the moving Story
A month or so ago, the opportunity came up to purchase a house. After much prayer and consideration, we decided to make a bid on the house.
Housing here is very different than in the United States. The average price of a 4 bedroom, two bathroom is $30,000. Most houses have a garden of some sort, and many have an outbuilding, which is used to house a national translator/guest, or be a storage facility, or any number of things.
When you look at a house here, you're looking for whether or not it's a place you can live. Does it have the bare necessities? Does it have anything you really like?, as well as how the plumbing works (a puzzle at every home, there is no standard), how the hot water works, (is it solar, is it gas, how old are the panels on the roof? Does a heating coil go through the fireplace?) You're also looking at electric, most of the lighting here is fluorescent because of the high light yield and low energy cost. If you think working in the office is bad, people here "ooh" and "aah" if you have an incandescent lamp in your house, and usually it's a luxury. Dryers are rare, as are dish washers. This house has neither of those, but the house we rented did, although we didn’t use them because we didn’t want to get spoiled. The pictures (see link below) seem to say “this is a normal U.S. home” and that’s what we were hoping for. However living here while not as difficult as many places, is more involved than in the U.S.
You look at the walls, are they mildewed? The walling here is not sheetrock, it's "fibro". A very brittle, hard, non-absorbent thin type of material that offers no soundproofing at all. If a room is hot and the outside is cold, or vice versa, condensation tends to collect on the fibro. Thus making enamel/oil based paints practical for cleaning these walls. So you get the picture of a shiny indoor room. Bright, reflective (oil based paint), and noisy.
So there is a challenge to make a warm and inviting home here. Housing is mostly seen as utilitarian. It gets the job done. But some of the homes have a nice touch to them. EVERY home has been added on to multiple times. This place was started with huts, and each generation builds up from there.
The home we purchased, ironically has lower ceilings in some of the rooms which will be a challenge for me, mister 6'5" tall. I already hit my head on the doorjambs around here as it is, and I have currently have what I fear is a permanent welt on the top of my head from not clearing the beam in the under-the-house area where I go regularly. (-;
Is the house on stilts? How high up is it? Is it at the top of the hill? Is it on the ground? How close to the river is it? (mosquitos) Is it on the fence line? (there is a fence around the center) Is it near the road (more dust if it is)? Is it near the construction (more noise if it is)?
Our house is near the fence, near the river, near the gate, near the road, near construction. What the means is... more dust, more mosquitoes, more traffic noise, more daily noise, and less of a view... THAN the houses on the top of the hill.
But we love it down here. We love that we daily have nationals near our home, to talk to, to visit with. We don't mind the traffic noise, and in fact, our new house is further off the road than the one we're currently renting.
We are moving about 4 houses down from where we've been staying the last few months. Everyone is different, and living down here, makes the place feel... more alive. I've spent hours at the top of the hill at it feels more secluded. It's nice to go there, up on the top has gorgeous views, but there is fewer interactivity with the nationals of the country who live down here more than not. While being at the top is more secluded from the rest of the country, being at the bottom is nicer because you can't see every house on center. Being on the fence means we don't have neighbors all around us, and so, I enjoy it.
Out of all the houses we've seen on center, there are a handful of "we could live here" type of houses. And the one we bought, is in the top 3.
But buying a house works differently here. Housing is limited and so there are rules. When a house goes on sale it has to sell for what it was bought for (until the recently changed rule). This is a guideline more than a rule now, meant to keep real-estate from being an investment. All it is, is a way to keep from moving multiple times a year. It is for family stability.
This stability is something we prayed for from God 2 years before coming here. WE specifically asked God to provide the money and the house. He did both. First the money. The money came rather surprisingly as a series of bonuses from my previous employer. Our bank account went from zero to an amount near exactly what we paid for the house.
Next came the house. While we were here, a few went up for sale, we looked at them and really liked two. We bid on both. The rules:
-if it is a 4 bedroom house, the couple must have a minimum of 2 kids.
-if the bid price equals the asking price, (no one can over bid), then seniority on center is used to decide the winning bid
-the amount of children in a family also plays a role... a family of four vs. a couple, for a 5 bedroom house, will win out even if seniority is less.
So we have our two bids out there.
Same price, one house is 6 bedrooms, HUGE... it used to be a hostel. The other is 4 bedrooms, and not as big. Different locations, but both nice. We had begun praying about the houses, for direction. We wanted the exact house God had prepared for us. But there were two. And here we are, not even a month on center, with zero seniority so if ANYONE bids with us we lose instantly.
After we prayed the next day we heard that a family of 7 wanted to buy the larger (6 bedroom) we had bid on but they did not have the money. They became the underdogs for this house, and we found ourselves not wanting to bid against them. They had seniority and their church had been scraping together for a year for them to buy a home.... they came up short, by $1000.00.
Which means, we would win the house.
This family of 7 whom we had not met, because they were in the States on furlough, was living in a 3 bedroom "apartment" aka "flat". They were crowded to say the least.
Not knowing them, but not really having a use for 6 bedrooms, we decided to withdraw our bid from this house. This REALLY nice house with a nice yard, and plenty of room, and a nice rock fireplace and..... why did it feel like such a sacrifice? We don't know... but truly we gained friends through it whom we're hoping to meet, and the nice benefit of not having ticked off the community that wanted to see them in the house.
They fended off several other bidders and won the house. Meanwhile... our bid for the other house was accepted, with zero competing bids. No one bid against us! So we got what essentially was our second choice, after being only a month here.
In a seniority based bidding system, that was nothing short of confirmation from God we had the right house!
MOVING IN:
Right now we're finishing packing our house.
When you move out of a house, renting or owner, the housing department here requires you leave behind certain things, and you pass a cleaning checklist. House wares stay, furniture stays. When you enter a home here, you should be able to buy food, and begin cooking, have a place to sleep, sit, etc. You never move into a completely empty house. What's the sense in shipping all that stuff everywhere? Add to that, frequent moving, and it makes things more simple.
The side effect of that however, is that sometimes people leave a little more than the bare necessities behind. So here is our moving plan:
Monday - we get the keys, we go in, we clean everything from top to bottom (with help)
Tuesday - we move in our stuff
Weds - we move in the rest of our stuff
Thurs/Friday - we clean the home we were renting top to bottom.
Because moving is part of the culture here, we stumbled upon two surprises:
1 - you get two days off of work to move.
2 - your neighbors call you and offer to make meals and carry boxes!
WOW!. Yes we're no stranger to people offering to help, our friends and family were always helpful. But making meals, because... you can't eat out. You can't order fast food. That was a surprise. So we have neighbors dropping off dinners for us two nights next week. What a blessing this community is!
Attached are some pictures of the house we purchased. The house is in disarray as we move in but I wanted to get the pics up soon since we will be slowing down on the blog in the next few weeks due to P.O.C. (I’ll blog about what this is later)
This is our first house we’ve owned. The benefits of owning here are that we no longer have to move when the owners return, we’ll not have to worry about if the kids scratch a wall, WHAT will the owners (our friends) think?
We’re both firm believers in leaving something better than you found it, so we’ll be doing some touch ups on the house we’ve rented too because, kids are kids, and dads are dads, and sometimes things get scratched (-;
We haven’t completely acclimated to the whole idea of cleaning up after someone, and packing up all your belongings on a regular basis, and knowing the person who owns the house you’re living in. It adds that small touch of extra… worry when you know that every nick in the house could possibly affect a personal relationship. On the flip side, we’ll eventually be renting this house out to people and will try to remember that and be very flexible.
We want to praise God for answering prayer.
We had a chief 5 prayers we went to God before coming here. THESE 5 things are things we either need to give up, God, or we need you to fix.
Of those 5, we learned to give up 2 of them, and God supplied 3 of them. Owning a house was one of the 5.
God’s continuing to provide for us in unlikely ways, continues to amaze us. IT is another confirmation that we’re in the right place.
In many ways, we still feel as if we’re in transition here…. There is so much we are waiting to do. Kendal will begin teaching when P.O.C. is over. (again I’ll blog on that). We’ve been able to minister but really have been ministered to more than anything. We’re hoping to settle after P.O.C. and really sink our teeth into what we came here to do.
It may not be much, but I’ll relish the chance to say to my kids when they’re in their 30’s:
“When I bought my first house, I paid $30,000 and I paid cash fer it!” Can you imagine how expensive houses will be when my kids can buy one?
