on house hunting and other such trivial matters ...

Gideon went to see a villa last night at 22:30, yes I said, 22:30, weird Ramadan business hours are still with us. Same design as here, 6 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, one kitchen outside and a lot of weird little storage rooms. The villa has potential, only problem, the majilis is divided and we won't get the bigger part, only the smaller part. Bummer, 'cause Nico (our lodger) can use that, but where do we go for a lounge / dining room?

Maji-WHAT I hear you ask, ok Arabic house design 101. I'll try to explain as best I can. Imagine an apartment building with 2 flats, one at the top, one at the bottom, both have 3 stupendously large bedrooms, 2 bathrooms top floor, 1 bathroom ground floor. And that's it, that's all that's in the main house. Now, outside in a "L" shape in front and to the side of the house are an assortment of rooms. Another ridiculously enormous room that's divvied up in 2, with a bathroom / shower in the middle, this room has a front door. This room is called a majilis. Then to the side of the main house is the kitchen and the maids room and some storage rooms.

The idea behind it, is that both men and women have a separate visit space for their guests, as men and women don't socialise together, much and when they do, there's all sorts of Islamic social customs and laws that need to be remembered. Therefore, we have a house that's got only bedrooms in the main house and the living areas are separate from the main house and these are also divided so that the men and women can visit without fear of violating the social code.

Now, what we've done is use the one room of the majilis as our living area, where the dinning room and lounge area is. The other part of the majilis is where Nico (our lodger) lives, yes, it's that big.

We stay on the top floor, with our guest room and a storage room at the bottom. Oh, what's also just a little bit important is that this particular house has a roof over the stoep area between the main house and the majilis/kitchen building, this is a little bit important for summer, as you can imagine it will be rather sheit to walk out in the 45C heat to the kitchen, suddenly you're not so sure you really want that cup of coffee that badly.

RIght, now that we've got the basics down. We're looking for a similar place, same area, within budget. Yesterday afternoon Gideon and Nico (our lodger) went to see a villa in a neighbour area, it's got possibility, only there's no roof over the stoep area and the rent is a bit high. So Gideon said to the agent that he must negotiate with the landlord, fix the roof thingy so it's closed up, keep the rent at the same price and we'll maybe take it.

The villa Gideon looked at last night may also have potential, but we'll only make it work if we absolutely have to. The estate agent, Mr. Abdullah is at least a very nice guy and he even had the key ready as well as his own car, no, these are not standard practise for local estate agents, I know, I know the mind boggles. So Gideon explains to him that he'll have to show me the villa first, because "we're Western, the wife will make the final decision", to which Mr. Abdullah answers: "Not only in western culture Mr. Gideon, everywhere!" I had to giggle.

Fast forward to this afternoon at 16:00. Gideon and Nico (our lodger) goes with a certain delinquent called Shams to view a villa. This is the same dude that showed us our current villa last year, but tried to make about 20,000 dirhams extra off us, luckily we have an honest landlord and when Shams told him the plan, he promptly turned round to Gideon and told him exactly what Shams proposed. For obvious reasons we didn't deal with him any further.

But I digress, so enter Shams and another villa in the same area we're in. I haven't seen it, but this is what I was told. It's exactly like ours, roof over stoep area, no walls to close it up though, but that's fixable. There's even a little bit of garden!!!!! Grass and small palm trees!!!!! Can we be this lucky? I certainly hope so, now we just need to co-ordinate legal docs and cheques. One snag, the landlord wants occupation on the 1st of October, which we won't do as it will mean that we have to pay double rent, here and there a total no-brainer. So now to convince the landlord that we'll definitely take it, but he must please accommodate us on the occupation date and try and get the cheque from Alec as soon as bloody possible. Oh, and the total bonus, it looks like there's the teensiest possibility that we'll get him to agree to a 3 year contract, DOUBLE YEAH!!!!

So in a nutshell, yes that WAS a nutshell, I didn't even use any pictures for illustration purposed, that's where we are at the moment. Now we play the waiting game and as I explained to one of my friends earlier today, we find ourselves between a rock and a hard place and someone forgot the rock climbing equipment as well as the coolbox with the beers. :-)

I'll update as and when I know what's going to happen where, when and with whom