Finally Playing Catch Up

For those of you who receive our every-other-week prayer partner e-mails (if you don’t and want to, let us know at travis_williamson@sil.org), you know that in October and November, we were asking for prayer regarding a change with our housing situation, which we did not explain in detail. Well, the decision has been finalized in that we have taken over the rent of one of our agency’s former guesthouses. This meant that we paid a whole lot of money to cover the final 8 months of the lease, the salary of a house-worker, who was promised a job through April, as well as purchasing all of the furniture inside. Why in the world would we invest in a house in Addis Ababa? Because our agency has decided to cut its guesthouse program which not only stinks for short-term visitors, but also for those of us living and working outside of Addis (as we soon will be). It means that we would need to find other housing for the 4-6 times a year that we come back to Addis. Well, in taking over the rent of this house, we hope to partner with other outside-of-Addis teams to create a shared house that we can all come back to. If it works out as planned, 3 or 4 of us families/couples/singles not only enjoy the luxury of having a place to store our “city stuff” but we will actually save money by not paying the inflated guesthouse prices. If everything does not work out well (either by other teams not joining us or by the rent going up too much upon renewal), then we will have actually saved money on the rent we would have paid in guesthouse fees between now and when we move out of Addis. So it’s a win-win situation from our perspective.

So, now that we are starting to think a little more long term about this house, we have felt better about making some slight improvements. For example, we were noticing that our bathroom occasionally smelled really bad. Now hold on a minute, I know what you’re thinking: foul-smelling bathrooms have more to do with what meal was served the night before than home improvement, but in this case you’re wrong. The smell was clearly coming from the shower drain which had corroded so that air was seeping out directly from the sewer below. So for less than three dollars, we bought a new drain which when properly watered, blocks this unwelcome air flow. A hammer, screwdriver and about 2 hours of pounding removed the old drain and widened the hole enough for the new drain to fit. Putty along the edges finished the job to our satisfaction and it works beautifully. Now, as long as the drain has water in it, the bathroom does not wrinkle our noses anymore – well, at least not for that reason.

Part of breaking from the guesthouse meant being able to do our own laundry, so another project involved “hooking up” a new washing machine and making a clothes line for drying. The clothes line we made simply by buying some hooks, plastic anchors and 13 meters of nylon rope - all for 5-6 dollars. About 20 minutes of drilling and setup transformed our small balcony into a nice clothesline area (It is visible in the outside picture). The washing machine hook up required three things: water input, which ended up being a hose from the bathroom; electricity, which comes from the fridge power strip; and a drain, which is the floor drain in the tiled bathroom. The drain, pictured above, was the hardest part because like the shower, it had seen many years of corrosion and was filled with dirt. But, after more than an hour of pounding, screwing, and yanking we removed the cover, cleaned out the inside and tested the new flow rate. Perfect.

For years, I (Travis) have watched my parents and brothers do all kinds of home improvement projects – from little drain-like projects to full basement renovations. Jealous of the things they were learning, I looked forward to the day that I would have a house to work on. Although this is only a rental house and we don’t want to invest in major improvements, it has been fun to start to play catch up in learning about small home improvement projects.