Laundry

People back home, be appreciative of having running water and machines to do laundry. Forget about wearing clothes only once. If you did you’d never stop doing laundry here. That means underwear too. You get over it quickly, you have to. Laundry starts by walking to fetch water, which luckily isn’t that far for me. Then it’s done in three separate buckets. First the soap, which is the most intensive part of it. Scrubbing takes a lot out of your knuckles, especially on the socks and pants which accumulate a lot of mud given that the roads are dirt and it rains frequently here. The first time I washed my pants my fingers literally bled (but then again I was washing four pairs of pants). Yesterday I did my laundry right after umuganda so I would have Sunday free to myself. I got a couple blisters on my palms, which opened up during laundry, and stung the rest of the time. The second bucket, which I usually omit, is for more soap, but in powder form. The last bucket is for rinsing the clothes and getting all that soap out. Clothes go on a line to dry, which the second it gets cloudy you need to take them down because it’s going to rain. In that case I line my clothes on my mosquito net to dry until the next day. The whole process varies in length, but I would say usually a two hours process plus drying time. Also, take into consideration that this is a weekly chore, minimum, because if you have fleas like I do, you need to clean your clothes constantly and your bed sheets and blanket in hopes of this being the last time you have to do it. Whenever I wash my bed sheets I act like I’m suffocating the fleas personally and I keep them submerged under the water until the bubbles stop.