TAZARA is the name of
the famous East African railway connecting the
copper-mines of Zambia with Tanzanias port
of Dar-es-Salaam. For passengers, it is a journey
of almost three days and two nights made possible
by Chinas first attempt to involve herself
in a massive development project on the African
continent.
In April 2007, a TAZARA-Express is heading from
East to West into Africa. It passes points
seemingly without control, changing its direction
time and again almost like a runaway
train.
However, control rests with a mysterious
stage-manager who is able to direct action
through handy men within the trains
coaches. Steered as if by ghostly hands, the
train is being manoeuvred through time and space,
even travelling on far away rail-networks thereby
touching stations where raw products and goods
are waiting as well as ideologies and
claims to power to be loaded or unloaded
by iron horses of their time.
Whilst diving through tunnels, an ominous
saloon-coach of this spooky train receives as
visitors personalities of universal history who
sometimes heckled by co-travellers of the
TAZARA are made to involve themelves in a
debate of their conduct as actors in business or
politics coining in one way or another the fate
of Africas people in the past or in the
future.
The VIP-list of the mysterious stage-manager does
contain such actors of the world game as Dag
Hammarskjöld, John D. Rockefelller Jr., Leo
Trotzki, Kofi Anan, Cecil Rhodes, Frantz Fanon,
Albert Schweitzer, Bill Gates ... Knowing voices,
hiding somewhere else on the train, are using the
compartments public address system to
confront the VIPs.
Among co-travellers occupying TAZARA-compartments
of the first class there are: four Zambian
business women returning from a shopping spree in
Dubai, their goods rolling with them in a
TAZARA-container a travelling tailor from
Hong Kong who used to fit African politicians
with affordable diplomatic suits, now scouting
for African opportunities on behalf of a Mr. Moon
a messenger on his way with valuable
vintage watches to launder money for dealers in
drugs and weapons a German entrepreneur
who is convinced that he will construct another
railway line through Africa ...
All of them dont have a clue that the
mysterious stage-manager has already determined
at what type of rail-siding their journey will
come to an end.
INTRODUCTION
It smells
of soot and of oil.
Thats for my nose.
For my eyes, both of it produced some trainy film
on scattered glass-pieces sitting in the rusty
sieve of a roof hovering over this draughty hall,
each fragment reflecting a dazzling recollection
of great engeneering art developed through more
than two centuries.
The light of the sun remains pale within this
enormous hall, in the morning, at midday or in
the evening fixed only for moments as
bright white fingers indicating from above
through shifting clouds of dust.
Steam first, then diesel, electricity never
no!
The last locomotives which did rest here, then
did rust they represented the engineer's
highest effort to complete a development of which
the beginning was the turning wheel, the wheel!
With the advent of electricity the wheel lost its
power. Oh, it knew how to use the wheel, this
electricity, it would need it for its very
existence, afterwards it would drive the wheel
itself may be, even better than steam and
diesel, but at the end, it would dispense with
it, not to be used in intelligent machines
anymore, would replace it with endless lines of
letters and numbers in flickering computers
operating soon without a turning wheel.
The matrix of electricity will see the wheel
serving for production and communication as a
slave of digital codes only, as a rolling misery
mounted under cargo-robots.
Gone is the time when steel rails would guide
rolling wheels to conquer foreign worlds.
Oh, I have studied the secrets of electricity,
this is the switch which will let it serve my
purpose in this hall ...
Click!
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