The folly of building big houses

By now you all know how I enjoy stories, and how many of them inspire this column.

Well, I have yet another one for you, and this time round it is about what the narrator of the story referred to as the folly of building big houses.

Her relative, a father of three, she told me, owns a four-bedroom bungalow in Kilimani, a place he and his family have lived in for about eight years now. About two years ago, this man’s eldest brother, a well-to-do man in his late seventies, approached him and asked him whether he would consider swapping houses with him and his wife.

The two had a stately home in Karen with six bedrooms and even more toilets, not to mention two separate servants' quarters. The grand home, which sat on about two acres of land, had a huge living room and dining room, plus a “family room” upstairs where their now adult children would watch TV whenever the couple had visitors, many decades ago. 

Their four children had long moved out of home – three lived abroad with their families and visited once a year, while the one who remained in the country, the last born, was busy with a life of her own, and would visit once in a while. And no, she rarely spent the night.

As you can imagine, the palace-like home which was once a hive of activity and warmth and laughter when their children were younger was now too big for the elderly couple, who had since moved from the master bedroom upstairs, (it was a chore climbing up the stairs several times a day with their arthritis) to one of the two bedrooms upstairs. Loneliness crept up on them from time to time too since where they lived, you couldn’t simply walk up to your neighbour’s home, knock and invite yourself for 4 O’clock tea.

The only people they interacted with in their silent home was their live-in help and a gardener, who kept the compound tidy, and as you can imagine, their interaction with their employees was mostly limited to questions and answers.

The home they once enjoyed and which was full when their children lived there had become a huge quiet hall with unsettling echoes, hence their half-serious proposal to their relative, who still had young children who would enjoy having a bedroom to themselves and spacious grounds to play in. 

“Had we known, we wouldn’t have built such a big house,” they said, pointing out that, unlike other elderly couples, they did not even have grandchildren to warm up their home once in a while since theirs were too far away. When they made the home-swapping offer, they were contemplating selling their mansion and buying a much smaller home, preferably a two-bedroom house with a small compound that would be easy to maintain, and in a location that was not as secluded as their home was.

While this is food for thought, I doubt it would have an impact on someone who grew up poor and is determined to have the things that he or she grew up lacking.

The fact is that many of us, especially those who grew up surrounded by poverty, perhaps sharing a narrow bed with two or more siblings and having a living room that was also the kitchen and bedroom come nightfall, dream of one day owning a big home with spacious rooms and an ‘upstairs’, since in our society, a home with ‘upstairs’ is synonymous with being well off, of having made it.

The writer is editor,  Society and  Magazines, Daily Nation.   Email: cnjunge@ ke.nationmedia.com