Laundry Day

“I’ve been doing this since primary” my friend Mary said turning to me with laughing eyes. She was in the middle of trying to teach me how to hand wash my clothes, and apparently I was looking quite like a fool as I scrubbed my clothes in the suds filled basin. Mary thought my life to be quite soft up until the moment as I had never had to experience such labor with my hands as I did on that Sunday afternoon. Her patience for teaching me the correct way eventually faded and she let me do what I was doing with my laundry as long as it was working. We sat like this laughing about my technique for about two hours in a cramped bathroom leaning over the tub and using back, arm, and leg muscles to do so that I did not even know I had. After our fourth load of laundry my fingers were bleeding, I had managed to scrub the skin off of my fingers. Mary laughed as she took over the laundering and said “you were not made to do this.” I had felt defeated, my more cushiony life that I live at home had not prepared me for the hard work that women in South Africa must attend to every day. I felt as though I was weak and at the same time had an appreciation for not having had to experience such harsh realities to everyday life as the people here in South Africa do. Looking back on how we do our laundry in the US, while it always seemed like a tedious task, all I really had to do was throw my clothes into the washer and leave it be for about half an hour. It did not require me leaning over a tub and scrubbing the clothes myself and then having to rinse them myself, a simple machine took care of this for me. However, washing machines are hard to come by here in South Africa, they are very expensive and most families cannot afford to buy one for their apartment or home. They are also not a common appliance as they are in the US so most apartments and houses do not come equipped with them. Essentially, like most things here in South Africa, including cars, if you are not white you cannot afford to have one. My respect for the people I am surrounded with, for the strength and knowledge that they have about everyday tasks, that I myself have never known about grows daily. I find myself feeling childish and unprepared for harsh realities of the world as I spend more time experiencing their tight grip on the reality of the struggles of life that they must face. I encourage everyone who is reading this blog to think of the things in your life that seem like difficult and tedious tasks and re-imagine what life could be like without all of the trappings and new gadgets that we have that makes those tasks so much easier. I certainly can’t help but think of how easy my life truly is every time I look down at my bandaged fingers.