Train to Dar Es Salaam

Let's pretend that you are taking a train from New York City to Chicago (I know Amtrak doesn't do the route straight, but we'll use our imagination).
Your train is scheduled to leave at 1pm, so you arrive at Penn Station at 12:30, ticket in hand. But your train is not leaving at 1pm. On the grapevine you hear that it has been delayed for 2 hours.
Okay, fine. Sit down read a book.
At 2pm the train has been delayed until 4pm.
Okay get some food.
At 3pm an Amtrak representative wheels out a chalk board which reads "DUE TO CIRCUMSTANCES BEYOND OUR CONTROL THE TRAIN WILL BE ARRIVING AT 7PM"
Four hours later 7pm comes and goes without a train passing through the city. The sun starts to go down and there is a city wide blackout in New York so now you are sitting in the darkness. The bathroom was nasty before, but the stench is now filtering across Penn Station. It has no plumbing nor has it been cleaned since the morning and can't be cleaned until the station is empty and the sun comes up.
At 8pm some wheels away the chalkboard and doesn't return.
At 11pm everyone has begun to wrap up in a blanket to sleep. As far as you can tell everyone who works for Amtrak has gone home.
At 2am you fall asleep on the stone floor.
At 4am the train is said to be near.
At 5am it arrives.
In New York, there would have been a riot. In Mbeya, Tanzania there is patience. I heard my favorite line while talking to a local around 8pm: as he was breaking his fast for Ramadan he said "Don't lose hope, the train always comes."

It was a little hellish, but could have been much worse. As I waited for the train to Dar Es Salaam I had good company with other travelers.
Four days before, I had come to Mbeya early to buy tickets for myself, a South African girl and an Irish couple that I had met in Malawi. We planned to shared book an entire 4 four person compartment (only single gender compartments unless you buy the whole thing). However, the Irish couple never showed (in their defense I met them in Dar last night and learned one of them had contracted malaria in Malawi). To help fill our room I offered a ticket to a British woman who had gotten a 2nd class ticket and would have been sleeping in a room with strangers. Together, we three were a little team who would band together and make the journey to Dar surviving  further delay, stench, food shortage, alcoholics, a stomach bug (pole sana to Lauren), crying babies, bureaucracy and freezing temparatures.
And we only arrived a mere 15 hours late.