On Saturday, we met Sehen and her mother. Sehen is a close friend of my good friend Helen Fikre who I studied with at Columbia. Helen is originally from Addis and met Sehen in law school I believe. In any event, Sehen and her mother are absolutely, without a question, angels. There is no other word to describe them – they are the most lovely, generous, helpful people. They took us with our housing agent to see three houses and then arranged for us to stay in a house close to theirs in the lovely Bole area, about a 10 minute walk from the bus, near the internet cafes, shopping malls, movie theatres and the largest church in all of Africa – Bole Medanyala. [NOTE: This church is absolutely stunning and situated on such a large piece of land. It is white and has large towers/domes. It is extremely peaceful and calm. We could not go inside as the church was closed. I look forward to visiting the church and observing a traditional Ethiopian Orthodox church service.]
You have to understand that searching for housing was not easy. We called Sehen and her mother for help when we were at a complete standstill. We had found a housing agent who took us to see a few houses to rent last Friday. Apparently, you can only rent houses here. It is quite difficult to rent apartments, because there is a lot of government bureaucracy involved and taxation issues and it is harder for foreigners (or firenjes in Amharic). Furthermore, many of the apartments in the commercial areas are earmarked for specific officials.
The first house the housing agent took us to had large cockroaches – I mean large – large enough so that even I, a legally blind person, could see them just fine. No joke. The second place that he showed us was already occupied and the final place was a story in and of itself. So we arrived at this two-story villa-style house in the Bole area and the guard working at the house opened the gates and let us in. He took us to the back of the house (me, my friend and colleague Mary, and our housing agent). He then demanded money from us before he would show us the house. This is very uncommon, as you do not have to pay the guards or the owners of the house for showing their property. The housing agent yelled at him in Amharic and after much hesitation he finally let us in. The house was a 2 story home and it was quite large. It was completely empty – no furniture – apparently it was all “in storage” and would be brought back if and when we moved in. Then he told us that the price for the house was 12000 birr per month, approximately 4000 birr over our budget. We thanked him for showing us the house and went to leave, indicating that it was outside of our price range. As we approached the gate, we noticed that it was locked. At this point, the guard once again demanded that we pay him for having shown us the house and refused to open the gate until we did. Needless to say, our housing agent yelled at him for quite a while in Amharic until he finally relented. Thank goodness for our housing agent! Good times. Good times.
That evening, both Mary and I had what we can only coin as “culture shock”. I had already been here for a week and had been walking around with “rose – coloured glasses” not understanding the reality of key everyday matters such as finding a house. Did I mention how nice it is to have Mary here? It is nice to share this period of anxiety, uncertainty and discovery with someone else and she has been so supportive and kind. She is also from a super close-knit family and totally understands the need for me to check in with my parents on a regular basis. It has also been fun to venture into different parts of Addis.
Anyways, back to the housing story. On Friday night, I finally called Sehen and told her about our predicament in finding a house. She told us not to worry. She said that she would bring her mother and we would all look at places together the next day. They took us to about 4 houses on Saturday and finally took us to their friend’s house which was a lovely, new, immaculate 2 bedroom house in the Bole area. The house was in our price range and since it was their friend’s house, we did not need to have a housing agent or pay the associated housing agent fees.
A little bit of background is warranted - a housing agent in Ethiopia is much like a realtor in Canada, however, housing agents here also show rental properties. Plus, housing agents here are not with brokerage houses and they do not have fancy signs or pictures or calendars or other such swag that realtors in Canada provide. The deal is that if you decide to rent a house that the housing agent shows you, you have to pay them 1/2 of one month’s rent and the landlord pays the housing agent the other 1/2 of the month’s rent essentially giving them fees totaling one month’s rent.
The owners of the house we are renting are really nice and will be living in the service quarters behind the house. They will be like the security for the house. We will also have someone come in and clean the house and do laundry two times per week. I have to admit, that this will be a completely strange feeling, given that I am so used to doing my own chores. It always made me feel awkward when I visited family in India to have people doing everything for you. However, I think it makes the owners of the house feel more confident that their house will be well maintained if they have someone come in and do the work regularly. It also helps us, as there are no laundry facilities or washing machines nearby. Without this assistance, we would have to find a Laundromat or we would have to wash our clothes by hand. The last time I washed clothes by hand was in our hotel in Venice two summers ago and I used shampoo on my T-shirts because we were out of detergent. Needless to say the colour ran out of my clothes faster than an Olympic track and field gold medalist! As such, I think this situation is for the best. It looks like the total cost of the cleaning and laundry services per month is 200 birr which amounts to about $20 Cdn.
We agreed that we would meet the landlords to sign a housing contract on Monday and pay them the money up front for 6 months rent. It is quite standard here to pay the entire amount of rent up front (rather than on the first of every month). My friends who are in the same program, but working in Tanzania, found that they too had to pay the whole amount in advance. After we paid the owners the money and signed the contracts, the owners brought out snacks, drinks, and food to celebrate with us on our new impending relationship as landlord and tenant. This was an extremely kind gesture and made us feel very welcome. The landlord and his wife told us to think of them as our parents and promised that they would take very good care of us! When I told my mom that they had said this, I could almost hear her huge sigh of relief on the phone! My poor parents – I swear that I am giving them way more stress than they bargained for. I promise I am doing great Mom and Dad! I am eating my meals and will start taking my vitamins every day! I promise. Don’t worry!
So, we moved our luggage in yesterday and we officially move in to the house today! I cannot wait! The people at the hostel have been nice, but I am sick of living out of a suitcase. Plus, on Saturday morning, I had quite a scare when a young boy of about 7 or 8 jumped on to the balcony of my room (which is located on the second floor) and began banging on the window). As I was sleeping at the time, when I turned over and saw him standing at the glass doors staring at me, I jumped out of bed and yelled (who am I kidding – I screamed like a 8 year old girl). I think I scared him off! Poor little guy.
