Dire Dawa, Ethiopia, January 2023. The repair centre for passenger carriages and freight wagons.
Dire Dawa, Ethiopia, January 2023. Men repairing a door in the general workshops (forge, foundry, boiler making, carpentry). Since the end of the 90s, activity has been very limited, and employees are often busy working on things outside the station.
Dire Dawa, Ethiopia, January 2023. The atmosphere in the large spaces of the Dire Dawa workshops is almost “museum-like”. The light streaming through the glass roofs highlights the antique pieces, which have often been at a standstill for several years.
Dire Dawa, Ethiopia, January 2023. For the last twenty years, Fayssal has been in charge of one of the workshop’s supply shops. He manages the stock of all the parts (bolts, screws, etc.).
Dire Dawa, Ethiopia, January 2023. An equipment yard in the passenger and freight wagon repair centre. All the parts in these gigantic workshops are meticulously inventoried once a year.
Dire Dawa, Ethiopia, January 2023. A man repairs an engine part. Today, there are only 14 workers left to keep these skills and this line alive. Skills are no longer being passed on, and the next generation is not guaranteed.
Dire Dawa, Ethiopia, January 2023. A group of men work on an old machine in the general workshops. There are many trades involved in train maintenance (forge, foundry, boiler making, carpentry).
Dire Dawa, Ethiopia, January 2023. The railway wagons are almost 70 years old, and incidents are frequent. The workshops near Dire Dawa station are full of old derelict wagons like this one.
Dire Dawa, Ethiopia, January 2023. Outside the station there are a number of train wrecks. Children can often play inside. Today, rehabilitation would require funds, but the project is expensive and not very profitable.
Dire Dawa, Ethiopia, January 2023. It’s five o’clock in the morning in Dire Dawa, when the train, packed to the rafters, pushes off towards the Djibouti border with Dewele. The train only runs twice a week, on Tuesdays and Saturdays.
Ethiopia, January 2023. This line is a real link between populations, and for some even a means of subsistence. Particularly for the merchants who come to town to stock up on a range of goods that are impossible to find in the desert.
Ethiopia, January 2023. The crowded train is on its way to the Djibouti border, Dewele. The journey sometimes takes more than twelve hours.
Ethiopia, January 2023. The train stops around fifteen times over the 207 kilometres between Dire Dawa and Dewelé.
Ethiopia, January 2023. Many teenagers and mothers with their children were crowded into this carriage. Many of them were preparing to cross the border illegally into Saudi Arabia, with virtually nothing – no bag, no telephone, very little water.
Ethiopia, January 2023. The line acts as a kind of backbone, providing a social link for the inhabitants of isolated desert villages.
Ethiopia, January 2023. At every stop, sometimes in the middle of nowhere, queues of people of all ages come running, climbing aboard the carriages and offering passengers drinks, peanuts or milk.
Ethiopia, January 2023.
Ethiopia, January 2023. This line is a means of subsistence for the merchants (sacks of rice, Khat, milk, etc.) but also a means of obtaining supplies of medicines in town for those who live further away.
Ethiopia, January 2023. This young woman was pregnant and travelling with a child. Like so many others, she was trying her luck that day to go into exile. A few kilometres from Djibouti, she set her sights on Saudi Arabia via Yemen.
Ethiopia, January 2023. One of the line’s other “uses” is as a means of escape to leave the country illegally: in the background is the Chinese line, launched in 2016, linking Addis Ababa to Djibouti non-stop.