go with the rainy season. The majority of Kenyans have no access to washers or dryers. Clothes are washed by hand in buckets, hung to dry on lines. In the rainy season, if you’re lucky, you have a covered area where you can hang clothes, to drip into dampness over several days. Then you bring them indoors, move them around the warmest parts of the house. They rarely dry completely. You wait until they’ve lost just enough moisture to not make your skin flinch too much. You put them on, shivering, and hope your body heat will dry them out.
I’m not up for that anymore. This morning, I insisted that in the year 2007, there had to be laundromats in Nairobi, with dryers. I took all the sopping wet clothes off the lines, stuffed them into plastic Uchumi bags, dragged my mother to the nearest shopping complex.
Turns out I was wrong. The only laundromats in Nairobi are in the Central Business District – where no one lives, so I can only assume they’re used by companies and hotels. In the suburbs and residential areas, the rich have their own washers and driers (and their own generators to power them during blackouts). The poor, or the old-school / frugal / petty bourgeoisie (like my parents) deal with perpetually damp clothes – and accompanying illness - right through the rainy season.
2 Comments:
If it's not too hot, it would make sense to wear wool in such conditions, as it still warms even when wet. Sounds like a good way to get a rhus tox sort of cold/flu. Maybe some sort of solar
reflector, such as people use for cooking while camping? Oy vey, these people who need to FIX things!!! Maybe the thing is to just let go of clothes in the rainy season! Au naturelle!
Miss you, Ms. Shailja.
Dr Janny
Yr blog abt lack of washing machines or laundromatt was in bad taste. Quite in the style of Kenyans who go out to the west and come back home. Always comparing, comparing, comparing! Which is fine, only problem with me is, you make it sound as if we are dis-advantaged, or missing out on an essential must have vitam! As if drying clothes on the line on a rainy day is sth unconceibale!Like a 3rd eye! Without a washing machine and drier, how can you live like this. C'mon Shailja! Dont be sucha cry baby!!Typical American!
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