Mais non, this is Africa

I am easily seduced. The website for the Hostellerie de France promised a wine list that wouldn’t be out of place in central Paris, let alone downtown Blantyre – that is Blantyre, Malawi, not Blantyre, Lanarkshire.
Nigel was more impressed by the room rate, which was well under our too-tight budget and so we booked a studio, complete, said the website with a kitchen and private garden.
Why, oh why do I believe hotel websites. Sure, the wine list was real, but its author Jean Michel and his wife must have drank dry it a few years back because all we were offered was chilled, yes, chilled red wine served in brandy glasses.
The studio apartment was big enough, but the kitchen consisted of a two-ring hot plate, a bashed frying pan and a few mismatched glasses.
The shower only worked on alternative days and the private garden was a shared strip of geraniums, which the huge Alsatian guard dog used as his own private parade ground.
Don’t get me wrong. I know Malawi. I don’t expect the Ritz. The electricity supply can be erratic. Water is a precious commodity, so needs to be used carefully, and who needs expensive red wine when there is Kuche Kuche.
But Jean Michel’s whining response to our complaints: “mais madame, this eez Africa, nothing works” was baloney, as well as insulting to his adopted country.
The shower didn’t work because he had skimped on the plumbing. The so-called kitchen had been bought on the cheap and the wine list was nothing more than a cruel trick to persuade suckers like me to give him my hard earned cash to fund his retirement in the sun.
This is not Africa, this is a cheeky Frenchman, which is why I am now sitting in the Malawian-owned and run Mount Soche, eating home-made cake, drinking Mzuzu coffee and savouring a view to die for.
Jean Michel, this eez Africa.