Kibokoni Hotel, Malindi

After 3 weeks of generous hospitality staying rent free and with luxurious exclusivity of cousin Julia's in-laws holiday home, Zawadi House we decided to move out. We had decided to remain in Malindi and do some free consultancy at a local orphanage/school/hospital that we found just around the corner and realised that for us to appreciate the community a bit more we'd have to venture out of the safe and cosseted environment that is Zawadi House. Zawadi House is a beautiful 3 bedroomed traditionally styled Kenyan building with a towering pointed roof thatched with palm throng tiles. Ventilation is achieved with gaping roofed openings in the sides of the roof a little like dormer window without the glass, frames or structure - actually not very much like dormer windows at all but very picturesque all the same. There are two floors, both open plan and both with an inordinate amount of sitting/lounging apparatus. I estimated that there was arse space for approximately 54 people, not including the bedrooms.  We were getting in to the habit of watching the National Geographic channel on the satellite TV every night and while I will sorely miss the thrice weekly episodes of "Monkey Thieves" (worth the whole subscription I am sure) we decided to look for a place with more independence and lower walls. Besides, we were beginning to feel that we were getting under Peter the houseboy's feet as we were clearly interfering with his nightly soccer fix on the satellite TV.

So after talking to a few of the locals and laughing hysterically at the prices of other self catering places on offer we jumped at the chance of seeing a small apartment just down the road in a complex called Kibokoni Hotel. It was actually Peter the houseboy that found the place for us, only hours after we had dropped the hint that we might be moving out! Malindi is a small town but the convenient location of Kibokoni Hotel was just perfect - only a 5 minute walk from where we were working and the staff seemed friendly enough. When we were shown around by a slim woman in nothing but a bikini and a towel, everything seemed OK to me. Everything seemed to be in the right places, well proportioned and pretty tidy over all -  and the apartment wasn't too bad either so we took it. We ended up paying about 40% over the going rate and foolishly agreed to pay 2 months in advance - something we were to truly regret only days after moving in. The interior decor of the place was ropey (tangerine and pistachio?) but pretty spacious and outside the place was in state of typical disrepair. Bizarrely, there were a number of reproduction early 19th century paintings of English fox hunting scenes on the wall and a set of Russian dolls covered in dust on a shelf in the kitchen. There was enough seating for at least a dozen people which judging by our social life in Kenya up to that point in time seemed about 10 spaces too much.

Televisions in Africa are still quite rare. Their scarcity is generally compensated for by being always on and set permanently at full volume. The two TVs at Hotel Kibokoni, one in the  open bar area and one by the pool, are no exception. "AfricaMagic" seems to be the favourite channel which shows shitty soap operas made with a shaky camcorder and very bad actors who constantly shout at each other in Swahili and cry a lot. All stories seem to centre on money problems and or infidelity along with a few witch doctors thrown in for good measure. If we're lucky we get a bit of National Geographic, but never any Monkey Thieves.

Once we had paid two months up front the pleasantries ended and we are treated like anyone else in this country - isn't that what we wanted? Yes but...
The kitchen was pitifully poorly equipped, the TV we were promised finally got connected a week later but only showed what was being watched in the bar - yes you've guessed it, witch doctors and shouting black people. The bed also took a week to be installed properly as it was missing a correctly fitting mosquito net and the swimming pool has gone green. To top it all the gas ran out after a few days and after being told that all the bills were inluded in the rent we were told to go the the petrol station to get ourselves a new cannister if we wanted to carry on using the cooker. We were sharing the appartment with 3 or 4 geckos and thousands of ants and the locked interior door to the next appartment was warped so badly that we quickly became intimately acquainted with our neighbours lifestyle, music taste and bowel movements. The Landlady from Hell, Marcie (a true She-Devil, if ever I met one), sacked Dominic the member of staff that tried to warn us that she was trying to con us when we mentioned the gas bottle episode as some kind of demonstration of who has the power round here. She fixes you with a don't **** with me stare when we make the slightest complaint although she did begrudgingly agree to pay for the new regulator that we had to buy for her own bloody gas cooker.

The only person working at the Hotel that actually seemed to do anything was Amissi, the general gofer and maintenance man. We would regularly hear his name being shrieked across the hotel as he had instructions randomly thrown at him throughout his 11 hour days. He never seemed to complain, always greeted you with a smile and a cheerful "Jambo" and was usually dripping with sweat. I suppose working for the She-Devil, you would have to be  a certain type of person, and Amissi clearly needed the two pounds a day that she paid him. It was Amissi who ended up inheriting a lot of our cast offs, which he seemed to greatly appreciate and would hurriedly squirrel them away before the She-Devil spotted him with anything.

 

So, over the 7 - 8 weeks that  we stayed in the Kibokoni Hotel, we slowly but oh so surely fell out with the owner and her partner, Sam. The gas bottle was the first problem, then our repeated requests for the bed to be fixed, the TV scam, the murky green swimming pool (picture was "before", didn't get a chance for the "after" - the broken pot is cemented on to the edge of the pool), refusal to fix lights that stopped working in the appartment ("but they were working fine when you took the place"), constant lack of water as they wouldn't refill the tank until somebody asked (we were always the somebody) but as we got to know our fellow inmates we learned that it clearly wasn't personal. One girl, a Kenyan that was working at another NGO in Malindi had ended up paying 3 months in advance and had since been told by "the management" that she would now have to contribute to the electricity bills, would have to pay to have her rubbish taken out of her room, and would have to pay if she used the pool or  watched the public bar TV that was permanently switched on anyway. She was too scared to complain as she could not afford to get kicked out. She also said that most of the other residents were in the same position, but there was nothing anyone could do without having to bribe officials for any kind of support.

The last straw came unexpectedly and brought an  abrupt end to our stay at this salubrious residence. One evening, we returned to the hotel after dark in a tuk-tuk. Unfortunately, we managed to leave the key to our appartment in the tuk-tuk so we were locked out. When we asked Sam, the She-Devil's 6 foot 9 partner for assistance (by this time she had stopped talking to us entirely) there was a complete absence of even a hint of giving the remotest of a shit. Not only that, but it turned out that the last residents had lost their key also and we had therefore been given the spare. Sam sat there and with out the slightest irony made us the generous offer of a special rate on another room. When we told him that we were not prepared to pay for another room on the basis that it was his responsibility to keep a spare key, he told us that we would have to spend the night under the stars. He also told us that we would have to sort out a locksmith in the morning if we wanted to get back in to our room - thanks for the advice Sam, nice one.
In the end, Peter the Zawadi House Houseboy came to the rescue and put us up for the night. In the morning he helped us find a locksmith and we were back in the appartment before 8:15. Our hosts didn't surface until 9.30.
In the local bar that evening, we shared our story with a few of the locals and the unequivocal advice was to go to the tourist police and report the incident, which I did. Actually, the police were surprisingly interested in the issue and promised to look into it - the officer I spoke to ending the conversation with a request for me to send him a Man Utd shirt from the UK when I  got back.

It all came to a head the following night - yet again, there was no water as they hadn't bothered refilling the tank, it was a hot and sticky night and I needed a shower. I went into the bar area to tell Sam. As soon as he saw me, he leapt up and immediately started shouting at me about ruining his reputation around Malindi. Apparently he'd heard about our visit to the local bar and he was not happy. The last thing I remember doing was launching into some rant about paying rent and having rights and firmly standing my ground as he loomed over me. I didn't see the first blow coming, and to be honest it was the last thing I was expecting. He then slapped me in the head again as I was scurrying around trying to get the hell out of there while the She-Devil herself did her best to block my escape. In the end, it was Jessica the diminuitive barmaid who grabbed his arm and let me get some distance and a few words in edgeways.
So to cut a long and rather tedious story short, I called the Police, they came, Sam and the She-Devil denied everything and the witnesses said they saw nothing. The Police left, telling us all to go down to the station in the morning. The following morning we moved out, I got an apology from a sober Sam and I dropped the charges knowing that I'd never be able to afford the bribes to see justice done anyway.
A couple of days later we caught the train from Mombasa to Nairobi and as we passed through one of the Game Reserves we accidentally threw the last remaining key to the appartment out of the carriage window.

I never thought that our last couple of days in Kenya would turn out like an episode of one of those crappy soap operas on AfricaMagic.On the bright side, it gave me a fascinating insight into how things work in small towns in Kenya and how quickly news travels. It's the law of the jungle - if you have money you have influence. If you are bigger than someone you fall out with, you hit them. If you want European standards of service, you find a European run Hotel - suddenly it dawned on me why all the white tourists stayed locked up behind the thick white washed walls of their private residences. With people like Sam and the She-Devil towards the top end of the food chain, why the Hell would you want to venture out anyway?