Hotel Afrique

Where: Shanzu Beach

In a good hotel there is always a cat jumping around on the premises. You often don’t hear them coming. They’ll surprise you by a tail softly embracing your lower leg, and then that look in the eyes, continued by a slow blink of both eyes ending in a pinched mew. It’s very hard then to refuse them a chunk of that juicy steak that you’re just about to enjoy. Also with cats friendship comes at a price. In some places cats grow really fat by using there full set of animal charms.

I am thinking about this when seated in the empty dining hall of The Dolphin Hotel on Shanzu Beach in Mombasa. Some ten crying cats are surrounding me, and there are more coming from all sides. They really grasp my legs, and the brave ones dare to jump next to me, and cuddle my sides with their heads, meanwhile purring and purring. Did you ever notice that purring is not connected to breathing? Whether they are inhaling of exhaling, it continues without the slightest interruption.

Welcome
It’s a very warm welcome in this hotel where there is not a living soul to be seen. In the restaurant the tables and chairs are removed, there are no charming waitresses, nor a chef with a high white hat passing by to greet you, and attending you on the specials of today. It’s amazing how well a big smile rhymes with that funny high hat. Maybe that’s why they wear it. Otherwise I don’t see the logic of it, apart from constraining dandruff which is my view quite rare in Africa.

The elegantly curbed pool is also deserted. Still there is water inside, and it has a deep green color, which means it has not been in use for long time. It starts to rain softly, and the drops are creating wrinkles on the surface. I look around me to the blue hotel buildings. All the windows are shut by wooden doors. The plastic chairs on the balconies are unused. Funny how always in these places you can still hear and feel the activity that used to be here. People talking to each other, children shouting and diving in the pool, people lying on sun beds, slowly leaning over to take their drink from a table. Waitresses who urge you to take another beer, long before the one you’re drinking is finished.

Too bad I just lost my phone in public transport, otherwise I wouldn’t have resisted to take a picture of this frozen emptiness. Think I am surrounded now by fifteen cats, but suddenly some of them flee in that low way of running cats can do. From far I see a guard coming. He is dressed in a green uniform with a nice cap. In his hand he’s holding a wooden club.

Fine
‘How are you, Sir?’ he opens our conversation. Of course I am fine, which is interesting in a country where many people are definitely not fine. Still they will say they’re fine, unless you insist. Then you will get too many stories about how bad things are nowadays. Like often in this life the question is already the answer.

‘Fine,’ I reply to the guard. ‘How do you like my friends?’ He stares too me a bit confused, and the cats do the same to him. They seem to have found my back pack now, which looks to be under heavy attack.
‘You’re not supposed to be here,’ the guard interrupts the stream of my consciousness. ‘Sorry for that,’ I reply. ‘There is no room for me here?’
‘The hotel is closed, Sir.’
‘Why?’
‘There was violence in Kenya after the presidential elections. Many people died, and the tourists left the country. So the management closed the hotel.’

Calm
As a journalist I did a lot of reporting on the post elections violence, even from Mombasa. Over thousand people died all across Kenya. It’s end of July now, and the country is relatively calm again. The tourists however did not come back by the masses.

‘We saw you coming, Sir, and I wanted to tell you it’s dangerous here.’ The guard tells me the premises are often frequented by thieves how try to steal things from the hotel, even looking for shelter here under the many stairways that connect the buildings.

‘And from the beach nobody can see what happens inside here. They might even attack you.’ The guard is slowly tapping his stick against his left hand palm, and the cats are jumping back.

‘I see,’ and I decide to relieve the guard. The cats are now clawing in my backpack. There are over twenty now. That attention is even too much for a human being. Then it comes to me why all this devotion. This morning I bought a few roasted fishes to have for lunch later. That should be the explanation, and waiving my hands I liberate my back pack. The cats run in every direction. Waiting for their next victim, it seems. I almost feel sorry for them that nobody’s going to throw chunks of juicy steaks, but I cannot surrender my fish. With a long bus drive to Nairobi looming it is rewarding to be selfish.

The guard and me walk to the path which leads back to the beach.

Some days later I do my searching on the Internet on the Dolphin Hotel. It was regularly visited by German tourists I read in many reviews. The rooms were a bit basic, although the air-conditioning and the mosquito nets were okay. The last reviews date back from late December 2007. Wonder which day it closed its doors. The reviews also say that the food in the restaurant was very nice, and that explains this thriving cat colony that was left behind. No Dolphin Hotel anymore for them, or me.

Double: 25$

It’s the kind of hotel where you look at each other like saying: ‘How did you end up here?’ I am in the Royal Hotel in Ndola in Zambia, in the middle of the defuncted copper belt. My wife Mariam stayed in Lusaka to visit her sister. Myself I decide to take a bus trip. Sometimes I like to be alone, just to get my mind straight. It really works like a head cleaner. There are some thoughts and ideas I’m not getting in company. You need the calmess and quietness of being alone. The hotel is in the industrial area of Ndola. The reason I came here was a small article in the Daily Mail of Zambia. One of the few English language newspapers. It said that a school at the Dag Hammarskjöld Memorial Site in Ndola was opened. Dag Hammarskjöld? Wasn’t he a former secretary-general of the United Nations? In the cyber I did some googling, and yes: he was and I came to understand that the honourable man died in a plane crash in Zambia. Washed away my croissant with the remains of my coffee, and I went off to the bus station. That one is located opposite to the main train station in Lusaka. There they keep a steam engine locomotive of Rhodesian Railways. It sounds fascinating, and after indepence in 1964 the company was renamed into Zambia Railways. So when Dag Hammarskjöld crashed, Zambia was still under British colonial rule and named Northern Rhodesia.

Caterpillars
’Ndola? 40.000 Kwacha,’ says the guy in the shack where they sell bus tickets. That’s eight US for a four to five-hour drive. ‘The bus is there,’ he adds. His hand is pointing at a green bus. The diesel engine is already on, and people are getting in. ‘The bus leaves when it’s full.’ That system is common in African countries I travelled. Wonder why we don’t do that in The Netherlands. You don’t have to wait in a crowded terminal, and you can spend your time seated, doing anything you like. When the bus leaves, the next one comes and this cycle continues the whole day. Off we went to Ndola. The place is situated in the Copper Belt of Zambia, which is about in the middle of the country. The industry made Zambia a thriving country, until the international copper trade collapsed. Now Zambia is under heavy IMF and World Bank support. On the way to Ndola you can see the defunct copper mills. The meaning of the word Ndola is hill, which is easily referring to the copper mines. The bus ride was without any hinderance. Roads are good in Zambia. The only thing that disturbed me, were the dried caterpillars that are a national delicacy in Zambia. When the bus stops for our calls of nature, vendors hold up trays of caterpillars. They’re yellowish and have dark round heads. I know I should try, but please next time. Keeping myself on a diet of roasted peanuts. Mariam once told me that ladies get beards from eating caterpillars.

Copper
Ndola is a quiet provincial town. It’s like that because of the decline in the copper trade, but still it reflects grandeur. Main Street is called Broadway, and along side there are modest skyscrapers. Examining the square concrete shapes I get the feeling they are erected during the socialistic era in Zambia. Looking for a forex I bump into the Copperbelt Museum. The vitrines holding tools and fragments of copper ore are covered with red dust, the light is faint. A group of school children is standing still. Their teacher tells great stories about the past.
Got myself a room in the Royal Hotel, for 15 US a night. Had my dinner in the underground restaurant. It is huge with a flagstone floor and wooden details on the walls. The place was almost deserted. The waiters are in the majority, and they seem used to it. Next to me there was a middle-aged Indian man, talking loudly to a guy holding banana boxes. On another table there was a white fellow with a black lady. Waiting for our orders we were staring at each other, with that look in the eyes, saying: ‘How for God’s sake did you get here?’ I had chicken with cream sauce, and it was delicious. After dinner I spent time in the bar, drinking a Mosi Lager, the best beer Zambia has to offer. On the wall there are trophees of giant kudus. There are some guys wearing overalls with logos on the back. I imagine they are labourers of a copper mill. For the rest there is nothing that remembers of the copper trade. Had a decent night sleep in a small and well equipped room. As in many middle class in Africa there were many many rooms. Just wondered if they would ever be fully booked. Maybe only when some kind of NGO is holding a workshop or a seminar on things like capacity building, sensitisation, community building, you name them, and I meet these functions quite often on the way.

Custodian
‘It’s very far!’ cries the taxi driver next morning. He asked 60,000 Kwacha and we agree on 50,000. The Dag Hammarskjöld Memorial Site is ten kilometres away from Ndola. On the map I saw we are close to the border with The Congo, specifically the Kantaga Province. We left Ndola and now we are driving through a densely forrested region. ‘It’s here,’ says the taxi man when he is turning into a dirt road on the right. ‘No you can’t walk it,’ he laughs when I suggest it’s not that far from Ndola. That should keep our agreed price undisturbed. We drive through the forest. Not the place you’d expect for a monument. Strange that forests anywhere in the world look the same. To my estimation we could be in France or even Germany. ‘Take your time,’ says the driver, and it’s if he falls asleep right away. In front of us there is a gate and a sign board reading ‘Dag Hammarskjöld Memorial Site’. The trees here have been removed, and in the middle of a flag stone circle there is a stone post holding a copper globe on top. Except a staring gardener there seems to be nobody. He smiles, leaning on his rake, and says: ‘He is there.’ Then he proceeds raking. From a building further down a man in a suit emerges. His shoes are shining bright, and proudly he walks to me. ‘Good morning, sir,’ he says, reaching out a well-manicured hand. ‘My name is Musialike Nasilele and I am the custodian. How can I be at your service?’ His eyes are shining strong and sure. Slowly I introduce myself and that I am interested in this part of history. ‘You are most welcome,’ he says. When I tell him that I would like to take a video, his eyes are blinking. ‘For video you pay a fee of 300 US Dollar.’ The entrance fee is 3 US Dollar. ‘You show me some proof in print,’ I tell the custodian. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘Come.’ We are walking to the building where he came from.

Crash
‘Please sit,’ he says, and starts grabbing through a pile of files. ‘There is it,’ he says and gives me a paper that bears the logo of the Zambian Government. ‘I mistaked,’ he says when he shows the rates. ‘It’s 500 Dollar. It’s the first time that someone comes to film.’ His eyes do not look greedy, but at least eager. ‘You have the money?’ I tell him that I didn’t travel all the way to Ndola to pay that huge amount for a bit of filming. ‘You are going to earn money on us. We charge for that. How much can you pay?’ Gently I tell him that there will be no filming at all, some pictures at the most. ‘Let’s go,’ he says. ‘We’ll start the tour.’ We are walking to a hill with a hut on top. ‘This is the spot where the body of honourable Dag Hammarskjöld was retrieved.’ Routineously he tells what happened in the night of 18 September 1961. ‘It begun with the independence of The Congo from Belgium. The leaders of the Katanga Province lobbied for separation because they still had strong ties with big Belgian industrial companies. The region is rich of uranium and copper. The newly formed government refused. Belgium sent in troups to stop the rebels in Katanga, who had their own army of mercenaries. A war was looming and Secretary-general Mr. Hammarskjöld took a personal interest and travelled to The Congo.’ Although I read the whole story on the Internet the custodian manages to grab my full attention. ‘He decided to have a meeting on the 18th of September with the leader of the separatists. He left from Leopoldville and embarked on a course that took him to Ndola in Northern Rhodesia, where the peace talks would be. It was a covert mission and the DC6 had to fly a secret route. We still don’t know what exactly happened, but that night the plane crashed at this site. There are two assumptions. One is that is was pilot error because he had to land with no lights. The other is that the rebels shot the plane to halt the peace talks. We still don’t have the funds to do a full investigation.’ We walk to the centre of the monument. There on a pillar is a copper plaquette with the name of the late Hammarskjöld. On top there is a globe also made from copper. Around the pillar there are stones laid by visitors. Kofi Annan and Joseph Kabila were here in 2001, also Nigeria’s president Obasanjo. ‘The most visitors we have are diplomats.’ I ask him how many tourists come here. ‘Sometimes four a day,’ he says.

European
‘The only survivor of the crash was Sergeant Harold Julian,’ the custodian continues. ‘He reported that Mr. Hammarskjöld was saying ‘Go back go back!’ Also he reported there were sparks in the sky when they tried to land.’ It must have been really something. Flying in the dark with no headlights, searching for an airstrip somewhere in a forest. Who knows what happened inside the plane. Shouting, panicking? Then finally crashing into the trees. On the Internet I read that it took days before the search party found the wreckage. ‘Harold Julian died in a hospital a few days later. We are left with assumptions and there is no money for a full investigation. With the monument we try to keep his remembrance alive.’ Suddenly the question strikes me why the Zambian government seems to pay a lot of attention to this crash site in the forest near the Katanga border. ‘Mr. Hammarskjöld was a white European and he gave his life for African independence. We want to remember him as a great man.’

Receipt
We do an interview at the gate of the memorial site, and then I am finished filming.
‘What about the fee?’ I ask. The custodian waves his hand. ‘I realise the promotional value of what you do. The film you are making will attract visitors. That is worth more than 500 Dollar,’ he answers, and is quiet for a moment. ‘Still you have to make a donation.’ We walk to the museum building, and inside he shows me a carton donation box. ‘That money is not receipted,’ he explains. The money will always be to the benefit of somebody, I think while I put 50,000 Kwacha, the equivalent of 10 US Dollars. ‘When I leave you take it?’ I ask. ‘No,’ the custodian replies. ‘They come every two months to collect. We use it for the upkeep of site.’ It seems a splendid example of government induced corruption. At least the guy is wearing a nice suit.
It was an impressing experience that is still on my mind. The year was 1961 and the United Nations were just in place. The secretary-general did not have many means to enforce solutions. Sanctions were not developed yet; there were no peace keepers. The best thing he could do was dropping by and talk a way out. Imagine Kofi Annan going on secret missions. Still he does go and talk to the leaders and listen to them. In that respect nothing much has changed.
That evening I had a good sleep in the Royal Hotel.

Personal stories and observations from hotels in Africa.

Will soon be back after being hacked.

Ruud Elmendorp
Video Journalist Africa