House-Hunting in Geita

How do you find a house to rent in a place where there are no realtors? This week we've mostly just tried driving around and knocking on doors. Geita is only so big so it's pretty easy to cover the area with houses that is close to the market. We'd like to be close enough to walk or ride bikes to the market. When we see a house that looks about the right size we stop and ask if it's for rent. That's where it gets complicated. Most of the time there is a family, or 2, or 3 squatting in the house. It's hard to say if they are there with permission of the owner or not. At any rate they try to avoid the "Is this house for rent?" question by pointing out other houses that could be for rent or telling you that this one is really small and there are big ones over there. You can't really blame them. If you move in where does that leave them? Sometimes there is no one there. Once, a random guy hanging out across the street knew who owned the house and even knew where to find him. Sometimes, there is someone around who knows nothing about the house you're looking at, but will take you to another house that is for rent. Even when you find someone who knows about the house they don't always have a key and sometimes you sit around a while waiting for the key to show up from whoever it is that has it. One day we sat outside a house for an hour, presumably waiting on a key, only to find out that the house had been rented out last week! Yesterday, we happened upon one that we really like and the owner was actually living next door and home. He even speaks English, a very nice plus when talking about something as detailed as renting a house. The house, like many others we have seen isn't yet finished, but could be soon. In some ways that is a nice situation. It means you get to have say in the tile they pick (no pink and gold floral, please!) or better yet get them to do concrete floors. It means Carson can be around overseeing the finishing to make sure it is done well and I can be around making sure they use the paint colors I picked! (NO "Always Coca Cola" turquoise!- I have a theory about this color of paint from my Honduras mission trip days. In Honduras there are Coca Cola signs painted everywhere. I think when they paint one they buy a whole gallon of neon turquoise for the little arch at the top that says "always". Then, they have a ton of it left over and sell it for cheap. This is why in much of the developing world this color gets more than it's fair share of use on buildings and houses. The color is worse in person than in this picture.) 

Anyway, when you do find a house you are interested in you have the fun task of figuring out if the landlord is a good, trustworthy person to rent from. And that is where we are now...