7:30am
This morning as my family headed out to the fields I proclaimed that I would need to do my laundry.
“But when I finish, I will come meet you.”
“No, hijita, it will take you all day to do your laundry.”
“Ok, we will see. If I finish I will come find you in the fields.”
Oh, lordy, was she right.
I started to fill up the tub made from old tire and the water was murky. I cleaned the tub and filled it again. Murky. Reapeat. Murky. And when I say murky, I mean brown.
“Do you think the tub is dirty or is the water?”
“The water is brown most of rainy season.”
“So how do you wash your clothes?”
They all just looked at me. It became very obvious that they just wash their clothes in the dirty water.
“Some women take the family clothes to the spring”
“Ah, ok”
“Will we drink this water?”
“Of course, it is fine when it is boiled.”
Time to buy bottled water.
8:00am
I packed up my all my dirty clothes and headed to the spring. There were women there, as always, washing clothes, bathing themselves and their kids. But today no one was chatting like usual. Some clouds were peaking over the side of the canyon and we new the afternoon rain would be strong. So, the women focused on washing as quickly as possible at 8am so their clothes would be dry before the rain started. I joined the concern club and scrubbed away.
10:00am
As you may know, carrying wet clothes is no easy feat. Carrying all of your clothes wet is nearly impossible. I figured this out the first time I went to the spring and had to stop every ten paces on the hike home up canyon. Now I wash the clothes in shifts (broken apart by color of course, that’s for you Mom), but that takes much longer and he clouds were looming.
Just as I got back to my house with all my clean laundry around 11am it started to rain. Now what? Literally everything is wet, and I have to pack for my quechua classes in Chivay tomorrow. So, I start pounding nails in my ceiling and stringing rope all over my 3 meter by 2 meter room (lots-o-zig-zags). When I run out of rope I curse at myself for a little bit then decide to balance a long stick between a chair and my bed to hang some more clothes. When that task is completed my room is completely inaccessible, but I can kind of crawl to my bed (which needs to be cleaned because it is covered in adobe debris from pounding nails) and I sit on my bed , arms crossed, pondering what the heck I am going to do with the other mountain of clothes that is sopping wet slung over my door.
1:00pm
Just then, the rope slides off the nail and all my pants don’t fall on the dirt floor (which would be bad), but worse, in the dirty dish water.
So, I re-string the rope, re-wash my pants with water from the kettle, and disperse the heavy clothing more evenly among the threads around my room.
Then, the Sun comes out. I dash to move everything outside for whatever amount of time we will have Sun. It is now 2pm… laundry still not done.
More clouds in the horizon and everything surely did not dry in the one hour of sunlight.
The rain starts.
Everything comes back in.
3:00pm
Then it stops.
Everything goes back out.
Now it’s 4ish, my clothes are still very wet, and I hear thunder in the distance.
“Why,” you might ask, “don’t you just do your laundry on a day when it doesn’t rain?”
It’s the rainy season. It rains everyday, often all day.
What do people in town do? They don’t wash their clothes much. They wear the same clothes over and over (this heavily contributes to the high rates of urinal and vaginal tract infection according to the nurses).
So they wear the same one outfit (yup, same undies too from what I an deduct) for a week or two until their clothes dry.
So… now what?
6:00
My host mother and sister came back from the fields and laughed when they saw my bedroom. We sat and munched on pineapple I brought from the city as we shared one anothers’ days.
Little did I know that before I got up this morning they had killed and cleaned two rabbits for dinner! Woot woot! Roxana and I were placed in charge of rice and onions on my stove while Juana, my host mom, finished gutting and frying the rabbits.
I can get over the rabbit guts that were hanging over the fire (she missed the pan with some of the intestines). I can get over the fact that she never cleans her grinding stone and there are literally decades of crushed pepper mashed into tonight’s sauce. I can even deal with the fact that no one washed their hands but me before we started cooking. But, is it really worth it with the brown water? Washing and boiling the rice in the brown water is not something I can get over. Nor washing all our plates in the same murky yuck. The cherry on top was when they boiled it and added cocoa to make hot chocolate. I took one sip and my nose turned up. I really couldn’t handle the knowledge that this matte was brown even before they added the chocolate.
This morning I thought bottled water, but that is going to get very expensive very fast. Can you imagine washing you face in brown, murky water? I am going to need to hall in a TON of water to wash my self, fruits, dishes, and cook with.
It would be better to do some sort of filter system. I remember Peace Corps mentioning they could send us such a thing, but I need it now. Not in a month. Not in 3 months. I need it tomorrow. Knowing Peace Corps nature, I doubt I would receive the filter system anytime soon.
It would also be good for me to demonstrate to the family that filtering is easy and inexpensive. Cross your fingers for me. Until them, I am going to continue buy 1 liter water bottles daily at the tienda down the street.
No wonder half the pueblo goes to Arequipa City in the rainy season. It really is hard to live here right now.
No comments:
Post a Comment