The view from the top of the old Intercontinental Hotel is well worth the haggle. Bartering with the Nigerian peacekeepers who lounge around in the old lobby, their equipment and rifles spread about them as though they themselves are newly arrived guests waiting for the long forgotten bell boys to carry the gear to their rooms. It is a pleasant and slightly informal affair. One enters a process of gentle joking and teasing remonstration with the soldiers who guard the deserted building. The sergeant passes us on to a junior officer who in turn introduces us to a Major in a vest who had clearly been stirred from an afternoon nap. After the usual talk and introductions they wave us through the protective cordon and we are free to wander about the vast crumbling emptiness. The savage war and the internally displaced have left their mark. This was once a swinging place, a nine-story 106-room hotel built back in 1960 when things were very different here. The rich and famous came and sipped cocktails from its famous rooftop bar after eating oysters in the French restaurant. Idi Amin is said to have frequently used its vast swimming pool. Now there is a stark sadness to the dank abandon, if walls could talk, one probably wouldn’t want to hear the details. The restaurant and kitchens on the top floor are smashed and broken, a few shining tiles not removed from the concrete flooring preserve the original place where dancers once swayed in front of the band stand. Everything is gutted, pulled from its sockets, broken and smashed in a turmoil of anarchy hard to comprehend now as one gazes across the city, watching the hawks and eagles lazily drift amid the thermals thrown up by the Atlantic.
