So last Friday was independence day, and we had the day off. That weekend we were heading out to Luweero for a weekend trip to visit a local Catholic priest and internationally known Anglican priest, as well as visit a school supported by Compassion International. We'd be gone all day Saturday and arrive back Sunday evening. As luck would have it, I was completely out of clean clothes come Friday, having only one pair of socks, no underwear (!), and a bathing suit. TGIF takes on a whole new meaning when you've got a weekend trip and no clean clothes. After watching a movie they were showing at school ("War Dance"- good movie!) and eating lunch, I trekked home to face the monstrous pile of laundry. Wearing only my bathing suit and a dirty T-shirt I began the arduous task of hand washing 4 pair of pants, 5 shorts, half a dozen T-shirts, a couple African style dress shirts, and 12 pair of socks. Socks are the worst! They gather more dirt and are harder to clean that any other piece of clothing, and there's a ton of them! Luckily my mom felt pity on me and asked for Norine, our house helper, to assist me. She helped me get started by washing a few shirts with me in the soap basin, then moved on to the following two rinse basins, washing the soap out then hanging them up on the line. This put me at the front lines to face the daunting bag of clothes, which began to feel like the Mary Poppins bag as it always seemed to have more surprises in it. I spent about an hour and a half scrubbing the clothes till I noticed my knuckles really began to sting. I stopped long enough for the blood to appear where I had worn away the top layers of skin. I found it amusing and a bit ironic that for the past few minutes I'd been trying to scrub the red dirt out of my white pants with bloody hands; a bit counter productive. I decided clean clothes were worth bloody knuckles and kept at it, finishing it all within a little less than two hours. I began thinking of what I could do to minimize the need to wash, so immediately after this I walked into town (still wearing my bathing suit, dirty shirt, and a pair of long old man socks) to buy some sandals. No more was I going to have to worry about washing 24 socks. I'll let you all know what decide to do about the shirts and the pants, and I'll keep secret what I will do to avoid washing underwear ; )
(I'm still alive and kicking Mom (the original) and Dad (the only), and will try my best to keep it that way) Love you all.