Before I even began to start washing my clothes, a couple women came over to me and tried to wash my clothes for me. It is very difficult to do things for yourself around here because Tanzanians are so nice. For example, I was riding home in the van with room for 12, but this time we managed to fit 26 people in it, pretty impressive. I was carrying a bag with four large water bottles all the while my head was squished against this woman's shoulder. She saw that I had this heavy bag so she grab it from me so she could hold it for me. Needless to say, I had to fight off these two women from washing my clothes for me.
For those of you who have never washed your clothes by hand...which is probably almost all of you, I will give you a rundown. You need two buckets, preferably large buckets otherwise you will get wet. One bucket is for washing the clothes, the other is for rinsing the soap off. The most difficult part is scrubbing your clothes. You must be thorough with your scrubbing to be sure you have gotten rid of the sweat from the 90 degree weather with 85% humidity. After you rigorously scrub your clothes, you then rinse them off. When you are sure that you have gotten all of the soap off your clothes, you can then hang them on a clothesline. If your lucky like me, your clothes will be dry in less than 6 hours due to the intense heat bearing down on your clothes.
Remember how I told you that you would be amazed with the food that Chloe and I could prepare on our gas plate? After only TWO days, Chloe and I prepared a meal that could be eaten by a human being. We prepared pasta WITH meat AND toasted garlic bread. We had to go into town (mgini) to get the meat. Unlike America, you have to get your meat fresh from the marketplace. I'm pretty sure the meat we bought was moo-ing 15 minutes before we took it home. I am not sure what part of the cow we took with us-it all looks the same when its chopped up on a table.
It took a good 30 minutes to cut the meat off the bone using a pocket knife and after 90 minutes of preparing and cooking our meal, Chloe and I dined like Americans. In no time at all, Chloe and I will be preparing chicken cordon bleu with mashed potatoes and peas.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
it looks like you are learning some very important skills. Here is a tool kit for hand washing clothes that I recently found when my washer broke. It makes washing much easier and it does an excellent job.
ReplyDelete