Africa descending

I’m not normally prone to depression, but the hotels of Africa can be very depressing. I’ve written about the experience before, so don’t want to be a bore, but what is truly sad is that so much money goes into building them, but then . . . nothing. Even in remote areas there are marble floors, elaborate ceilings, fancy curtains, and up to the minute sanitary fittings.

I was staying in one such hotel in Goma, only to have my guest experience dulled by the fact that even though the bathroom sported the latest sanitary ware and Hans Grohe taps (very expensive German ones) there was no seat (it had obviously been broken by an earlier guest), neither the basin nor the bath had a plug, and the curtains had pulled away from the hooks and were sagging helplessly. In another one, in Bukavu, the opening to the en suite bathroom was an inch narrower at the bottom than the top so naturally the door had no chance of closing.

It’s a bit similar when it comes to breakfast. We all know that supplies can be difficult, but I’m not sure whether that’s the problem. One day bread, the next day none. Once a week there’s margarine, and never butter. Pawpaws and melons grow like weeds, but one day there’s fruit, the next day nothing.

Then I realise what’s happening. The unfortunate staff are working on their own. They get no support from the big boss who owns the place. Any expenditure has to be justified to him or her in detail and only grudgingly paid after many days. These are not doss houses: they charge between $75 and $100 a night. But that doesn’t matter. Someone up there thinks that the establishment will run itself.

The total absence of middle management has its impact on morale and performance. No one checks up to see when the room has been cleaned or whether all the towels are in place. No one checks to see whether the lights are working (many of them aren’t). No one checks to see whether the little safe in the room is working.

Meanwhile in the kitchen the cooks struggle to cook a menu they neither understand nor like. The hotel in Goma had a five page menu which looked very impressive, but the results bore no relation to the dish’s name. Goujonettes de Tilapia, which should be small fish fingers in bread crumbs was a sloppy mess of fish and mushrooms in white sauce. Pizza was some cheese, olives and ham on a sweet pastry base. Escalope Viennoise looked like a Wiener Schnitzel, but was cooked until it was rock hard.

Lack of management is a problem, but there’s another one: that making repairs is something that should be done tomorrow. I remember visiting a school in South Africa where one classroom was out of use because it was used to store broken wooden desks, cupboards and chairs. Any competent carpenter could have repaired them with nothing more than some glue and a few nails in a matter of days.

For readers who are squirming about this apparently racist labelling of Africa as being incapable of good maintenance I need to point out that it is now a mantra among Africans throughout the continent. “Why don’t we, or can’t we, maintain things?”

In Ghana we met a Ghanaian, who had spent time in the US and had come back to a senior position to oversee the property portfolio of the national insurance fund (SNIT). The hotel we were staying in was one of their properties. Near a palm fringed beach in the tourist resort of Cape Coast. It was relatively new. We were sitting outside and as he looked at the rotting timber fascia, at the cracking and damp stained plaster, and a cracked window pane, and he said: “What’s wrong with us? We Africans just screw everything up.”