Tad's Life

We've been looking for an apartment for a few weeks now. Aaron and Sarah Toombs and their kids will be coming in early September. They'll be taking over the apartment here at the Phare. It needs some work to get it ready. Well, OK. It needs a fair amount of work. We don't want to scare away the new teammates! And with Anna and Frankie coming in July and teams in June, we decided moving sooner was better than moving later.

We don't want to increase our budget. That means certain neighborhoods aren't available, of course. And a house is out of the question. Also, we want to stay in Ouakam to be near the ministries that we already have and also those that seem to be coming. And we want three bedrooms so we have room for an office and a spare bed.

We looked in Cité Mamelles and our old neighborhood Cité ASECNA and also in COMICO. Some places were too small. Others shared a common entrance and we worried that late night visits from bleeding talibé boys might cause problems with the neighbors! Finally, Antoinette found a place in COMICO that was just right.

In fact, it is better than we expected and at exactly the price we wanted. It has three bedrooms and a couple bathrooms. The kitchen is reasonably large (though we'll have to enlarge the door to get our fridge and stove into it). Best of all, it is the first floor of an eventual two unit building. That means we have a terrace roof instead of upstairs neighbors and no shared entrance!

The only downside is that there is no garage and no sewer hookup. I'll have to park our vehicle with a car guard somewhere nearby and we'll have to get the septic tank pumped once in a while. Hopefully, that won't be too often!

For those of you who haven't been here, or who don't know Ouakam well, COMICO is a development originally done for the military. All the houses were built to the same basic plan, a simple one story small house with a tile roof and a tiny back yard. We watched the neighborhood go up in our first few years here. A number of church members in Ouakam have rented places in COMICO over the years. Those who have visited Antoinette may remember her little house.

Over time, though, the owners have torn down those little homes and built multistory places. This is one of them.

It is on the first (westernmost) street of the development, next to the “balloon houses.” This is a small group of dome shaped huts constructed by the US military in WWII for local construction workers, with the idea that they were more like village huts and would make folks more comfortable. At least that is the story we’ve been told. A few of them still exist. Antoinette lived in that neighborhood at one time, too. Just beyond those is our old neighborhood of ASECNA. So, in a way, we’re coming back to our old haunts. I certainly know this street well. For several years I walked through here at least once a week on my way to Bible study or prayer meetings. I’d come from ASECNA, through the “balloon houses”, cut through a little path between houses into COMICO a half block over from the new apartment and then out across the old quarry that became a dump over to Touba Ouakam to the church.

We’re excited. Well, as excited as we have energy for. Moving is never easy and we’re going to try to pull it off in the midst of busy lives. But God is good. He knows what lies ahead and won’t abandon us! We’re truly thankful for a place beyond our expectations and affordable to boot!