Our future home
posted by Jesse on Thursday, February 26, 2009 at 5:23 am
One of the things that we’ve been really looking forward to in our move to Togo is getting a house and setting up a permanent home. Ever since being married we’ve been either living in temporary houses or with family because of our constant travel. So, the prospect of living in one place for a very long time is quite invigorating to us nomad types.
Our coworker, Jim, started searching for available houses a couple weeks ago, so as soon as we got into town here we went and looked at two of them. The first was overall a very nice house (by Togolese standads) with a gorgeous yard, but it was in pretty bad shape and would need several thousand dollars put into it in order to fix it up. Also, the kitchen was smaller than most American bathrooms, so I immediately decided that it wasn’t going to work for us. If Tiffany is going to be using a kitchen for a very long time, then I want it to be as comfortable as possible for her.
The other house we saw is THE house! It is fairly new, which is hard to find out here and means that it should have less problems than most others. It also has semi-American style windows and doors which should help in keeping out the heat. It has four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a spacious living/dining room, and a larger-than-typical kitchen. It does need a couple minor repairs, a paint job inside, ceiling fans installed, and lots of work to the yard, but overall house is SO much better than anything else available.
What’s also nice is that the landlord is flexible and willing to work with us. In Togo, a house can be great, but if the landlord is difficult to deal with, it can cause a lot of unnecessary frustration.
We have met with the landlord, worked out all the negotiations, and have set a move-in date of April 15th. What’s amazing is how incredibly cheap the cost of rent is here. We’ll be paying $260 USD per month! It’s nice to know that at least one thing here is cheaper than in the States. Not much else is!
Once we pay the deposit, the landlord will start having all the work done that we negotiated. After that’s all done, we can do the extra stuff we’re wanting to do, and then we can move in as soon as our container gets here.
It’s exciting to be so close to getting into our own home. We’ll keep you updated with our progress in the next couple months.
Category: family
