Washing Machines? Not in Africa...

I have more respect for Tanzanian women today than ever before. I just spent three hours of my morning at war with laundry. The thought of a washing machine seems like such a luxury after all that torturous work. My hands were left pruned and scraped from hours of scrubbing. Honestly, I started bleeding from one of my fingers! I am so impressed by these Tanzanian ladies who wash not only their own clothes, but those belonging to everyone in the entire household! I can't even imagine it after what I went through today.

In this grueling process I made a few rules that will hopefully make my future laundry days a bit less painful.

1. Wash laundry twice a week—I'm pretty sure that if I had less to clean, my hands would've survived the scrubbing. But I'm also fairly confident that I won't get around to it this often...
2. Never wear anything white—the most time was spent on these awful white pants that had small dots of mud splashed on the back of both legs. On the bright side, they're tinted pink now, so maybe stains won't show up as easily in the future.
3. Always wear flip flops—I'm never wearing socks again! (if I can help it). I am so happy to be done cleaning endless pairs of socks, which were obviously all inside-out when I started, dumping clumps of red dirt into the bucket each time I fixed them. I'm also quite pleased that none of the socks went missing, which always seems to happen in the dryer back home.
4. Skip the workout on laundry days—If I did laundry every day, I'd have massive biceps by the end of the week!

For anyone who thinks I'm not roughin' it in Africa, I'd like to see you hand-wash every article of clothing you have on your continent. Then we can talk.