Home Sweet Home

Sounds like an embroidered wall hanging any good Kansas girl would hang in our first house in Addis, but turns out Garrett can't embroider.

The group above includes (from left to right) Tsegaye, our new gardner/guard who lives on the property; Fisseha, our house broker; Ato Taye, our landlord; and of course, Garrett.

We are quite excited to have a house in less than two weeks.  We owe a lot to Fisseha and his sidekick/taxi driver, Kassahun.

Together we drove all over Addis in Kassahun's small blue Lada seeing a total of around 20 houses.  I was not sure what to think the first day when all three of us would walk together through the houses then get back in the car and discuss our opinions of the house.  In the end, I could not imagine doing it without them!  Kassahun even called me last Saturday just to say "hi" and let me know that of all the houses we had seen he really thought this was the one for us.  Kassahun will definitely be one of our regular drivers since we have decided to hold off a bit on buying a car.

The house is technically a three bedroom house, but one is rather small so will probably be a study.  The living room is nice a light with a great fireplace, which everyone said was really nice to have during the monsoon season.

After seeing it, we called it "the house with the doors" because of this unique touch, which I am still not 100% sold on.  The built in closest are really nice though.

The kitchen is also very barebones currently.  It seems that when many of these houses were built, the kitchen in the house was not meant for actual food preparation.  Food preparation often happened in a second kitchen in a block of rooms behind the house that Fisseha often referred to as the servants quarters.  At our house, two of the rooms have been joined to make a small apartment, which I think will be more than comfortable for Joey Joe when he joins us from Swaziland!  There is also a small room and bathroom for Tsegaye, who supposedly has been with the house for over twenty years although he himself does not look much older than that.

Two of our favorite things about the house are the garden and the location.  Gardens are a hard thing to come by in Addis.  Many of the yards have been covered with concrete in order to accommodate more cars.  Considering we will probably have only one car, given how expensive they are, we preferred to have some grass.  Tsegaye has done a great job with the front lawn and I am hoping to have him help me plant some vegetables and herbs in the back of the house.

As far as location, I think we lucked out.  It is tucked back in a nice little neighborhood called Olympia.  It is walking distance to Garrett's office, a nice supermarket, and a number of restaurants.

Now we just have some furnishing to do.  Currently we have only this mattress, which was delivered to us on one of the classic blue Lada taxis.  I love these cars although it seems that the exhaust is piped directly into the back seat.

We are hoping to officially move in on Monday!