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Here in an ordinary Rwandan household, there are no washing machines. No tumble dryers. But it’s good to have clear water and a clean basin.
With that, you can handwash, rinse with the least possible waste of water, hand wring, then hang your clothes on a sunny clothesline. This takes some practice. Normally, the house facilitator does almost all of the laundry.
Everyone washes his and her own skivvies though.
I don’t hang these little things outside on the line. Muzungus already create enough ruckus.
I’ve done my own laundry since about fifth grade, and most of what I brought to Rwanda can’t be wrung too energetically, which is lucky, because it matches my physical capacity. I might get to the point, though, where I’m happy to hand over my jeans to Joseph the house facilitator’s capable hands.
This household uses a white powder that I’m pretty sure is bleach-laden, so I bought some washing powder in town that is supposed to be gentle. I used it the other day on said skivvies and was having trouble getting the powder to dissolve in the cold water. I was so happy then when Joseph saw what I was doing and quietly put a dark blue bar of soap next to me.
I don’t know what’s in this little blue bar, but it’s awesome!
I suspect it contains something like lye and bluing, but whatever it is, nothing has a chance against it. It erases the dark orange African dirt and everything else you would want gone.
Some blue bar soap just might be coming home with me.
A few mornings ago, I was feeling strong and another issue was coming to mind as well. Last week, Joseph the house facilitator needed a couple days off to take care of something, but embarrassingly for me, I can’t function here in an ordinary house by myself. Julius was working in the field up north, so Joseph had to make other arrangements because I don’t know how to cook with charcoal. I could eat out, but I remain clueless about dealing with water or electrical issues that come up often.
So I am trying to learn as much as my Rwandan family will let me about how really to live here.
One step was doing a bunch of my own laundry myself—my dark clothes and a couple pairs of pants. Small items are one thing, but pants are something else altogether.
And I suck at doing my own laundry.
I used as little water as possible but I think it was still too much. I couldn’t get the rinse water to be anything other than darkly muddy. So…the clothes are cleaner than they were.
I think.
I wrung them out not nearly as dry as Joseph gets them, so they dripped for a long while out on the line and finished drying overnight slung around my room.
One small step for acculturation; one giant leap for a muzungu.
