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The first sight of the Hotel Magnifique leaves little doubt that it is anything but. It had begun operations some ten years previously and the white paint that had been the maiden coating of the building was now a very anemic brown, peppered with patches of assorted shades of brown, green and yellow, whose origins are best left lost in the mists of ignorance.
The revolving door that had been the pride of the management had given up the ghost a year after operations, chiefly due to the fact that the juvenile doorman had derived immense satisfaction from taking impromptu rides from the same when authority was out of ear (and eye) shot. This had necessitated its removal and replacement with a double glass door that had lasted all of the morning and slightly into the afternoon of its replacement before the temptation had gotten the better of the street urchins in the neighborhood. Half a dozen or so well aimed stones had introduced into the surface or the door a series of spider-web like cracks that had truly withstood the test of time.
The hotel itself was a two storied building, and the windows overlooking the entrance showed indeed that mere mortals lived and breathe within. Almost all were opened, and from most of these an ingenious arrangement of sisal twine served as a clothes line. From these hung a dizzying array of attire, both for external and internal use that was a source of much merriment for the locals. The one thing an observer of the drying washing can conclude is that indeed it takes all shapes and sizes to make a world.
When the sun retires at the end of the day it becomes still more apparent that the hotel is Magnifique by name alone by the neon sign whose only functional letters (and only just, judging by the flickering and periodic omission of spectacular sparks) were the Q, the U and the E.
The current doorman was a relic of the second world war called Owiti, or so the patch just above his breast pocket said. The coat he wore started life as being a violent red and both the effects of age and the attempts to keep it red had reduced it to an indeterminate colour. Owiti's protruding stomach was the chief suspect when it came to establishing where the buttons were. The shirt below the coat was always a pasty off yellow, at least from the visible portions of collar and lapels. It was always tucked. The shirt violently clashed with the trousers, a dull brown, with conspicuous patches on the knees. The colour, it had been established, was entirely by design to increase the cycle between washings.
Owiti's striking footwear looked like a hard fought compromise between cowboy boots, moccasins and gumboots. Enormous in size, ridiculously thick soles, and absurdly pointed tip that curled up at the front and gleaming and polished brown surface, the footwear was quite unique. He claimed they were waterproof, dirt proof and theft proof. The shoes were a matter of immense pride to the owner who could effortlessly hold forth for two hours (assuming a 60 minute hour and a 60 second minute) of tales of the strengths of his shoes and how time after a time they had extricated him from several sticky situations.
Owiti himself was like his footwear – entirely unique. His hairline appeared to begin just above the nape of his neck, ruling out any possibility of the wind blowing through his hair, a statement he enjoyed peppering his tales with.
His head was a credible approximation of a perfect sphere, and the gleaming smoothness of his bald skull was a source of constant merriment to the neighbourhood's numerous urchins. His lack of eyebrows and facial air of any kind gave his face an almost eerily youthful appearance.
The eyes and teeth seemed to have agreed on the same shade of yellow to adopt, and the smile was dazzling. The face itself was ever smiling and ever cheerful, from the crack of dawn to the break of dusk.
His habitual position was a half slouch against one of the cracked glass doors that had been closed for that very purpose. One slouched against the door he'd bend a knee and brace his foot against the door, knee projecting accusingly into the street. This was the reassuring picture that the clientele of the establishment first clapped their eyes upon.
Upon perceiving guests ascending the sadly chipped and battered three steps to the lobby of the hotel, he would lever himself away from the door with the bent leg and effusively welcome guests into the hotel.
On the rare occasions where the guests had luggage, a small boy would be summoned from the confines of the hotel to service with a bellowed oath. Owiti took his duties of welcoming guests and showing them into the hotel seriously and literally.
A combination of necessity, practicality and a stab of marketing has seen the lobby subdivided into the hotel reception and a bar cum restaurant by way of a perforated plastic partition. This establishment had no choice but to be called the Magnificent Bar and Restaurant.
The décor of the Magnificent Bar and Restaurant was a showcase of consistency. The chairs were plastic. The tables were plastic. The flowers were plastic. The cutlery was plastic. The crockery was plastic. The curtains on the windows were plastic. The tablecloths were plastic. Gladly, the uniforms of the single waiter and waitress were not plastic, but this was only apparent after a second and a third look.
The reception was immediately after the Magnificent Bar and Restaurant, and it consisted of a minute room liberally encased with metallic grilling with a small hole at the very front for reception of money and issuing of keys. This room also doubled as the manager's office and its Spartan furnishing consisted of a rickety table, a still more rickety chair and a telephone that could quite possibly have been the original prototype of that gadget.
Securing a room at the Hotel Magnifique was an exemplification of simplicity. One merely specified the duration they wished to stay (minimum one night) and whether they wanted a normal room or a presidential suite. (To the uninitiated, the presidential suite earned that distinction by having a window as well as portraits of all the presidents of this great nation on the one wall.)
Once this information was specified, money changed hands and a receipt was scribbled on whatever paper that happened to be at handy.
Ideas such as half board and full board accommodation had been considered, tried and rejected because the small staff had gotten tired of explaining to the guests what exactly those were. The fact that the sole telephone in the building resided in the manager's office had also introduced some practical limitations. The final nail in the coffin for this initiative was that Wanjiru, the buxom who filled the capacity of the maid has reacted violently to the news that in addition to her assorted duties she was also expected to carry food and drink up the stairs to the guests. Her vocabulary as she sought to know why the guests could not march their lazy selves down the stairs to get their own food had turned the air in the immediate vicinity blue.
Upon settlement of payment, either the small boy with the luggage or Wanjiru is called upon to guide the guests to the room, in the cases where the guests are newcomers. Old timers already know every nook and cranny.
The rooms were accessed by scaling a flight of rickety stairs to the first floor. Veteran guests tended to tread on the sides of the steps and eschew the railing altogether for reasons of safety for the outer well being of the person in the case of the former and safety of the inner well being in the case of the latter. Upon seeing the rooms it becomes apparent why a guide is essential – none of the rooms are numbered.
The architect who had come up with the design of the rooms was a man who eschewed complication. His maxim appeared to be one of simplicity. Every last room followed the same simple design. Each room was equipped with a single iron bed (the bright red rust betrayed its composition almost audibly), a rickety beside table whose function appeared to hold the odds and ends of the guests and cupboard to hold entirely another set of odds and ends. The sole concession to aesthetics was a single plastic flower on the bedside table.
Excluding the cockroaches and assorted wildlife, each room has a maximum capacity of two, two and only two. Care needed to be taken when opening the door because it is prevented from opening to its maximum by the presence of the bed, which is in full contact with two sides of the room. The patronage of the Hotel Magnifique is a fraternity that does not suffer from claustrophobia because the rooms are of a size that is very conducive to punching a fellow occupant in the next room in the eye while taking off one's jacket.
When nature, as she is usually wont to, calls, these calls can be answered by the communal facilities at the end of the corridor. A sense of smell is all that is needed to identify precisely which door offers relief from nature's cals. Any doubts are settled by the numerous footprints on the actual door. The reason for the footprints could be deduced both from the smell emanating as well as the fact that this door was not constrained by the presence of a doorknob. A good kick was the usual way of gaining access to the throne room.
Opening this door (by way of kicking it in) revealed a small room, with barely enough space to change one's mind, divided into a single shower and the toilet facilities. This demarcation is achieved by a sadly battered plastic sheet that consisted more of holes. In a burst of inspired genius, repairs had only been carried out on the upper sections, such that an individual of average height could attend to his hygiene without any part of his upper body being seen. The nether regions were another matter altogether but the rationale adopted seemed to be that no one minded their nether regions being seen as long as they were not associated with a face.
The floor of the shower itself hosted a perpetual pool of unbelievably murky water that was an excellent site for an entire ecosystem. In defiance of numerous laws of physics, the pool was always the same size, regardless of whether a shower was actually being taken or not.
The toilet itself was one that needed a scientific approach. For starters the management was of the opinion that the patrons were not above helping themselves to water from the WC and has thus encased it in a wooden chamber. The management also felt that a lot of unnecessary flushing was taking place and thus had made a tiny hole in the wooden chamber with which to access the magic lever for flushing. This was an exercise that required patience and small hands, because accessing the lever and turning it was another matter altogether. This naturally meant that the usual state of the facilities encouraged Mother Nature's calls being tempered by perseverance.
Having laid out this tapestry, it is apparent that the patronage and staff of this establishment are, just like everyone else, unique. But that is the stuff of another tale altogether…
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