Excerpt from The Lion in the Moon: Two Against the Sahara (Rainbow Books, Highland City, FL).Available for sale at Amazon Books.
"THE AFRICAN LAUNDROMAT"
"Do you have any laundry for me to do?" the African man asked.
"Oh no, I can do it myself," I replied.
"You know how to do laundry?" he asked incredulously. He shook his head as if it were the wildest thing he had ever heard and walked away laughing.
I didn't need to hire anyone. Staefan took care of the laundry. Being an early riser, he would have our clothes washed and hung on the clothesline before I awoke. It was a perfect arrangement. I wasn't about to rock the boat by getting up early or by paying someone else to do what I was getting free.
We had been in the campground outside Niamey for several days when I noticed the laundry was beginning to pile up. I'd open one of the MOG's side lockers only to have soiled socks and underwear tumble out. Someone was falling down on his job. I was out of clean clothes.
When Staefan announced he was taking the MOG to a local service station for a much needed oil change, all I could think of was dirty laundry.
"I'm out of clean clothes," I announced. That oil change could wait.
He looked at me a long moment as if not understanding the urgency in my cry for help. Then a light went on behind his blue eyes and I knew I was saved.
"Gee, so am I," he said. "Guess it's laundry time."
He opened the side compartment and unloaded a week's worth of dirty clothes into a woven basket, threw a box of granulated African soap on top, and with a twinkle in those same blue eyes, drove off leaving me standing very much alone between the single hammock I had just strung between two small trees for my morning siesta and the basket of clothes.
Was this a hint? I wondered.
I lugged the bundle across the campground to the laundromat--three deep concrete sinks built around a single cold water faucet. A short, black hose directed water from one sink to another. As fate would have it, the man who had asked to do my laundry was using the sink to my left. He grinned in great anticipation.
I dropped my load into the dust and stretched my sore back. Doing laundry in an African laundromat was not at all like doing laundry back home. Where were the sleek stainless steel machines that whirled automatically day and night? The chairs and magazines? The bundle service? There wasn't even an espresso bar next door where I could wait out the cycle.
Here, there were no machines, nor idle time. I had a hint this might be true since the African detergent box listed only instructions for hand washing. I looked into the deep sink. The stained sides were coarsely pitted. There were no plugs. How did the water stay in? It dawned on me I had no earthly idea how to wash clothes.
I was not about to ask the man.
What I lacked in domestic skills I more than compensated for in pride. I decided to pretend I knew exactly what I was about.
I found a piece of plastic on the ground, laid it over the drain and piled clothes on top to weight it down. Then I turned on the faucet and watched the ice cold water slowly fill the sink. Growing impatient, I dumped the rest of the clothing in, not bothering to segregate whites from colors, and liberally sprinkled them with blue detergent. There weren't many suds so I added more detergent; still no suds. I emptied the box.
I could see from the corner of my eye that the man was watching with an amused expression on his face. Maybe I had put in too much soap. One whole box did seem excessive. With a determined look, I leaned into the concrete pit and did my best imitation of a washing machine: chopping the water in a whirlpool motion, swirling the clothes in a slow circle. I wasn't very forceful as the sink was clogged with clothes. No matter! I was in the delicate cycle.
In less than a minute, my lower arm was red and swollen from the icy water and concentrated detergent. I switched hands and continued the whirlpool action while glancing to the sink on my right. A white girl--wearing a tie-dye T-shirt and African fabric wrapped around her hips, her golden hair tressed in the African style--climbed into the sink. Hoisting up her skirt, she began to stomp about in the sudsy water with great exuberance, creating small waves that lapped over the sides. I tried not to stare. I had never seen anyone walk on their laundry before. I felt totally foolish next to this savvy woman.
In the meantime, the man had begun to lay pieces of clothing on the rippled concrete shelf next to the sink. He rubbed each piece with a large bar of chocolate brown soap. I had wondered why the shelf had those ridges. It was a washboard.
Suddenly, I noticed the water was running out. Only inches were left. I hadn't finished! This was awful. Both my hands were numb. My back ached. I had used all the detergent and didn't have a bar of soap. The only thing to do was to skip the agitation cycle and proceed immediately to the rinse cycle.
I turned on the faucet and tried to hose down the lump of wet clothes that lay in the bottom of the sink. Giving up, I held each piece under the faucet and shot a thin stream of cold water through it until all the soap ran off. Laboriously, I wrung each piece out and piled them one by one on the unused washboard beside me. My back was killing me.
I had been the last to arrive at the laundromat and was the first to leave. With head held high, I lugged and dragged the heavy load of wet clothes back to our campsite and draped them over a rope I had strung for the purpose. With the last sock hung, I collapsed into the hammock and waited for my lobster red hands to regain sensitivity.
I was feeling rather smug. I had after all, conquered the system. Suddenly, the wind came up. One by one, all my clean clothes were blown into the dirt. I had not thought about clothes pins.
Staefan drove up in a whirl of dust and jumped out of the MOG.
"What have you been up to?" he asked.
"I did the laundry," I answered, pointing to the half-empty line.
He walked over and fingered the wash. "What's this?"
"Dirt," I replied defiantly. "The wind blew them off."
"Well," he said slowly. "I guess they're clean. They smell like detergent."
That was the last time I did laundry in Africa.
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Excerpt from The Lion in the Moon: Two Against the Sahara (Rainbow Books, Highland City, FL).
Available for sale at Amazon Books.
Copyright by Babs S. Harrison, all rights reserved.