It is a necessary task that is not fun even in the best of circumstances - time to do your laundry. As you may have guessed, laundry in Vanuatu is different from laundry in most of the United States. For me, I went from a washer and dryer in the house to hand-washing and using a clothes line. Ultimately it is a very simple processes - you get a basin of water with laundry soap, suds up your clothes, give 'em a scrub with a brush on a board, rinse, wring, and hang to dry. Easy peasy, right?
For the most part, yes. But it is also a culture item that you are required to learn during training because you will scrub holes into your clothes if you don't learn from your mama how to wash your clothes right. Also, I just want to point out that this is mainly a 'woman's task'. Some of the male trainees during Pre-Service Training had to convince their host parents to teach them how to wash clothes or any other 'woman's task' assigned to us to learn in our Passport to Culture activities book. Vanuatu is a culture that has gender specific tasks and roles. Washing anything - clothes, dishes, children - is considered to be woman's work.
The second reason trainees had a hard time getting their mama's to teach them to wash clothes, cook, or other household tasks is that they wanted to provide for us, to take care of us. Our host parents took their hosting duties very seriously and wanted to give us the best possible experience as we lived in their house. Which meant providing for us and that meant washing our clothes for us. So some trainees had to convince mama that no, it won't be you showing a lack in your hosting responsibilities if I do my own clothes during training. Really, our host families were super sweet!
Why is hand-washing the norm in Vanuatu? Because there is no power grid to supply the electricity for appliances and there is typically a lack of piped water. When homes do have piped water it is usually a single tap inside the family lot. You use the tap by filling buckets of water and then carrying said bucket to what ever task you need the water for. The tap sprays directly onto the ground, there is no sink or waste pipe to carry away the used water.
When it's time to get the wash done, step one is to soak your clothes in sudsy water. My site in Vanuatu is equipped with a tap sourced from a spring. The water tap works most days. I also have a back-up rain tank. Plus we have a dry season where both rain water and spring water are less accessible. So doing your laundry is dependent first of all on do you have enough water? When the tap isn't running, and it's been a few days since it has run, I'm seriously running out of clean clothes, do I bite the bullet and dip into my water reserves from the rain tank?
So let's say yes, I've got the water, in goes several gallons into my basin and a bucket. I suds up the clothes and using a brush and board give 'em a good wash. Some people also use an agitation method of the putting the sudsy clothes into your swim bucket and with a pole create an agitation movement similar to how the washing machine will mix 'em all up.
Next you wring out the sudsy clothes and drop 'em into a bucket of clean water for a rinse. Assuming you have two buckets. Otherwise you set them aside to go into the tub you were using for the wash. Then depending on your water supply, and how tired you are, you may give the clothes a second rinse.
So here is my first pro-tip on preparing to go on a trip where you will hand-wash your clothes, regardless of where you are going- take into account the wring-ability of your clothes. Before you go on your trip do a test run with them at home. Dunk the clothes you want to bring with you in the bathtub, get 'em good and soaked, then wring them out. If you have clothes that retains a lot of water and is hard to wring out, don't bring it. For me I have tendinitis which makes wringing out the clothes hard on my hands. I've found that the hand action of squeezing the clothes is a good strengthening exercise up to a point, after which any clothes which are too water logged, too solid, to wring out easily hurts my hand. Even if you don't have tendinitis, I still recommend only bringing clothes with you that you can comfortably wring and squeeze to get most of the water out.
Next you hang the clothes up on the line to dry. Depending on how well you wring them out, the strength of the sun, the visibility of the sun onto your line, and the wind you may get your clothes dried in one day. However, it is entirely possible, and in my case likely, that several times through out the day the skies will cloud over and you will get a sprinkling. At least half the times that I have done my laundry, when I start out the sun is out and hot and when I finish it is grey and sprinkling.
Second pro-tip - bring fast drying fabrics. Calico is easy to wring out and dries quickly which is probably a big part of why it is the fabric of choice here. When doing your test run time the clothes' drying time. There are some gym shorts that I brought which are super comfy and warm and which take forever! to dry. Your clothes will develop mildew and a stank smell if they do not dry properly. On the positive, sun dried clothes have a fabulous fresh smell to them!
Last point to consider is drying your personals. Menstruation hygiene items, lacy underwear, that sort of thing. Menstruation hygiene items need direct sunlight as apart of their sanitation cleaning process. But it is a little, embarrassing, exposing, personal - to have your items out on the line for all to see. And everyone does see. I'm the exoctic fish in a bowl and everyone likes to come by to see what I'm doing. So I situate my clothes just so on the line so that you have to be between the house and the line to see the personal items. Or I could also put a calico over them, which I don't really want to do since I want them to get as much sun as possible.
Laundry time is one of those regular tasks which is simple but not simple. It takes physical labor, access to resourcess, and access to adequate space. Do you have the resources to build a clothes line? Do you have the access to water? Do you have the funds and access to soap? Is there both ground space for the line and air space above for the sun to shine down on the line? Do you have the time to do the laundry or are you having to choose between this domestic task and another task such as gathering food from your garden to feed the family that night? Are you physically capable of carying the water or to sit on the ground to scubing clothes out of a bucket? Maybe I overthink things, but these questions are all going through my head when I do my laundry and I'm thinking about my host family and neighbors doing their wash. I wonder what a person does when the answers are no. I also wonder what I can do to improve on the task.
As I have been doing my survey around town, I finish by asking for suggestions on what I, along with the Health Committee, can do for our project. More than once it has been recommended that an improvement can be made in the way the wash is done. So now I'm wondering if there is a way to install utility sinks with running water utilizing the existing tap system. Utility sinks that can be used for any number of domestic chores and which would fit into the Hygiene portion of the WASH Program. Maybe they can be made out of concrete, a readily available building material. Maybe the grey water can be re-used such as for flushing the toilet? But then how would that system be set-up? Hmmmm....
....to be continued.
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