The topic of the week is Sundays in Bokito. Sunday here is a
day of rest, in the sense of the word that no one goes to work, however, there
is very little rest involved. This Saturday, I asked my host sister if people
slept in on Saturdays and she laughed and replied yes. Naturally, I didn’t set
my alarm clock and figured I would wake up around 10 or so. Boy was I wrong.
After my family had been up for several hours, they decided I had slept enough
and woke me up at 7:45. Considering my normal wake up time is before 6, it was
still sleeping in, however disappointing.
As soon as you wake up here, you get to work. On Saturdays,
I help take care of the floors. The first step is sweeping. Now the brooms here
aren’t quite what we’re used to in the states. They are basically thrush tied
together to make a short brush. To use it you need to bend down and basically
walk backwards with your butt high in the air as you sweep. It’s awesome. After
I sweep the whole house (which, mind you is quite large), we wash the floors.
Mind you, this is a job that is done every day. Every morning at 6, one of the
girls is up washing the floors. This means taking an extremely old and dirty
shirt-rag and dipping it and a bucket of brown, muddy water. Then you have to
get down on your hands and knees and whisk the shirt around the floor in such a
way as to push all the things you’re “mopping up” to the door. Possibly a bit
inefficient, but who am I to judge.
After we’ve swept and mopped the whole house, it time for a
quick break for breakfast, a huge 4 egg omelet with cassava leaves, tomatoes,
onions, and sometimes leftover fish.
Then its laundry time. Laundry here is an adventure. There
are no maytag machines or any oxyclean to do the work for you. At the end of
the day, if you don’t have blisters and scratches from scrubbing, you’re doing
it wrong. Although, according to Cameroons, us american’s will never get it
right anyways. As my host sister has been teaching me how to do my own laundry,
after about 2 seconds she gives up, sighs in exasperation and takes the article
of clothing from me, cleaning it in 5 seconds flat. You will never get it right
the “Camermoonian way”.
So to do laundry here, you need two huge buckets, some
individual bucket size packets of laundry detergent and the hideous soap that
they use for everything over here (the same bar is used to wash dishes,
themselves, clothes, and just about anything else they use saop for). All of
your clothes are dumped into one sudsy bucket and then the scrubbing begins.
The motion that they consider the only way to wash is basically taking the
article of clothing in your two hands and rubbing them as hard and as quickly
against each other as possible. Your fingers end up being the washing board,
your clothes end up getting stretched and clean. After you’ve done this
numberous time all of the shirt, then another type of scubbing occurs which
includes the whole piece of clothing and I honestly have no idea what they do
because I’ve never been able to replicate it. Bascially, they are able to scrub
huge amounts of fabric against each other, “cleaning” it. In Cameroon, “clean”
means visibly clean, not necessarily actually clean. After scrubbing, brushing
and wringing, the clothes are beaten. They are pounded together against a
concrete slab over and over again. I’m not sure what the purpose of this is or
what it accomplishes, but laundry isn’t “clean” without it. Your clothes are
then transferred to another bucket of cleaner water. They are briefly rinsed
and hung out to dry. If you have more than one bucket-load, you repeat,
conserving as much water as possibly by reusing the buckets.
When hanging clothes up here, you have to be careful. There
are insects called Mango flies that leave their larvae on your wet clothes. If
you wear the clothes while the larvae are living, they burrow into your skin
and grow. There is a horror story other volunteers are telling us about a dude
who wore wet boxers after leaving them out all night and ended up having to get
20 mango flies removed from his genitals. Sounds terrible. Anyways, if you take
your clothes in before evening and make sure to hang all our clothes on
clotheslines rather than bushes or grass, you should be fine. Just in case your
not, you should also wait three days before wearing any clothes as that allows
all the larvae to die. Or you can just article every piece of clothing you own
with the electricity we don’t have. Catch 22.
Speaking of Electricity, we did have some for a short time!
But it’s rainy season here, and when I say rainy I mean rainy. I have never
heard thunder like I’ve heard ehre. It’s insane. Anyways, three days after we
got electricity back and huge storm came in and knocked it out again. Most
people in town do still have it right now, but my house doesn’t.
After laundry, your chores are done, you’re clothes are
hanging out to dry, and all you have to do is cook dinner later. However, right
now, it’s only about 1. So what would you do with your time? You guessed it!
It’s hair time!
Every Sunday, my family gathers on the front lawn and does
their hair. The first two times I didn’t have a clue what was going on and they
got to me before I realized what was happening. Needless to say, after 2.5
hours of painful, tearful, hairpulling this past Sunday, I am currently
sporting intricate braids over my whole head. They are very artfully done and
sometime very useful. However, when braiding, my host sisters have some things
to learn. They’ve never worked with Caucasian hair before. So basically, they
take my hair out, tease it terribly so its knotted and terrible to work with
and then try to braid it. If they don’t want to get a knot out, they simply
pull it out. It’s horrifyingly painful. But I bore it, hopefully for the last
time.
Next week, I’ll have to say no and give my poor head a
break.
The rest of my Sundays are spent helping to cook dinner and
learning French if I’m not going out and meeting other Trainees. It’s an
awesome, extremely Camerooninan day, and I love it.
Miss you all, lots of love. Write me with suggestions for
what you want to know about!
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