I was trying to find the right words to describe the experience of the journey by train I took last year and I think what I experienced is well described by this extract from an article I recently read: “ There was a sense of diminishment. I always get from our culture of images: no matter how finely you chop life into sequence of photographs, no matter how closely in the time the photographs are spaced, what the sequence always ends up conveying to me the most strongly is what it leaves out.” The end of the end of the world, by Jonathan Franzen.

 So what was the point to travel by train from Kigoma to DAR, spend two days in a train when I could easily take the plane and in few hours be at home? It was to experience the essence of time. Get dazzled by the beauty of the scenery and the humanity around me and sense “the present of past things, the present of the present things and the present of the future things” (St.Augustine).

Giorgio Faedo – Italy