Laundry

When someone goes on a trip, usually the last thing they think about is laundry. But last Sunday, doing my laundry gave me something to think about. I had ran out of clothes to wear and was in dire need of doing laundry. That afternoon, I walked to the market, bought wash soap and headed to my room. Thinking this was going to be a piece of cake, I threw all my clothes into the tub and started scrubbing. (Yes its true, I hand washed my clothing and it was the worst thing ever!) I was scrubbing for FOUR hours and it seemed like it would never end! The amount of work that goes into hand washing is indescribable and I have never sweat so much in my entire life! To make matters worse, it began to rain outside just as I was finishing up. Not having anywhere to dry my clothes, I put them out on the window thinking I could just put them out to dry the next day. As I woke up the next morning I soon discovered that it was raining even harder than the previous night! I didn't have any clean clothes for two day, I was beginning to smell and sunshine was nowhere in sight! By the time a got a chance to hang and dry my clothes, they had smelled even worse than before I cleaned them. In all of my days here in Accra doing laundry by far was my biggest challenge!!
There are so many things we take for granted in Toronto and having a washing machine is one of them. Looking back and thinking about it now, most of my frustration and sheer inadequacy in the area of hand wash clearly was rooted in my privilege being Canadian. It is overwhelming to think about the fact that the majority of the human population have to deal with this form of washing on the regular. Although I can laugh at myself about it now, most of us really need to stop and think for just a second about being thankful for what we have!