south african house vs. american house

By now, most of you have had a virtual tour of our casa via FaceTime, but I thought you may get a laugh out of the little differences between a South African house and an American house that we may not have pointed out.

1.  No doorbell. Whaaaat?!?!

2.  It took Telkom nearly 4 weeks to install our ADSL line. While we are overjoyed to have internet at all, it is slow. As you can see from the photos below, they did an excellent job installing the line!! haha

3.  Light switches and power outlets are on outside of the bathrooms. It is against South African building code to have them inside. It is pretty annoying!

4.  Only one “air con” (A/C) unit in ENTIRE house.

5.  Doors use old-fashioned skeleton keys. The kicker is that each door has a different key. You should see the size of our key rings!

6.  There is only 1 (or maybe 2 if you are lucky) electric outlet per room. What’s weird is that each appliance has a different type of plug so we need several adaptors.

7.  Small fridge. You cannot really tell in this photo but it is narrow. Food does not have a long shelf life here, so a small fridge actually works well.

8.  Need for Jo Jo water tank. This is helpful when they turn the water off for no reason.

9.  Wake up every day by the screech of the hadeda (aka most annoying bird in the world). Curious what it sounds like? YouTube has a bunch of videos so you can hear the screech.

10.  Need for generator when power goes out at breakfast and dinner times.

11.  Need for metal slam door to protect us (and our valuables) from danger.

12.  No mailbox and no public postal system. Mail and packages are not delivered to homes, but rather to pre-paid PostNet boxes, which are sporadically located. Paper mail is really only used by businesses and is delivered via private post. While a national law may exist, mail theft is not enforced.

13.  No dishwasher. I never realized how many dishes we use! I think each of you knows why this one stinks :-(

14.  Small washing machine and dryer with meters of clothesline in the backyard.  Tumble dryers are not a staple item in homes here because most people hang clothes outside to dry. I can deal with no dishwasher, but a tumble dryer was non-negotiable!

15.  Ants. Yuck.

16.  Walls are made of bricks coated with plaster. This makes picture hanging nearly impossible and I cannot find those cool 3M self adhesive hangers anywhere.

Have a great weekend!

Love,
Mat & Jess