Complications of another sort :)

Africa can look so innocent, so uncomplicated, but .......rarely is!!  Take washing clothes, as a very real and recent example……

Now, normally in the un-developing world (does such a state really exist?  I’ll leave that for another day!) – washing is really quite simple.  You pop the dirty stuff into the washer and then you pop the wet stuff in to the drier!  So uncomplicated…..even if you have no dryer, you can pop it on the line, without waiting for disaster to strike.  Well, this is how I do this very “simple thing” here and take into account I have a husband and three lively boys who really get their clothes dirty…..

First I check the time of year.  We have a rainy season that lasts exactly 5 months.  So in the rainy season I wash one bundle per day, because then I can get it reasonably dry overnight on the lines inside the outside kitchen (eliminating mango fly this way).

Now, the dry season – 7 months all in all.  This is where the tricky part starts!  It’s dry enough and warm enough to wash one to three bundles, but the drying is what makes it tricky.  Questions to ask are:  “Are there any strong winds” – if the answer is “Yes”, check direction otherwise you will have clean, but dusty clothes, so choose wisely what you wash!  Next question to consider – “Are there any People trying to Burn the old Fields?”  If the answer is “Yes”, then check the wind and the direction of the named variable and choose wisely.  And so on, and so on!  You get the picture!

Today, i actually  had one more option to consider, but didn’t!   

........We are making bricks from mud, which then need to be burnt in a great Mayan-temple-style pile of bricks and wood.  Now the questions that I forgot to ask this morning were “Will the brickmaker light his enormous fire?” and if Yes, “What is the current wind direction” and “Why, oh why did I wash two bundles today without checking anything???” 

bella, with smoked clothes!