Journals of a Hotel Manager

As I am waiting for the news on the rats, my secretary Yeti came rapping on my door cautiously.  She is from the neighboring bigger island and observes a different religion.  On the island of the gods where women, all slender, wear hip hugging sarongs and tight lace kebaya while leaving their luscious black hair in a bun, Yeti’s loose fitting robes and headscarf concealing all traces of her hair makes her stand out.

“Pak John, excuse me, Pak Made wants to see you,” she said quietly.

“Made?  Umm, sure…show him in,” I frowned and tried in vain to think which Made this is.

The tradition of this island is unique and interesting.  Take names for example.  Nearly the entire local population has only five principal first names: Putu, Made (Ma-day), Nyoman, Ketut, and Wayang.  If you are a first born, no matter girl or boy, you would be called Putu.  Second born is always called Made.  And so on.  Actually Wayang and Putu are interchangeable, so there is no way of knowing whether this Wayang is the first born or the fifth child of the family.  There are certain variations but the five principal names are always prevalent.  If you call out “Hey, Putu!” in a busy market, at least one fifth of the people will answer you.

Hence my dilemma at this very moment: which one of the 200 Mades under my employ is coming to see me?

This Made turns out to be one of the engineers, the one nicknamed “the snake man”.  He is approaching sixty years old and has a passion for raising snakes as a hobby.  We invited him to show off his pets during the last New Year’s Eve party.  He had ruthlessly pulled out some poisonous fangs from quite a few snakes he was showcasing, thus both delighted and frightened many guests.

Made stood there with bloodshot eyes and quivering lips.  He muttered a long story.  His English was too poor for me to understand therefore I only locked eyes with him and nodded encouragingly.  I sensed that he was in fear.  All I understood was “I sorry, Pak.  I very sorry.”  But what could this harmless (old) engineer have done?

The story turned out to be, after Yeti’s translation, related to a complaint a few days ago.  A cobra was discovered hiding under a bush near the beach in the morning by a guest who went for a morning dip in the water.  It is not uncommon for this volcanic island to have snakes.  But a cobra on a hotel beach did seem unusual and dangerous.  Instead of calling pest control, our in-house snake man was asked to capture the snake, which he happily obliged.

Last night, apparently, he had a dream.  He dreamed that an old man with a long white beard jabbed a finger angrily at him, shouting: “You took my walking stick away!  Put it back!  Put it back!!”

Made awoke with cold sweat and realized that he had angered some deity by taking the cobra, a vivid resemblance to a walking stick when stretched out.  He went to pray at the village temple then came back to release the cobra back into the bush where it was found.

“I very sorry, Pak. But I have to,” he pleaded.

That’s great, isn’t it?  With the holiday season around the corner, not only rats are rampant but now a cobra has joined the melee?

I just hope Made’s dream deity with a long white beard takes his walking stick away, for good.

© 2008 Global Hotel Nomad (SH)

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