Saturday, 4-9-11
I only vaguely remember what I did today. That’s how interesting my day was. I know I did something in the morning but I’m not sure what it was. I think today was another one of those days that was supposed to be more productive than it actually was. Those seem to be happening a lot lately. I don’t know it’s that’s a bad thing because it means I’m not getting things done or if it’s a good thing because it means I’m not stressing about every little detail.
I got some laundry done which was good. It seems like I do laundry a lot but I actually don’t do as much as the ladies here. They wash their own clothes plus the school uniforms of Mauricio, Elmer, and Marvin and Alejandro’s clothes as well since he lives here during the week. Most days someone is washing clothes or sheets or towels. Not only is there a lot of stuff that needs to be washed but because of the weather and living conditions many clothes need to be washed more often.
For example, Marvin, Elmer, and Mauricio each only have one pair of pants and a shirt for their school uniform. They all live together in Alejandría (a caserío) and walk to school every day together. They always wear “normal” clothes to walk to the Pastoral House and then change once they get here into their uniforms. It’s a dusty walk from Alejandría to Berlín in the dry season so they get dirty fast. In the rainy season they also walk which means mud.
After doing laundry I washed out Chiquita’s cage and Chelita’s guacal (plastic tub) that she sleeps in at night. Chiquita is the conure and Chelita is the chicken. Chiquita’s cage wasn’t too bad but Chelita’s guacal was very funky. I put newspaper in the bottom of both of their little enclosures and change it daily. But they are both sloppy eaters. Chiquita likes to dump out her water as soon as I put it in her cage and Chelita dumps out her food as soon as I put it down for her. Oh, my daughters. I love them very much.
Before I knew it day had turned into night. I got on Skype to talk to my mom about Spanish. She’s been taking Spanish classes and we were practicing and reviewing some words. She’s doing really well considering she’s only had a couple classes. And she’s retaining the information as well which is key. She said something about learning how to say “sit down” in Spanish and that got me thinking about the imperative verb tense which we don’t have in English. So after we were finished talking I started looking things up on the internet and checking my notes on the computer about the imperative tense. Sometimes I get going on these little adventures inside the Spanish language that after a while I get lost inside my own head.
I had wanted to get to bed early. Yeah, that didn’t happen. I ended up sitting in bed watching an episode of The Office that I brought with me and painting my toenails pink. So glad I stayed up to get these important things done.
Showing posts with label Laundry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Laundry. Show all posts
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Monday, February 28, 2011
Revelations from doing laundry
Sunday, 2-27-11
“Tenemos agua today?” As soon as those words came out of my mouth I knew I had just spoken some sort of Spanglish. Cecilia gave me a funny look and said, “Qué?” (What?) I started laughing so hard I had a difficult time explaining what I’d just said. What I meant to say was, “Tenemos agua hoy?” (Do we have water today?) The water only runs every other day here for a few hours and I couldn’t remember if it was running today. Eventually I calmed down and Cecilia told me that we did have water today. Lovely. Later on I told Alejandro, Cecilia’s brother, about what I said and told him in the US we call that Spanglish. He called it a “mezcla” (mixture).
After learning we had water and it was still running I decided to do some laundry. That way, as I used up water, the pila (concrete basin) would still be filling up. Today I washed 3 shirts, 3 pairs of pants, socks, a pillowcase, and several of my “unmentionables”. This took me about 40 minutes. As I’m sure many people know, hand washing things takes a long time. Granted, I know I’m not as efficient or skillful as the women here who wash clothes. These women are pros at washing clothes and bedding. (I say “women” because it is almost always the women who wash clothes for the entire family).
When I do laundry here I like to do it more often and in smaller parts. In the US I like to wait as long as I can before washing. The difference is time and water usage. In the US I like to conserve as much water as I can so I wait until I have enough dirty laundry to do a proper load. Here, it doesn’t matter how much laundry I have because I’m always going to use a certain amount of water for each piece of clothing. There are several other reasons why the US way of washing clothes doesn’t work here. If I waited to do laundry until I had almost no clean clothes it would take a lot of time, I’d probably use up all the water in the pila leaving none for anyone else, and my clothes may or may not dry before nightfall.
As I was doing my laundry today I decided that even though it appears that sometimes no one here is organized they are in fact incredibly organized but in a different way than people in the US. The women of El Salvador have somehow figured out a way to do it all. They cook, clean the house, do the laundry, take care of the kids, and often work in the fields as well. Again, I don’t want you to think I’m being sexist because I’m leaving men out of the equation, but most of the time in El Salvador, if there is a woman in the household, she is the one who does the cooking, cleaning, and raising of children.
The ladies at the Pastoral House are no different. I swear, I never see the ladies washing their personal laundry. I see them doing bedding from the delegations and doing their kid’s & brother’s laundry, but rarely their own. It’s like their laundry magically gets done on its own. They cook a feast for a delegation or a visitor and then take only a tiny portion for themselves. Every day they wake up early to sweep and mop the floors, clean the bathrooms, tidy up the kitchen, and attend to any other cleaning needs that pop up. Many times they do the cleaning before anyone else wakes up so it appears as those the house cleaned itself.
A week or so ago I compared the ladies at the Pastoral House to people who own a bed and breakfast. I said what they do is like owning a bed and breakfast only you never get paid, you make all the meals, and have to accompany your guests on all their activities. Then when your guests leave you continue to check on the projects they worked on from time to time. But not only are the ladies here running that kind of B&B, they also have to do all their own laundry by hand, cook for themselves, help raise children, and work in the fields when they have spare time. They are all leaders in their community and attend every religious event possible. They take the rest of their miniscule spare time to help other people in the community who are less fortunate with basic health, food, and housing needs.
Wow!! They are a constant reminder of how amazing the women in this country are! Yet I feel that my description of the women here only scratches the surface of everything they strive for and everything they’ve already accomplished. Words cannot illustrate the love and passion they have for their work and for their lives. I am so honored to be able to spend time with them and to learn all that they have to teach. And I think I’ll leave it at that for tonight.
“Tenemos agua today?” As soon as those words came out of my mouth I knew I had just spoken some sort of Spanglish. Cecilia gave me a funny look and said, “Qué?” (What?) I started laughing so hard I had a difficult time explaining what I’d just said. What I meant to say was, “Tenemos agua hoy?” (Do we have water today?) The water only runs every other day here for a few hours and I couldn’t remember if it was running today. Eventually I calmed down and Cecilia told me that we did have water today. Lovely. Later on I told Alejandro, Cecilia’s brother, about what I said and told him in the US we call that Spanglish. He called it a “mezcla” (mixture).
After learning we had water and it was still running I decided to do some laundry. That way, as I used up water, the pila (concrete basin) would still be filling up. Today I washed 3 shirts, 3 pairs of pants, socks, a pillowcase, and several of my “unmentionables”. This took me about 40 minutes. As I’m sure many people know, hand washing things takes a long time. Granted, I know I’m not as efficient or skillful as the women here who wash clothes. These women are pros at washing clothes and bedding. (I say “women” because it is almost always the women who wash clothes for the entire family).
When I do laundry here I like to do it more often and in smaller parts. In the US I like to wait as long as I can before washing. The difference is time and water usage. In the US I like to conserve as much water as I can so I wait until I have enough dirty laundry to do a proper load. Here, it doesn’t matter how much laundry I have because I’m always going to use a certain amount of water for each piece of clothing. There are several other reasons why the US way of washing clothes doesn’t work here. If I waited to do laundry until I had almost no clean clothes it would take a lot of time, I’d probably use up all the water in the pila leaving none for anyone else, and my clothes may or may not dry before nightfall.
As I was doing my laundry today I decided that even though it appears that sometimes no one here is organized they are in fact incredibly organized but in a different way than people in the US. The women of El Salvador have somehow figured out a way to do it all. They cook, clean the house, do the laundry, take care of the kids, and often work in the fields as well. Again, I don’t want you to think I’m being sexist because I’m leaving men out of the equation, but most of the time in El Salvador, if there is a woman in the household, she is the one who does the cooking, cleaning, and raising of children.
The ladies at the Pastoral House are no different. I swear, I never see the ladies washing their personal laundry. I see them doing bedding from the delegations and doing their kid’s & brother’s laundry, but rarely their own. It’s like their laundry magically gets done on its own. They cook a feast for a delegation or a visitor and then take only a tiny portion for themselves. Every day they wake up early to sweep and mop the floors, clean the bathrooms, tidy up the kitchen, and attend to any other cleaning needs that pop up. Many times they do the cleaning before anyone else wakes up so it appears as those the house cleaned itself.
A week or so ago I compared the ladies at the Pastoral House to people who own a bed and breakfast. I said what they do is like owning a bed and breakfast only you never get paid, you make all the meals, and have to accompany your guests on all their activities. Then when your guests leave you continue to check on the projects they worked on from time to time. But not only are the ladies here running that kind of B&B, they also have to do all their own laundry by hand, cook for themselves, help raise children, and work in the fields when they have spare time. They are all leaders in their community and attend every religious event possible. They take the rest of their miniscule spare time to help other people in the community who are less fortunate with basic health, food, and housing needs.
Wow!! They are a constant reminder of how amazing the women in this country are! Yet I feel that my description of the women here only scratches the surface of everything they strive for and everything they’ve already accomplished. Words cannot illustrate the love and passion they have for their work and for their lives. I am so honored to be able to spend time with them and to learn all that they have to teach. And I think I’ll leave it at that for tonight.
Friday, February 18, 2011
Day of rest
Friday, 2-18-11
It’s been a pretty laid back day for me, which has been nice. Betty and Maurice left early this morning at 3:30am. If I heard them I was going to wake up and say goodbye but I didn’t hear anything. I was kind of bummed when I woke up at 5:00am and realized they’d already left. But such is life I guess. I went back to bed and slept in until 8am. Yay! Since one delegation just left and another was coming today I figured Cecilia probably wouldn’t have time to be making breakfast so I could sleep in. Blanca offered to make me something but I said the cold tamales and bread they were having would work for me too. It was a nice, simple breakfast.
I spent a lot of the day working on my blog for yesterday. Maurice had a ton of pictures that I downloaded and sorted through as well as going through my own. Plus there was a lot that needed to be written. It was a huge, important celebration so I felt it deserved a good blog. I also spent time getting my room organized. I hadn’t really had time since the Trinity delegation left on Tuesday to move into my room and get organized. I’ve been too busy having fun! But now the blog has been written and I know where everything is in my room.
The ladies cleaned and washed everything today. And I mean everything. The bedding, bedrooms, floors, bathrooms, kitchen, counters, fridge, oven, etc are all clean. They also went shopping for more food and supplies. Taking care of a delegation is a lot of work, and cleaning up after and preparing for another delegation is just as much work. It’s like owning a bed and breakfast only you never get paid, you make all the meals, and have to accompany your guests on all their activities. Can you see why I love these women!?!? So after we ate lunch they took a break and I showed them some of the pictures that Maurice took yesterday at the celebration. They loved looking at them!
When we were done looking through the photos I decided it was time to do some laundry. Doing laundry here is a lengthy process, especially for us gringos who haven’t been doing it since we were old enough to walk. You start by putting water into a large guacal (plastic tub) and adding “rinso” which is like laundry detergent. You stir that up a bit with your hands and then you put in your clothes and kind of squish them around in the water. That sits for about 10 minutes or more if you get busy with something else. Then you take out each piece one at a time and put it on the cement slab next to the pila (cement basin). You rub it with soap inside and out. Then you either (1) take a stiff brush and scrub to get the dirt out or (2) you use your hands and kind of squish the soap around. I prefer to use my hands especially on my shirts because I don’t want them to stretch too much. There are no dryers here to use to “shrink” my shirts if I get them really stretched out. I use the brush on most of my pants and my towel.
After soaping and scrubbing or squishing your clothes you have to rinse them. This is the part that I find the most difficult because you really have to make sure you get all the soap out of your clothes. There are several methods of rinsing. (1) You can use a smaller guacal with water to put your clothing item in as you use another guacal to pour water into the first one. Then you squish it around till the soap comes out and repeat the process several times. (2) You can hold the clothing item up and pour water down it to push out the soap. Then you ring the excess water and soap out. Repeat this process as needed. (3) You use a combination of both steps depending on the clothing item you are cleaning. I tend to use a combination of rinsing methods when I’m rinsing small items like shirts and socks. And yes, this also how you wash all of your “delicate” items as well.
After soaking, washing, and rinsing you hang your clothes up in the yard on lines to dry. This usually isn’t too bad in the dry season because it doesn’t rain very much, although you do have to try not to get your clean, wet clothes dusty. In the rainy season it’s hard because (1) it rains a lot so you have to move your clothes when it starts raining, put them underneath something so they don’t get wet, or just let them get soaked. (2) Everything is wet and stays wet in the rainy season so clothes can become moldy if not properly dried. My biggest concern with line drying clothes is that I don’t have a dryer to shrink the clothes if I stretch them out too much. Plus I like to be able to move the clothes periodically when they’re drying so they don’t have funny line marks on them.
Moral of the story: In El Salvador there is no difference between clothes that are labeled wash cold, wash hot, wash warm, gentle cycle, hand wash, and dry clean. All clothes get hand washed and air dried. And if you’re a woman, get use to it because you’ll be doing it the rest of your life.
I had just finished doing my laundry when the three-person First Presbyterian Church in Newton delegation arrived around 4pm. Visiting with that group are Warren Erickon, Linda Anderson, and Linda’s daughter, Jenny Cunningham. Both Linda and Warren have been here before but it was Jenny’s first time. I’m glad they made it to the house because the pickup almost didn’t make it. Parts of the cables were corroded and the cables had to be twisted together in order for them to get to Berlín from San Salvador. Thankfully a mechanic was able to come over tonight and fix the problem so we’ll be able to use the truck tomorrow.
We ate dinner around 6:15pm. We dined on tortillas with cheese, casamiento (bean & rice), and french fries. It was all delicious and went down well, even though I ate a couple pieces of pan dulce (sweet bread) not long before dinner. After dinner we had a welcome meeting and talked about the week ahead. We tried to not draw out the meeting longer than necessary because Kathy is losing her voice and really needs to sleep. And on that note I bid you goodnight.
It’s been a pretty laid back day for me, which has been nice. Betty and Maurice left early this morning at 3:30am. If I heard them I was going to wake up and say goodbye but I didn’t hear anything. I was kind of bummed when I woke up at 5:00am and realized they’d already left. But such is life I guess. I went back to bed and slept in until 8am. Yay! Since one delegation just left and another was coming today I figured Cecilia probably wouldn’t have time to be making breakfast so I could sleep in. Blanca offered to make me something but I said the cold tamales and bread they were having would work for me too. It was a nice, simple breakfast.
I spent a lot of the day working on my blog for yesterday. Maurice had a ton of pictures that I downloaded and sorted through as well as going through my own. Plus there was a lot that needed to be written. It was a huge, important celebration so I felt it deserved a good blog. I also spent time getting my room organized. I hadn’t really had time since the Trinity delegation left on Tuesday to move into my room and get organized. I’ve been too busy having fun! But now the blog has been written and I know where everything is in my room.
The ladies cleaned and washed everything today. And I mean everything. The bedding, bedrooms, floors, bathrooms, kitchen, counters, fridge, oven, etc are all clean. They also went shopping for more food and supplies. Taking care of a delegation is a lot of work, and cleaning up after and preparing for another delegation is just as much work. It’s like owning a bed and breakfast only you never get paid, you make all the meals, and have to accompany your guests on all their activities. Can you see why I love these women!?!? So after we ate lunch they took a break and I showed them some of the pictures that Maurice took yesterday at the celebration. They loved looking at them!
When we were done looking through the photos I decided it was time to do some laundry. Doing laundry here is a lengthy process, especially for us gringos who haven’t been doing it since we were old enough to walk. You start by putting water into a large guacal (plastic tub) and adding “rinso” which is like laundry detergent. You stir that up a bit with your hands and then you put in your clothes and kind of squish them around in the water. That sits for about 10 minutes or more if you get busy with something else. Then you take out each piece one at a time and put it on the cement slab next to the pila (cement basin). You rub it with soap inside and out. Then you either (1) take a stiff brush and scrub to get the dirt out or (2) you use your hands and kind of squish the soap around. I prefer to use my hands especially on my shirts because I don’t want them to stretch too much. There are no dryers here to use to “shrink” my shirts if I get them really stretched out. I use the brush on most of my pants and my towel.
After soaping and scrubbing or squishing your clothes you have to rinse them. This is the part that I find the most difficult because you really have to make sure you get all the soap out of your clothes. There are several methods of rinsing. (1) You can use a smaller guacal with water to put your clothing item in as you use another guacal to pour water into the first one. Then you squish it around till the soap comes out and repeat the process several times. (2) You can hold the clothing item up and pour water down it to push out the soap. Then you ring the excess water and soap out. Repeat this process as needed. (3) You use a combination of both steps depending on the clothing item you are cleaning. I tend to use a combination of rinsing methods when I’m rinsing small items like shirts and socks. And yes, this also how you wash all of your “delicate” items as well.
After soaking, washing, and rinsing you hang your clothes up in the yard on lines to dry. This usually isn’t too bad in the dry season because it doesn’t rain very much, although you do have to try not to get your clean, wet clothes dusty. In the rainy season it’s hard because (1) it rains a lot so you have to move your clothes when it starts raining, put them underneath something so they don’t get wet, or just let them get soaked. (2) Everything is wet and stays wet in the rainy season so clothes can become moldy if not properly dried. My biggest concern with line drying clothes is that I don’t have a dryer to shrink the clothes if I stretch them out too much. Plus I like to be able to move the clothes periodically when they’re drying so they don’t have funny line marks on them.
Moral of the story: In El Salvador there is no difference between clothes that are labeled wash cold, wash hot, wash warm, gentle cycle, hand wash, and dry clean. All clothes get hand washed and air dried. And if you’re a woman, get use to it because you’ll be doing it the rest of your life.
I had just finished doing my laundry when the three-person First Presbyterian Church in Newton delegation arrived around 4pm. Visiting with that group are Warren Erickon, Linda Anderson, and Linda’s daughter, Jenny Cunningham. Both Linda and Warren have been here before but it was Jenny’s first time. I’m glad they made it to the house because the pickup almost didn’t make it. Parts of the cables were corroded and the cables had to be twisted together in order for them to get to Berlín from San Salvador. Thankfully a mechanic was able to come over tonight and fix the problem so we’ll be able to use the truck tomorrow.
We ate dinner around 6:15pm. We dined on tortillas with cheese, casamiento (bean & rice), and french fries. It was all delicious and went down well, even though I ate a couple pieces of pan dulce (sweet bread) not long before dinner. After dinner we had a welcome meeting and talked about the week ahead. We tried to not draw out the meeting longer than necessary because Kathy is losing her voice and really needs to sleep. And on that note I bid you goodnight.
Pila where water is collected and dishes and clothes are washed
Laundry drying in the yard
The pila as seen from the yard above
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