When we heard that our rent would increase substantially, we began looking at houses and office space here in Nairobi. Most LCMS missionaries in Africa work out of their homes but here in Nairobi we have a larger mission team, a national worker who needs an office, and an historic (6 years) presence where our mission partners know we can be found.
Our family has been on the road since April of 2010, so to hear only months after we arrived in Nairobi that we may have to move within a few months was barely short of devastating news. Immediately we stopped unpacking and quit decorating our new home. We had spent a few hours looking at homes in Nairobi last year when we came through the area just to get a feel for what's available. There wasn't much in what we considered to be a "reasonable" price range.
With a very active toddler and the expectation that part of our job is to host the many visitors who come through Nairobi, this time instead of focusing on price we focused on features and figured we'd get a feel for the price as we saw homes. We need at least 4 bedrooms (two are often used by guests), a yard, and a good kitchen (rather a rarity since most people, ourselves excluded, have a cook who makes due with whatever kitchen is available), and security included. Doesn't seem too unreasonable. In days and days of looking at houses we found only ONE that came in at less than $2,000 per month - and that's at today's very good exchange rate.
Nairobi, you see, is rather like the capital of Africa. There are other countries more developed, like South Africa, but to get anywhere in Africa you have to fly through Nairobi. There are wonderful conveniences to living here - shopping malls, movie theaters, and a few American-style restaurants. A lot of aid agencies and mission agencies are based in Nairobi. Relatively speaking, it's an easy place to live. There's a huge United Nations Office here and Embassies for just about any country you could think of. Consequently, there are a lot of foreign workers living in Nairobi. Housing prices reflect that high demand. And, as you can imagine, office space is also at a premium.
Office space downtown is around $1.40 per square foot. That doesn't include electricity or internet access or housekeeping or partitions or anything like that. It's $1.40 per square foot for an empty space. All the way out in our suburb of Karen, office space goes for a more reasonable price - $1 per square foot.
So what's the solution? We have the privilege of living in Nairobi - we must live here to work with the national church and the teams and visitors that come through. We want to live here because of the conveniences and access to Western goods. But if we accept the cheapest house we found and factor in the cost of renting office space in Karen the monthly expense is beyond belief! In fact, it's even beyond the rent of our current home and office after the increase in October.
When our currently landlord heard we were shopping around they suggested we provide a counter-offer. I penned a very nice counter-offer and submitted it. I hope they accept it. Their Board of Directors is supposed to consider it in the next couple weeks. Hopefully we'll get word soon and we can begin unpacking again, begin decorating our home, and feel settled for the first time in a year. The only thing we can't recover is all the time we've spent looking at housing. We'll let you know how things work out - in the meantime, please keep our housing situation in your prayers. Thanks! -Shauen
Shauen & Krista
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~ The East Africa Field Office compound with our house on the left and the office on the right ~ Our landlord has come back with a counter-offer to our counter-offer. We've only seen a draft of the lease at this point so nothing is signed yet but I don't think we'll be forced out. It's only a 3-year lease but that's better than they had originally proposed. With a few changes in the way we do things we think it'll work. It's still a substantial increase in cost but not as high as originally feared. We'll need to rent out a full floor of our office building to offset the price increase. Of course, that will also bring additional costs as we'll need to hire an additional guard for normal office hours and we'll need to divide the compound so our house is more isolated from the office to protect us from the increase in pedestrian and automotive traffic. But it could work. We'll let you know when we've signed and are finally able to call this house a home (for at least the next three years)! -Shauen