Washing Day in Kampala

On Saturdays in Kampala I usually catch up on household chores and this includes my washing. 

The soap powder availalbe in the shops has instructions like this:
You can see there are only photos of hands and plastic tubs, not washing machines, unless you have a twin tub and I don't.

African women bend from the waist to ground level to do their washing, but I haven't grown up with that and my back isn't so comfy working that way.

 Wringing everything out by hand isn't as easy as letting the washing machine do it for me, but its the way it is here in Uganda.

Were you wondering how I took these pictures when I live on my own? Takes a bit of thinking through, but usually I can come up with something that works. Sorry I couldn't show you the camera perched on top of the suitcases and chair, but I was using it to take the photo!

I have one of those travel clotheslines strung tightly across my little back balcony. Its perfect for my weekly wash.

Washing hanging is a very common sight

when I look out from my second floor flat

including the downstairs neighbours, whose kids were having Saturday fun in the courtyard as I went out in the afternoon.

I had planned to wash my sheets and hang them out the front of my place, but by the time I was ready that space wasn't available because it also seemed to be washing day for my next door neighbour.

So I had to get up earlier to wash my sheets and mosquito net another day so that I would have space to hang some out the front.

Out the back I am the only one who has access, so that will always be available.

Don't think that all the houses in my neighbourhood are like the one you see here on the right.

The greater majority are like this.

Sounds like another post for another day.

Washing, language and a broken toilet seat

After 10 days here I decided it was time to use the washing machine instead of doing all my washing by hand. We are wrapped to have a machine but I don't understand Italian or Russian. There were no clues that I could pick up from the words on the front of the machine to help me work out which would be a suitable wash cycle to use. 

 

And so I thought 'Google Translate' might be helpful. I brought my laptop in to check it out. I didn't need to use the toilet and so I put the lid down to sit on it. Oops! It's not made for sitting on!

Google translate told me that I needed to use setting 3, normalmenti sorchi, for mildly soiled clothes.

 

So I added the washing powder, set the dial to 3, made sure that the outlet hose was in the right place

and pushed the door closed. Two hours later I had clean washing to hang on the clothes airer in my enclosed balcony.
And two hours after that it was dry!

A few days later the landlady arrived with the instruction manual in English. Thank you, Galena.

Washing Day in Rwanda

Doing our washing here just isn’t the same as it is at home! It’s jolly hard work and takes ages. And we don’t do nearly as good a job as the locals do. Saturday is usually washing day for us. Here’s a picture of Kathrin doing hers in the ‘kitchen’ 

When it’s all done we hang it on the bushes as the Rwandans do. It takes only a couple of hours to dry as the weather is so sunny and beautiful for drying clothes. It’s the dry season here at the moment. The wet season starts in September.

I took a photo of my washing last Saturday so you can get the idea.

And then a photo of Mareike and Kathleen hanging theirs as well.