The Matatizo Rat

I am doing my pre-dinner survey of the downstairs dining room. It is an open air dining room overlooking the pool and beach. I am making sure that salt shakers have salt in them. Making sure that my bartendersput deodorant on today. Making sure that the tablecloths match. Making sure that there are not three different varieties of mismatched silverware on the table. Making sure that the waitstaff knows that room number six is allergic to shellfish. Making sure that the balsamic vinegar decanter is not full of soy sauce. Making sure that everyone can pronounce everything on tonight’s menu. I am double-checking with a waiter to make sure that the Maasai have been told that they are to perform tonight. And I am making clear with him that the Maasai can bring some beads and trinkets to sell but I don’t want my dining room turned into a bazaar.

It is about twenty minutes before dinner. I am face to face with this waiter trying to cover all the bases. Trying to see into the future. Trying to solve problems before they rear their ugly heads. Have I gone over everything? I am exhausting myself trying to think of whom or what could possibly ruin this dinner. And at that moment a giant rat falls from the makuti roof and lands with a splat on the dining room floor right between me and the waiter. It bounced enough that I saw the pink of its fat belly. I looked up at the waiter wide-eyed and slack-jawed. The waiter looked wide-eyed back. We look down at the rat. The rat looks disoriented but it definately saw us. There was a moment of truth. Something primal in its gaze. Like when they eye of the impala meets the eye of the lioness. There is a stall. A moment of silence and indecision. Dumbness. And then the hunt began.

The rat ran pretty fast for just taking a twenty foot plunge from the ceiling to the stone floor. Surely it had the wind knocked out of it’s little rat lungs. At best the waiter and I were uncoordinated and awkward trying to stomp on it. Me with sandals. The race is over before the sound of the gun. It must have resembled a Tom & Jerry cartoon. I was reminded of an arcade game that I played as a child where you are given a padded hammer and you have to pound down clown heads as they pop up out of their holes. I was furiously stomping at the ground. I remember a quote from Ali, “I’m so fast that when I turn out the lights I am in bed before it is dark”. The rat is behind the refridgerator before either of us can get a foot on it. And being behind the refridgerator he now has access to the area behind all of the dining room cabinetry. It is clearly high ground for the rat. That is to say, the rat won. So in fifteen minutes I have to waltz through a full dining room in manicured chef whites, schmoozing guests and looking over my shoulder the whole time for the giant pink elephant that stands to ruin the dinner.

Food is about environment. Just being able to cook good food is not enough any more. You have to be able to create a surreal experience in the dining room. No matter how mouth-watering the dinner is, if a giant rat runs under your table or makes a mad dash across the dining room floor you aren’t going to remember the food. You remember the rat. And Africa compounds the situation. Because people already come here with fears of eating, fears of food poisoning, fears of disease, and fears of nature. They are looking for exactly what you are hoping will stay hidden. And when they see it the circumstances are magnified because it feeds the intuitions that guests already have about Africa and they scrutinize the resort for more problems. Ultimately, regardless of the outcome, it is a headache that can be medicated with a chilly Tusker Lager and a hearty laugh at the end of the day. Because if you couldn’t laugh at it then it would surely drive you crazy.

I am lucky today. The rat stayed in whatever refuge it had found behind the fridge. He won the battle. However, I read The Art Of War by Lao Tsu, and I am pretty sure that the rat did not. So the next morning I grabbed the gardener, a handful of poison, and every trap in inventory and we went to work. I don’t know if we got the one who slipped by me and the waiter. But I’ll be damned if we didn’t get a brother or an uncle.

I’d love to say that it was an isolated incidence. But the following week we pulled an African Cobra out of the dining room. I guess it was after the rat.