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A country home that is worth the price
Build a country house that makes economic sense. /PHOTO/Rachel Mabala
What you need to know:
Whether an out-of-town retreat, retirement or ancestral home, a lot of thought should be invested in conceiving the plans for a country home to avoid tying up capital in a place that is hardly occupied but expensive to maintain.
Patrick Behayo does not regret building a small country home that he completed recently. in Rukungiri District. He lives and works in Jinja and hardly spends four days in a month at his Rukungiri home when he visits. He describes it as a convenient three-bedroomed house, with a living and dining room, with three single roomed servants’ quarters, connected to constant power and water supply. Even when he has a visitor, he says there is space for them to sleep.
Behayo adds that he did not build his country home with accommodation of his children in mind, but rather a home to retire to. The children have since all completed school. He believes that while the home can accommodate children at a tender age, with time, they take their own direction.
At times the style of the house is not what the children want when they have grown up.
Income generation
Now in his mid-60s and about to retire from his formal job, Behayo says his house will be a retirement country home. Behayo believes that it is imperative to set up a project or business where your country home is built even when you work and live elsewhere in far-flung places, which is why he set up a farm with a number of cows and a banana plantation, projects for which he has hired two caretakers.
“My banana plantation generates money to pay two country home caretakers. I sell between 40 to 50 bunches of bananas at between Shs10,000 to Shs15,000 each. When the cows are milked, part of the milk is sold and it also generates additional income to take care of my old parents. When I travel upcountry, I have extra money to pocket,” Behayo says.
Livingstone Mukasa, the lead business trainer at Living Business Education argues that lately, most people now travel to their country homes for approximately a week or a few days a year even when they spent millions of money to put them up.
In some regions of the country such as Ankole, natives such as Behayo frequent their country homes because of, say, the livestock they keep there and cannot spend a month without visiting their homes.
According to Mukasa, ideally a country home should not be the first house you build although some people prioritise them over building in urban areas where they work and spend most of their time and life.
“It makes more sense to first build where you live and spend most of your time even if it is a two-roomed house. It could be much cheaper than building a house in the village where you only spend four nights in a year. The business of building a country home so that people can find something decent in the village when they come for your burial is losing water over the years. Whether there is a house where you are buried or not, nobody comes back alive,” Mukasa argues.
New thinking to adopt
Rather than see it as a necessity, in the new thinking, Mukasa and Behayo opine that a country home should be viewed as a luxury you build much later after building your urban home, in the same way you would think of buying a second car. Country homes, Mukasa adds, should be multigenerational, meaning that they must be stronger so that you move away from the idea of every generation demolishing the previous old house to avoid losing the capital efficiency.
“You should understand that building on an ancestral ground should allow a house that can expand over the years even if you are not the one to complete it. It is much more capital efficient than demolishing an old house for a new one,” he advises.
Making money from your country home
Then also, the fact that Uganda is a beautiful country with vibrant tourism potential, you could turn it into a commercial space where tourists can stay to enjoy a home experience in the village. For instance, you could also design it as a community meeting space which is available for hire. This is more viable than keeping it as a family house only, which comes at a heavy cost.
A country home, Mukasa advises, should be able to make money to maintain itself without you having to dig maintenance costs from your pocket.
The relevance of country homes
Behayo agrees with Mukasa, reasoning that the old generation of, for instance, 50 years and above has an attachment to village country homes because it is where majority grew up, grazed livestock, made friends, went to school and a host of other activities.
A country home, Behayo interjects, is not only where you originate but also where you have your kinsmen, where parents like his, live, if they are alive and made long-lasting friendships. It is environment you fit in when you have retired.
But then, Mukasa worries of a totally new generation (approximately 35 years and below) that was born and raised in urban areas. Asking this generation to spend a month in the village may seem like a punishment to them because they have no attachment there, except knowing that it is where their parents come from.
Status symbol
“The young generation has a different understanding of a country home from the perception of the older generation of over 50 years. A country home to the older generation is sometimes a status symbol that someone who left the village when poor returns to regardless of how it looks while for the young generation, it is a luxury undertaking they want to return to for purposes of showing off,” Mukasa notes.
The cost
The cost of building a country home depends on what you can afford. Whereas Mukasa advises that your income should be able to allow you start on, build and finish your country home in less than four years, Behayo and Fredrick Ocaya, a home owner, agree that your country home should not be like a hotel or mansion to lie idle most of the year yet you do not even own a one-roofed house in the urban area where you make ends meet. It has to be something simple that you can complete in a short time and not spend 10 years of your capital in construction.
“If you are to build a country home of Shs200m, you can plan and partition the rooms to serve as a country lodge to make some money. It makes much sense to serve both local and foreign travellers in the area rather than having all your capital tied in one huge expensive empty house,” Ocaya advises.
Mukasa adds: “Go for functionality rather than show off. Do not spend money you do not have and in any case, if you do not live there, do not borrow money to build a country home. If you are a salary earner and you are taking a loan to build a country home, it is financial indiscipline of the highest level.”
Income inflow is tricky. There are those whose income inflow is constant and are sure it will exist for ages and those who are sometimes deceived by hopes and think and plan of building a big country home on money they don’t have yet.
“What and how you think about money tomorrow may be different. You can only budget for what you have. If you do not budget, you will spend impulsively and the income inflow changes and you fail to complete your country home and you become stuck with an incomplete country home,” says Behayo, who built his country home in less than two years.
The size
You cannot use seasonal events to plan for the size of your country home. Rather than thinking of the number of children you have or plan to have and the number of people expected to live in the house, you may instead look at having a large compound you can use as a camp site. Most families are becoming a dispersed generation that people who can afford decent country homes are likely to have many of their friends or relatives living upcountry.
If you are establishing economic units in the home, you could opt for something bigger to accomodate caretakers. If there is an economic activity in the area, or an income-generating project such as Behayo’s banana plantation, a bigger unit will suffice because you will be there more frequently.
“Go for utility rather than being a showoff. If you have four children and at any one moment you become 10 people, then three people can share a room and you put up a three bedroomed house rather than going for a humongous house because the 10 people will soon scatter to different places,” Behayo says.
Location
According to Mukasa, building a country home does not necessarily mean it has to be built in your ancestral village. A country home should serve the purpose of getting away from the hustle and bustle of the city centre where you work. If you are from western Uganda or the central region, you can have a country home in eastern Uganda where you feel comfortable to rest.
You could also have shared country homes in different regions. If your family has a country home in Pakwach and one of your friends has one in, for example Kabale, you can share these homes at different intervals and convenience rather than go to the same place. It is one of the ways of touring and showing people around different regions of the country.
