The bar section at White Horse Inn, in Kabale District. PHOTO/Tony Mushoborozi
There are places that one must pay homage to when they visit a new area. If you travel to California, you will want to see the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In India, you ought to check out the Taj Mahal. If you find yourself in Kabale Town, White Horse Inn is the place to visit and catch a cold one with the townspeople.
White Horse Inn’s iconic fame precedes it. It is held in high regard by people of all classes and ages. For that reason, many people from the region want to see it the first chance they get.
When I recently found myself in Kabale Town, I decided that I wanted not just to see it but to hangout there and grab a beer or two. As expected, the hotel still looks great structurally. The same iconic steeple-high multiple roofs, steep as the hills of Kigezi, the black miniature roofing tiles, a roofed walkway for residents only, and a large garden at the back and old trees. One look at the hotel gives you the vibes of class and exclusiveness that you’ve heard about all your life. The walls and ceilings look like the type that may last five centuries into the future, or that they would survive a nuclear blast, something expected of the great White Horse Inn.
I was here for a drink so I turned left at the reception, entered a corridor that leads to the bar and opens into the expansive garden outside. The bar’s centerpiece is the fireplace etched into one of the four walls of the square room, and floor-to-celing glass windows on the garden side meant to afford you not just the enchanting view of the garden outside but the vista of Kabale Town and the terraced hills around.
The bar tender and waiters are all trained men of experience, so they make the stay worthwhile. They are cheerful and familiar but professional respectful at the same time. Biakiga, while they have a cantankerous reputation, are some of warmest, nicest people to be around. They are open hearted, generous with their conversations and wallets and they say it as it is.
You pick a chair of choice around the fireplace and join the conversation if that is how you roll. If you are the quiet observing type, you may just sit silently among the patrons and simply smile and the wild stories going rounds.One thing an outsider must know is that there is no warm beer in Kabale. All beer is cold, even the one that is not refrigerated because of the cold weather. So if you don’t like freezing drinks, just order for “warm” ones, because a cold beer in Kabale means a freezing one. You could ask well as for ice cubes made out of beer.
All was going great until I had to use the bathroom after my second beer. As soon I entered the corridor heading towards the men’s, the putrid smell of the washrooms took my breath away, for lack of a better term. Hard to believe. Now, I don’t care what the circumstances are, toilets at White Horse Inn should never smell. That is a no-no. This place is too iconic for that. It doesn’t matter how busy the day has been or if Kabale Town has just been bombed. Smelly toilets should be alien at this Makanga hill hotel. But here we were. I entered the toilet and immediately ruled out chances of the hotel having been overwhelmed that day. You can tell how clean the doors, corners and trash cans are to know the level of sanitation of such any facility. But all these places simply proved that the place is not being taken care of. It is not cleaned constantly like it should. If you were dropped here out of the blue, you’d probably think you were in a bus park washroom or worse.
When I got back to the bar, I was suddenly not interested in sitting in one place. I was disturbed. My mind couldn’t get rid of the unwelcoming oduor. So I grabbed my Nile Special and walked into the garden to catch a cold breeze and watch the sunset. But the disrepair and sheer lack of class followed me to the outdoors. The dilapidated children’s play area in the center of the garden and a ramshackle tennis court at the end of the garden made the place look like it was recovering from a years of war. The shrubbery in the garden is not tendered to as it should be even when the grass is well kempt. Just sad. To make matter worse, the garden is populated by the cheapest plastic chairs on the market, placed under regular blue Pepsi umbrellas, again, something not fit for this icon of hospitality. Someone has drained White Horse Inn of all class, the same way someone has drained Uganda of all its past glories.
I didn’t wake up and decide to bash White Horse Inn. I am merely making a report that one hopes reaches the owner who may be out of the country or sleeping. To tell them that the hotel they bought expensively probably mostly because of it’s iconic name is fast going to the dogs and that they should wake up and do whatever it takes to recersitate this icon before it flatlines.
An icon like White Horse Inn can’t just be left to die. It’s the city on a hill not just for Kabale Town but for the entire region and country. It should shine like a young star for all to see and find their direction in the industry. No hotel in Western Uganda is quite like White Horse Inn, at least in reputation alone. It has had the who’s who is the world who visit these parts sleep there, Bill Gates being one of the many. It should be a true exclusive hotel where you pay a premium rate to be so lucky to hangout there because of all the history but considering the state that is in, I doubt it can pass for a one-star hotel.
Rating
One star? Two or three- star?
I did not enjoy my beer at White Horse Inn for so many reasons. The team is either not trained well, taken care of well, or managed professionally. If you know the owner, beseech them to take this icon seriously before it loses its reputation for ever. It is hard to fathom that the utility side of the hotel can be this bad while the accommodation side is in good shape. But I could be wrong, I guess.
