Tomorrow night I'm catching a plane tomorrow to meet m'lady in Paris, so now was a pretty good time to start getting seriously annoyed with Accra. On cue, my hotel ran out of water yesterday morning. This was especially vexing because Sunday night, when I was reading like a post-ritalin snort grad student, I kept scratching at my face and wondering if it were a time for shave.
Nah, I thought. If I shave tonight I'll wake up with five o'clock shadow and then when I'm reporting I'll look like Dick Nixon.
And then the reporting fell through. So I was walking in the door of the hotel last night unwashed, unpaid, and hairyfaced when I asked the guy at the desk if the water was back on.
"No."
"Shall I follow you to your room?"
"Why?"
"So you can pay for today." When I first got here, they were very laid back. I'd pay them every three days or so, and sometimes I'd pay them a couple of days in advance. Lately they've been jumping on my for rent as soon as I walk in. I put my things down and hand him 50,000 cedis.
"If the water's not on tomorrow, I'm leaving." But his back is already turned and he's walking away.
When the light in my room takes ten seconds to stop clicking on and off, I scream at it. When the toilet doesn't flush, I scream at it. I go to sleep and dream about screaming at African utilities.
Wake up, no shower water. I walk out to the desk. "No water?"
Manager smiles. "No, Mr. John. No water. We have called the company."
"When do you think there will be water?"
"Oh, maybe tonight." Whatever bro, I'm Audi 5000. I walk across the street to a phone and ring up Kokomlemle Guesthouse. The impatient man there assures me they have H20. When I ask him if they wash clothes, he sighs and says yes. Alright then. Pack my crap and out the door.
I pull up at the Guesthouse, and notice some annoying little dredlocked whiteboy smoking out in a corner. Grand. Into my room, where the manager mentions there's no water. Resume screaming.
"But there is no water anywhere in Accra now sir." Now who to scream at? The man who works for the place that assured me that there was water available here, or the idiot manager at the last placw who said nothing when I repeatedly expressed my frustration that the hotel management had done nothing to get its water going? Oh, let's do both. Yes let's.
