Chickens in The EnSuite

On the side of a hill in northern Lebanon amongst the extensive pine forest, there sits a large mansion. It is especially obvious at night when the lights are on, it would have a fantastic view across the olive groves all the way to Tripoli with the blue Mediterranean sea beyond. So at night from our home we could see the lights from this grand well positioned building. but oh how appearances can be deceptive.

This building can be repeated the world over and we have seen them in every developing country we have been. This grand mansion was built maybe 20 years ago in this wonderful location as a hotel, but I don’t think it has ever had any paying guests in it. Now it has become the building used by a chicken farm, the lights are often on at night to encourage the thousands of chickens who stay there to lay more eggs. Hence my title of chickens in the ensuite, no doubt the hotel has been designed to have ensuite bedrooms but what ever happened to the dream it is now the home to some chickens who do not know how lucky they are.

The world is littered with the remains of such pipedreams, someone somewhere has invested a lot of money and time building something which will remain as a folly to our generation’s greed and stupidity. It seems somehow irresponsible and stupid to allow this to happen, to so disregard the futures opinion of us, on the basis of a gamble that we could make a pot of money. As if such gambling justifies the building of such monstrosities that we all have to suffer looking at these follys forever.