Journals of a Hotel Manager

The aftermath of 02.02.2002 began painfully and slowly. On one hand I had to deal with the monumental paperwork such as the filing of damage assessment reports with the insurance company; on the other hand we had to find a way to get rid of the huge body of the dead water trapped in our building.
We eventually set up an industrial water pump outside the main entrance with wide tubes connected with a public drainage system. The pump worked 24×7 for two and half weeks before we could finally reach the basement garage on foot.

Electricity was still not on in fear of short circuit. One day I escorted one of our owners to the ballroom floor to inspect the damage of the ballroom. This owner, second in command in the ownership hierarchy, had his daughter’s wedding booked in our ballroom on the second day of the flood. Needless to say he was more than unhappy to have to host the wedding at some other hotel and pay the full price there, while he could have gotten away with a token few hundred dollars as gratuity for the staff at his own hotel.

The marble floor was slippery and soggy. We each held a flashlight. The dank smell reminded me of inside the Pyramids. We treaded carefully. The flashlights gave little hint of the nature of the mysterious gray masses on the floor. I had wisely put on my hiking boots while some of the local staff walked around in their flimsy flip-flops. Just as I was thinking about protective footwear issue in the future, Mr. Owner Number 2 made a strange sound as if he was grabbed by a ghost and about to vomit at the same time.

“What is it? What happened?” inquired us urgently.

Mr. Owner Number 2 pointed to his foot with a grimace and my heart sank. OK great, now my owner has his foot penetrated by a rusty nail soaked in sewage water for the past 3 weeks and he is going to die from tetanus and it is going to be on my head. I could already see the newspaper headline: “Local Owner Infected by Tetanus, Expat Hotel Manager Deported”.

We crowded around his foot and half a dozen flashlights revealed that his right foot was embedded in a large wet sack of some sort. The sack also discharged a foul smell. Mr. Owner Number 2 said there was no pain, but the sack could not be shaken off and he was simply disgusted.

Then another shout came at the edge of the crowds. In their local language someone shouted, “A head! I see a head!”

As soon as my heart started pounding at the word ‘head’, another shout came in with a much more relaxed tone, “It’s a goat. A goat’s head!”

For the local wedding, rich families usually roast a whole goat for the feast. Mr. Owner Number 2 had made such an order for his daughter’s wedding. And he just happened to step into the goat’s carcass.

When we came up to the daylight and clean air, we shared a nervous laugh over the goat incident. I couldn’t help but wonder if one day we would encounter a human head.

The suspense of losing a human life in our watery tomb and the gruesome task of the clean-up continued.