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

” If only I could stop the time. Hold it for a while. Keep it and then release like I do when practicing meditation. How beautiful and powerful is to take that time for ourselves, slowing it down and observe it. Observe what your mind is thinking, where it takes you to.

Stone Town in Zanzibar has a similar effect on me despite I have been here many times.

Every time it is like the first time.

I inhale the breeze and follow the flow. I breathe at the rhythm of the town. Wandering through the labyrinth of streets, mosques and houses, busy during the day and calm in early morning, I observe the daily life of locals through antique doors only open few centimeters. . I observe shadows stretching themselves as the sun set on the horizon. I read a book at the edge of the ocean observing the boats floating on it. I inhale the barbecue -scented breeze. I hunt down second-hand bookstores and antique shops.

Once at home, I settle in, lay down on my bed, open my book and listen the muezzin at the mosque calling upon the faithful to pray and the bells of the Cathedral.

As an article I read time ago said  ” It feels like being perched in a scene of the Arabian Nights”.

– Giorgio Faedo, Italy-