Choosing to live with your friends
Apr 25, 2008
More and more young women are choosing to leave home and rent before they get married. To cut the costs as well as the loneliness, a good number choose to rent jointly with a girlfriend or two. How easy is this kind of arrangement?
By Lydia Namubiru
More and more young women are choosing to leave home and rent before they get married. To cut the costs as well as the loneliness, a good number choose to rent jointly with a girlfriend or two. How easy is this kind of arrangement?
Lucy and Hellen were roommates at campus. Even then, they knew that they would never go back to live with their parents after school. “My home is in Mbale. If I had gone back, it would have been difficult for me to find work,†Lucy explains.
Hellen’s parents on the other hand live in Kyengera and she could quite easily have gone back home but she chose not to. “I simply wanted to leave the nest and find my own wings. I believe that going back home would somehow have made me too comfortable to grow and take charge of my own life,†she says. So they agreed that they would find a house to rent after school, split the rent and live together.
For the first few months after school, they lived together in a two roomed rental in Nakulabye. “We shared the bedroom but it was ok. After all we had been roommates before,†Hellen defends. Six months later each had a fairly good job so they moved to a two bedroomed house in Kitintale where they live now. “Between us, we manage quite well. If each was to use their sh150,000 for renting a small house, it most likely would be in a poor, insecure neighbourhood,†Lucy reasons.
Indeed, living with one or two of your girlfriends comes with a number of advantages. You have someone to talk to when you go home or someone to borrow taxi fare from on one of those dry days.
However, some say it is not as easy as it might sound. “I think I would be a pain to my housemate. I get so pissed off over small things like cleanliness,†Amelia, 26 explains why she would not opt for a housemate. Even Lucy and Hellen agree it is not always a happy experience. Like any other scenario of living with someone else, small issues like who last bought sugar, toilet paper and who never takes part in cleaning the house can turn out quite thorny.
If you are more than two housemates, these little squabbles can actually turn out to be really big when you begin taking sides.
Another thorny issue is the lack of some degree of privacy. For example, how many times can your boyfriend sleep over, if at all, before your housemates start rolling their eyes.
Poor Grace, a social worker with UWESO in Mbale, recently found herself the laughing stock of the house when she went home with a guy she has been trying to impress for quite sometime. One of her two housemates, Martha tells the tale between bouts of laughter. “She came home with this guy and they went straight to her room. Meanwhile, the other housemate and I made supper — our favorite fish and kalo. When we called her to eat, she informed us that she was not hungry and her visitor does not eat kalo. We went ahead and ate. Interestingly, when her visitor left, she stormed the kitchen looking for left overs! She must actually have been very hungry!†It is a story the other two girls cannot stop laughing about behind her back.
So, there you have it. Would you rather pay a colossal amount of rent on your own and retain your right to total privacy? Or, would you rather split it and giveaway your right to keep up appearences? At the end of the day, it is all about your priorities.
More and more young women are choosing to leave home and rent before they get married. To cut the costs as well as the loneliness, a good number choose to rent jointly with a girlfriend or two. How easy is this kind of arrangement?
Lucy and Hellen were roommates at campus. Even then, they knew that they would never go back to live with their parents after school. “My home is in Mbale. If I had gone back, it would have been difficult for me to find work,†Lucy explains.
Hellen’s parents on the other hand live in Kyengera and she could quite easily have gone back home but she chose not to. “I simply wanted to leave the nest and find my own wings. I believe that going back home would somehow have made me too comfortable to grow and take charge of my own life,†she says. So they agreed that they would find a house to rent after school, split the rent and live together.
For the first few months after school, they lived together in a two roomed rental in Nakulabye. “We shared the bedroom but it was ok. After all we had been roommates before,†Hellen defends. Six months later each had a fairly good job so they moved to a two bedroomed house in Kitintale where they live now. “Between us, we manage quite well. If each was to use their sh150,000 for renting a small house, it most likely would be in a poor, insecure neighbourhood,†Lucy reasons.
Indeed, living with one or two of your girlfriends comes with a number of advantages. You have someone to talk to when you go home or someone to borrow taxi fare from on one of those dry days.
However, some say it is not as easy as it might sound. “I think I would be a pain to my housemate. I get so pissed off over small things like cleanliness,†Amelia, 26 explains why she would not opt for a housemate. Even Lucy and Hellen agree it is not always a happy experience. Like any other scenario of living with someone else, small issues like who last bought sugar, toilet paper and who never takes part in cleaning the house can turn out quite thorny.
If you are more than two housemates, these little squabbles can actually turn out to be really big when you begin taking sides.
Another thorny issue is the lack of some degree of privacy. For example, how many times can your boyfriend sleep over, if at all, before your housemates start rolling their eyes.
Poor Grace, a social worker with UWESO in Mbale, recently found herself the laughing stock of the house when she went home with a guy she has been trying to impress for quite sometime. One of her two housemates, Martha tells the tale between bouts of laughter. “She came home with this guy and they went straight to her room. Meanwhile, the other housemate and I made supper — our favorite fish and kalo. When we called her to eat, she informed us that she was not hungry and her visitor does not eat kalo. We went ahead and ate. Interestingly, when her visitor left, she stormed the kitchen looking for left overs! She must actually have been very hungry!†It is a story the other two girls cannot stop laughing about behind her back.
So, there you have it. Would you rather pay a colossal amount of rent on your own and retain your right to total privacy? Or, would you rather split it and giveaway your right to keep up appearences? At the end of the day, it is all about your priorities.