This article does not directly address itself to the subject of hotels. There is another half page dedicated to that. Rather, this article is about typographical errors. Typographical errors, in this era of Facebook and Twitter and Whatssup! Induced laziness, are known simply as ‘typos.’ Typos are the printed word equivalent of a “slip of the tongue.” What is a slip of the tongue? It is that awkward situation when, instead of describing the person that just snatched your smartphone ‘a pick-pocketer,’ you instead say ‘pork-picketer.’ And by the way, there is no such thing as pick-pocketer. What we do have are pick-pockets. And people who deal in the printed word are no strangers to slips of the tongue, only that in their case, they do not create words using the tongue, but rather the pen or keyboard. In other words, writers and publishers are also human and, being so, are prone to the inevitable slip. The problem with the printed word is that when a slip of the tongue (or keyboard) occurs, it is difficult to ascertain who the culprit is. Is it the writer who actually penned the story that is to blame, or should it be viewed as the editor or proof reader’s slip? With a slip of the tongue, once you say ‘pork-picketer’ instead of ‘pick-pocketer,’ the culprit is immediately known to all. Generally, typos that appear in newspapers are much more tolerable than those to be found in a book or novel, simply because newspapers are transient; they come and they go, within a matter of hours. When a typo rears up its ugly head in a more permanent form of publication, like say a novel, it is a different ball game altogether. Occasionally, it makes me angrily toss away the damned novel. So it was that, in the ever financially tight January month just gone by, I occasionally found myself with little else to do than do some reading: the kind of reading that one does simply because they can hardly think of anything else to do. This unfocused kind of reading soon took me to a 2012-dated Business Directory that covers the entire region, including its soon-to-be-born, South Sudan. Not that I was looking for anything or any contact in particular –I was just content turning the pages and admiring the glossy inserts advertising different brands. Reaching to the “Hotels” section, something soon struck my eyes, and later, my senses. And for the name of a hotel to strike one as odd, that name indeed has to be from out of this world. “Blood Hotel”!! What sort of person would want to wake up and name their nice little hotel such? I immediately called up the number indicated to find out who would want to do that. “Hullo, this is Sgt. Moses, from the RTP …that is, Rwanda Typographical Police. Is this Blood Hotel?” “It is Bloom Hotel …Blooooomm ….not blood,” the polite, unperturbed male voice on the other side answered.
