Photographs

Train stop at the Zambia/Tanzania border - Tazara Express train from Dar es Salaam to Lusaka

Restaurant coach before lunch time - Tazara Express train from Dar es Salaam to Lusaka

Passengers in a row to exit from Ngambawa station, in Zambia - Tazara Express train from Dar es Salaam to Lusaka

Tanzanian landscape from a train window - Tazara Express train from Dar es Salaam to Lusaka

Train parking in Mbeya station - Tazara Express train from Dar es Salaam to Lusaka

Children asking for candies along the railway, in Tanzania - Tazara Express train from Dar es Salaam to Lusaka

Watching the train departure from Konona village, in Zambia - Tazara Express train from Dar es Salaam to Lusaka

Tazara Express train from Dar es Salaam to Lusaka

Inside the third class compartment - Tazara Express train from Dar es Salaam to Lusaka

Train crashed in the Zambian savannah at 200km from Kapiri Mposhi - Tazara Express train from Dar es Salaam to Lusaka

The Tazara Express runs through the jungle near Dar es Salaam

Trains meet at Mbeya station, in Tanzania - Tazara Express train from Dar es Salaam to Lusaka

Inside the lounge coach - Tazara Express train from Dar es Salaam to Lusaka

Getting into the train from the Zambian savannah, nearby Serenji village - Tazara Express train from Dar es Salaam to Lusaka

Train stop at Mbeya station, Tanzania - Tazara Express train from Dar es Salaam to Lusaka

The second class wagon-lit - Tazara Express train from Dar es Salaam to Lusaka

Restaurante and Lounge coach - Tazara Express train from Dar es Salaam to Lusaka

Arrival at Mbalizi station, in Zambia - Tazara Express train from Dar es Salaam to Lusaka

Train arrival at Dar es Salaam station - Tazara Express train from Dar es Salaam to Lusaka

Africa Express 3

The Tazara Express train (TanzaniaZambiaRailways) connects Lusaka (Zambia) to Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), 1800 km of tracks made at the beginning of the 70' by the People's Republic China in about six months as a gift from President Mao Tse-Tung. A big steel snake which broke the economic and geographic isolation imposed by Zambian government, during the apartheid and the cold war, connecting its big copper mines to the Dar es Salaam commercial seaport. Today this train carries out mainly traders and emigrates. The journey lasts around 70 hours.
This story is the third part of a long-term project, which will be published in a book in 2009 by Postcart Editions.

Africa Express represents a long passage of hope, aboard daily trains that run back and forth between the beginnings and ends of individual and collective journeys.
During the last twenty years the undercover migratory flux from Africa towards the European coasts has become endless and has reached such proportions, that the countries of the industrialized world are today trying to limit the worrying phenomena. African migration towards Europe represents only a part of a much larger phenomena that covers the entire continent.
Due to ancestral traditions and modern day necessity the African populations give part of their livelihood to these internal migratory movements : each day millions move from one city to another, from one region to another or even from one country to another.
For Africans, migration represents a vital need for knowledge, discovery, exchange and opportunity that translates into “hope” for a better life.
For these reasons, in time, some African locations, cities, villages or just simple geographic sites, have been transformed into stops along the journey of hope. Right or wrong, these places today represent a compulsory point of passage or a definite destination point.
The railway, once an instrument of exploitation used by the whites on the indigenous population, has now been transformed into a major opportunity and an expression of liberty for the local population. In Africa the trains are not only a means of transport for people, animals and things but they are also the setting for human needs and the exchange of knowledge, information and experiences.
Therefore the train as a means of transport becomes place. A place that produces a dilation in time that in turn slows movement to an endlessness in space, because the final destination is an abstract concept, distant like infinity. The trip is measured metre after metre, difficulty after difficulty, thought after thought.
The train therefore, metaphorically becomes a resource used to arrive at a collective betterment, but also to gain individual freedom that will in turn satisfy an always increasing and urgent desire for emancipation.