What's That Smell?

giving thanks today for: 159. traveling mercies .... my husband is home from his trip safely...

160. weather is warming up, and I'm warming up....

162. my washer and dryer....

My grand daughter ended her e-mail yesterday, "it is raining here, our clothes won't dry."

That one statement brought back a flood of memories.

The laundry not drying is the hardest thing for me to handle when I go to visit.

All laundry is done by hand in the village, and every woman does it her own way.

I remember the first time I saw Mama Ellen she was sitting behind her bamboo hut on a slab of concrete. She was protected from the sun with a small brown tarp held up with two tree limbs. She had two tubs of water in front of her. One had clothes soaking in a soapy solution, and one filled with clean water.

Up and down she would dip a pair of blue cotton shorts in the soapy solution. Mamma Ellen smacked the dripping shorts on the ground in front of her, and began to scrub the light weight material on a rock. Her scrubbing was meant to get the dirt out. I watched with anxiety and wondered if the seams on the shorts I made her son would hold together.

She rinsed the pants in cold water and wrung them tightly. Her daughter hung the clean clothes on the lines beside the house.

My daughter in law does laundry every day rain or shine.

Her process is very similar to Mamma Ellen's only she doesn't use a rock instead she scrubs using a heavy bar of blue soap and a brush.

No matter how much scrubbing is done the mud never completely gets out of the clothes, but each mamma in the village knows that regardless of appearance their families clothes are clean.

The wet hanging clothes were at the mercy of the weather. If warm and sunny the laundry dried quickly. If wet and rainy the clothes could be on the lines for days. We would go out every hour and flip the wet laundry.

Sometimes if there was a break in the rain then flipping helped the drying process, but

after hours of hanging on the lines, the clothes got stinky and the dampness never went away.

One day while playing Scrabble I said, "John Mark, your shirt stinks. Why don't you take it off and put on a clean one."

He smelled his sleeve and said, " It's okay Grandma this is the way all our clothes smell."

I smelled my own sleeve and he was right. Smelling like mildew is part of living in the village.

SMILE....

164. my clean fresh smelling shirt

Getting close to 200