Like washing dishes...on cue.
This wouldn't be quite so brutal if we had, you know, running water.
Everything here is as manual as humanly possible. (I was floored when I found myself in an automatic car; an English girl promptly reversed it into a wall.) The clean, dry laundry I used to spend an hour on takes three days in Liberia. This is especially irritating because we own a washer and dryer. I can see them, yet everything gets hand-washed and hung to dry. (This is as good a time as any to mention that this is the rainy season.) We're ahead of the game in that we have a covered balcony from which to drape our business: I've seen many a load of laundry drying on roadside boulders and patches of grass.
I've never used a lawn mower but it's got to be easier than the alternative which is, apparently, hacking wildly at the grass with a sword. Liberians call it a reaper, which sounds about right: if I had to stoop in the hot, hot sun with this thing, I'd probably just start taking people out.
Still, my free time revolves around stockpiling and rationing water in all its forms:
- Rain (for cleaning)
- Bought (for drinking)
- Spring (for cooking)
- Well (for bathing)
My mother wept when I finally understood the meaning of all of this. It was a pretty Helen Keller moment for us.
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