Tsegaw--The Guard-ener and So Much More

Before signing the lease each time we viewed our house, we would be let into the compound by Tsegaw, who was introduced to us as the gardener.  When we were negotiating the lease, Ato Taye, the landlord, told us that Tsegaw has been living and working at the house for 20 some years and is very trustworthy, but it was up to us whether we wanted to keep him on.  No pressure at all, right?  So we hired him. From the viewpoint of my sanity, this is likely the best decision we have made since coming to Addis.  He also seems to be friends with just about everyone in the neighborhood so if we had kicked him out of his house it might have been a rough two years.

His primary responsibilities are gardener, which when you look at our lawn or the fresh flowers in our house there is no doubt he has a green thumb; and guard, which we think mainly means that he is on the property the majority of the time.

He has done so much more than this though to help us get settled.  Every morning he is ready with a smile to help me tackle the many new questions I have come up with overnight.  It is so handy to have someone who knows the area and speaks Amharic on the property.  I have handed the phone to him countless times to explain how to get to our house, since I still have trouble even doing it in English.  He has patiently helped me navigate the city on all sorts of missions including visiting a carpenter, hunting for power strips, purchasing cases of Coke and beer (I will let you guess which case is for whom), getting correct plumbing parts to connect our washing machine, shopping for the small and large household necessities, carrying said necessities back to the house, filling a gas canister for the stove, waiting for me to try on a dress at a roadside store (a spur of the moment stop that is probably not a part of his job!), and countless other errands.

We have walked together for hours in the last few weeks with him occasionally turning to me asking, "you tired?".  The only time we have fallen out of step is when it comes to tight areas where we have to walk single file.  We both have the tendency to try to let the other person go first so we slow way down as we approach the narrow passage, almost coming to a complete stop, willing the other person to go first.  Tsegaw usually wins the standoff, but as soon as we pass, he catches up and we fall right back into step together.  

I was nervous before moving that it might be awkward to have someone here all the time, but we really could not have found a better person to hire or share our compound!