Houses and house ‘boys’
July 21
All the modern houses here seem to follow the same recipe. Monstrous high brick fence adorned with fashionable barbed or electric wiring, expansive luxuriant gardens that dwarf the still rather sizeable but more than a little rundown house. You have a guard – just honk at the gate and it shall open – who works by night, sleeping most of the time you’re not looking (but who can blame them). You also have a gardener, and of course, a ‘house boy’. The latter is a cook, cleaner and general jack of all trades, not, as the name may suggest, a young Thai fellow. These local employees, invariably desperate for the work they have, are paid a paltry salary in western terms and seem to work hours completely foreign to you and I. This understandably creates problems for many given the obvious disparity of wealth between employer and employee, with stories of theft, absconding, unpaid loans and other requests for money rife throughout the expat scene, and it didn’t take us long to be regaled with everyone’s opinions and experiences of staff they have had, currently have or had heard of.
‘How do we find staff?’ we had naively asked Tom, one of the other paediatricians, at dinner.
‘Oh don’t worry, they will find you.’
Advice from all and sundry regarding houses and house boys abounded in those first few weeks.
‘Make sure you get references from your staff.’
‘Pay them well and they won’t ask you for money.’
‘Loaning them money is a problem.’
‘Don’t overpay them.’
‘Have a written contract.’
‘Get a house with security doors.’
‘Make sure you don’t have vacant land beside your house.’
‘The College of Medicine will help you find a place.’
‘You’ll need to pay 3 months rent in advance.’
‘Electricity is a problem, as is water, so choose your location carefully.’
‘You could look on notice boards.’
‘Use an estate agent.’
‘Surely there’s an expat leaving, you can take their house.’
‘You don’t want to use a real estate agent.’
‘Check the roof.’
‘Check the security.’
‘Check the nearest Rapid Response location.’
‘Quiet streets are bad.’
‘Busy streets are bad.’
You name it, within the first couple of weeks of arriving in Blantyre and looking for a house, we had heard it all.
Heth did most of the house hunting, with my work taking up the majority of weekday working hours. She looked at six or seven places over the week, ranging from College of Medicine flea ridden dumps to grand four bedroom behemoths that were far too big to consider furnishing for only twelve months. After I looked at a couple of prospective choices it was abundantly clear that the one we ended up taking, a small two bedroom place in the suburb of Namiwawa only three minutes drive west of town, was the right choice. Our place is termed a town house, although it is simply a series of five similar almost free standing houses that share the same compound and gate, with the added bonus that you don’t have to organise hiring a guard (although that was to turn out to be somewhat of a saga in itself).
Our garden stretches back almost twenty five metres – a small one by Blantyre standards – and is adorned with a swathe of lovely papaya, avocado and mango trees, frangipani, bougainvillea and other tropical delights, as well as a ready-made vegetable garden. Our konde (the Afrikaans word for ‘balcony’, which everyone seems to use here) is a small elevated brick square construct draped in creeping vines and hanging potted plants. It looks out over Mount Muchiru, one of the three beautiful peaks which encircle suburban Blantyre, completing the perfect scene for a lazy late afternoon ‘Green’ with the sun blazing it’s reds and pinks through the dry season dusts… at least until the mosquitoes descend upon you in force each evening.
We have a small dining area with attached bar and an open walk through to the living area. There’s a small kitchen – most kitchens are small and closed off here given the majority of house owners employ a cook and don’t have any need to spend much time there – and two sizeable bedrooms with one small, slightly run down bathroom. Comparatively speaking, our house, although smaller than many around here, is relatively well maintained and quite new, something you particularly notice in the kitchen and bathroom in many places. Despite this, the one bullet that we weren’t able to dodge was the lack of anything in the house whatsoever. No stove; no curtains; no phone lines; no lamp shades; nothing. It seems standard here that when you rent a house you have to fit the entire place out. Not really what we were expecting only being here for a short time, but as they say: ‘When in Rome…’
Either way, we have been here only a week and a half and now have ourselves a comfy little home that we are gradually turning into something our own.
All the modern houses here seem to follow the same recipe. Monstrous high brick fence adorned with fashionable barbed or electric wiring, expansive luxuriant gardens that dwarf the still rather sizeable but more than a little rundown house. You have a guard – just honk at the gate and it shall open – who works by night, sleeping most of the time you’re not looking (but who can blame them). You also have a gardener, and of course, a ‘house boy’. The latter is a cook, cleaner and general jack of all trades, not, as the name may suggest, a young Thai fellow. These local employees, invariably desperate for the work they have, are paid a paltry salary in western terms and seem to work hours completely foreign to you and I. This understandably creates problems for many given the obvious disparity of wealth between employer and employee, with stories of theft, absconding, unpaid loans and other requests for money rife throughout the expat scene, and it didn’t take us long to be regaled with everyone’s opinions and experiences of staff they have had, currently have or had heard of.
‘How do we find staff?’ we had naively asked Tom, one of the other paediatricians, at dinner.
‘Oh don’t worry, they will find you.’
Advice from all and sundry regarding houses and house boys abounded in those first few weeks.
‘Make sure you get references from your staff.’
‘Pay them well and they won’t ask you for money.’
‘Loaning them money is a problem.’
‘Don’t overpay them.’
‘Have a written contract.’
‘Get a house with security doors.’
‘Make sure you don’t have vacant land beside your house.’
‘The College of Medicine will help you find a place.’
‘You’ll need to pay 3 months rent in advance.’
‘Electricity is a problem, as is water, so choose your location carefully.’
‘You could look on notice boards.’
‘Use an estate agent.’
‘Surely there’s an expat leaving, you can take their house.’
‘You don’t want to use a real estate agent.’
‘Check the roof.’
‘Check the security.’
‘Check the nearest Rapid Response location.’
‘Quiet streets are bad.’
‘Busy streets are bad.’
You name it, within the first couple of weeks of arriving in Blantyre and looking for a house, we had heard it all.
Heth did most of the house hunting, with my work taking up the majority of weekday working hours. She looked at six or seven places over the week, ranging from College of Medicine flea ridden dumps to grand four bedroom behemoths that were far too big to consider furnishing for only twelve months. After I looked at a couple of prospective choices it was abundantly clear that the one we ended up taking, a small two bedroom place in the suburb of Namiwawa only three minutes drive west of town, was the right choice. Our place is termed a town house, although it is simply a series of five similar almost free standing houses that share the same compound and gate, with the added bonus that you don’t have to organise hiring a guard (although that was to turn out to be somewhat of a saga in itself).
Our garden stretches back almost twenty five metres – a small one by Blantyre standards – and is adorned with a swathe of lovely papaya, avocado and mango trees, frangipani, bougainvillea and other tropical delights, as well as a ready-made vegetable garden. Our konde (the Afrikaans word for ‘balcony’, which everyone seems to use here) is a small elevated brick square construct draped in creeping vines and hanging potted plants. It looks out over Mount Muchiru, one of the three beautiful peaks which encircle suburban Blantyre, completing the perfect scene for a lazy late afternoon ‘Green’ with the sun blazing it’s reds and pinks through the dry season dusts… at least until the mosquitoes descend upon you in force each evening.
We have a small dining area with attached bar and an open walk through to the living area. There’s a small kitchen – most kitchens are small and closed off here given the majority of house owners employ a cook and don’t have any need to spend much time there – and two sizeable bedrooms with one small, slightly run down bathroom. Comparatively speaking, our house, although smaller than many around here, is relatively well maintained and quite new, something you particularly notice in the kitchen and bathroom in many places. Despite this, the one bullet that we weren’t able to dodge was the lack of anything in the house whatsoever. No stove; no curtains; no phone lines; no lamp shades; nothing. It seems standard here that when you rent a house you have to fit the entire place out. Not really what we were expecting only being here for a short time, but as they say: ‘When in Rome…’
Either way, we have been here only a week and a half and now have ourselves a comfy little home that we are gradually turning into something our own.
