In which I become horribly lost

It's been far too long.  Last weekend was supposed to be devoted to blog updates, but then the power went out---everywhere in the country, as it turned out. A power surge swiftly followed, knocking the university building off the grid and wreaking havoc with our poor, poor ISP's servers.  We finally came off the generators on Sunday and the Internet came back from the dead this afternoon.  It was a rough weekend.

But enough about the present: it's time to take you back to an incident from last week.

On the evening of July 13, I went out for a walk.  It was around 4:45 PM (or "16:45 hours," as they say here) and I wasn't particularly bothered by the knowledge that it gets very, very dark not long after 6 PM.  Nor was I concerned that I was walking into heretofore unexplored territory---what's the worst that could happen?

Things started out well.  I walked briskly down the street, heading north up a fairly steep incline, taking note of the city's Coca-Cola bottling plant and various palatial-looking houses secure behind sturdy steel gates.  Perhaps this is the affluent district, I thought.  The road eventually curved east and leveled off, and I came to a scenic overlook that afforded an excellent view of just how much ground I had covered.  It was 5:45, and I figured I was about a mile-and-a-half directly northeast of the university.  Then came the decision: should I turn around and follow the known---read: boring---path back, or should I press on and find another way?

Being the intrepid adventurer that I am, I chose the latter.  Continuing east, the road sloped downward, an encouraging sign.  But after perhaps a quarter mile it unceremoniously dead-ended in a field, the periphery of a shanty town that is, I was later told, "not a really great area to be in by yourself."  But look: a narrow path through the tall grass heading sort-of southwest!  Surely that would eventually lead...somewhere.  After ten minutes, I was dumped onto some train tracks.  Having followed some other tracks on my walk of a few days prior, I wishfully imagined that these tracks would eventually intersect those tracks and it would be a cakewalk from there.

But then it got dark.  Stumbling over the tennis-ball-sized rocks that formed the "path" between the tracks, I cursed my luck.  This was slow going.  After 20 minutes, the ground began to rumble.  Then a thundering horn pierced the relative silence of my trek thus far.  An enormous train came around the bend on the left track, and I quickly ran forward and to the right to wait it out.  My position afforded me a view of what lay around the bend: a train depot, perhaps the same one I had seen on my earlier walk.  But then the train halted and large men in bright yellow vests jumped off and ran around examining this and that; I was terrified they would spot me in the bushes and demand an explanation---this probably wasn't a place I had any business being in.  After a minute or two they jumped back on, and the train abruptly began moving in reverse, back toward the depot.  I waited a moment and followed.

Approaching the depot, and taking care to stay of the searing glare of the train's headlamps, I encountered my next obstacle: the sentry.   At least I think he was a sentry---who else would be standing in a tall tower surveying the territory in my direction?  Imagining that he had a sniper rifle he liked to use to pick off invaders like me, I crouched down and followed a fork of the track left, away from the depot but also away from the direction I needed to go.  It was about that time that I began losing hope of getting back anytime soon.

Things got worse.  This track was the only path through waist-high grass, so I had no choice but to follow it and hope for the best.  But soon it too became overgrown: this was clearly a disused section of the railroad.  After five minutes of struggling through the weeds, potential deliverance glimmered in the distance: a light, which I soon saw was attached to a small building.  Two men lounged outside, chatting and drinking Mosi, a local lager.  I knew this was my only chance to figure out just where the hell I was, so, mustering my courage, I played the dumb American and sheepishly told them I was lost and needed directions back to town.

They were friendly!  I was too far away to walk, they said, but they were happy to show me to the bus station.  We walked through the darkness for about ten minutes and then waited in even deeper darkness for a bus.  Every car that passed threw up great clouds of dust, and the few people still walking about at this hour were shadowy and spectral in the diffuse glow of the headlamps; I wish could have photographed that properly.  Eventually one of the junky blue buses arrived, and for 2500 kwacha (50 cents !) I was back home.  My watch read 7:45 PM as I unlocked the gate.