Washing clothes

Hands down, the single most life-changing amenity to have arrived in La Josefina in the last two decades is the electric washing machine. Yes, the road has been paved, and private transport via trucks and motorcycles is now common, but even still. Prior to the influx of  washing machines, women easily spent 10-20 hours per week hand-washing their family's clothes. And, yes, laundry was (and still is) entirely a woman's task in Ecuador. 

Most of the washing occurred in the nearby river; it turns out the river is a much easier and more pleasurable location to wash clothes than a lonely low pressure spigot behind the house. Children played nearby on the river banks, splashing in shallow pools all the while inventing games, and the completion of the load of laundry often ended with an indulgent river bath for the women (including shampoo) before heading back home. While clothes-washing was hard work, it was almost always realized in community. 

It was in the river where I really came to know and develop friendships with the women of La Josefina. We would chit chat about their kids and extended families, sometimes landing on sensitive topics like birth control and domestic violence; more often than not, women would complain about their husbands -- the drinking, the womanizing, the lack of support in the house. I miss those river days. I learned a lot.

And yet, I definitely do not miss actually washing clothes in the river. In fact, when I left La Josefina at the ripe old age of 24, I vowed I would never ever complain about doing laundry again in a washing machine. Nothing could be as tedious and onerous as lugging a tub of dirty clothes down to the river, washing for hours and then lugging it uphill to hang. Unfortunately, my vow did not last long; it turns out I simply dislike doing laundry, machine or no machine. On countless occasions in the past two decades, you could have caught me complaining about laundry, worse now with three kids and a husband.

Fast forward to this year, and we are eternally grateful to have the regular use of my friend, Lucia's washing machine, to wash our laundry. For some reason the wash cycle takes forever (2+ hours) and when the town loses power and/or water -- which is not infrequent -- the wash is suspended indefinitely. But, still we are grateful. (Here I should give credit where credit is due and confess that Paul is almost exclusively in charge of our laundry in La Josefina).

This morning, however, there was a blazing morning sun (the better to dry your clothes with), and Lucia's washing machine was not immediately available. So Paul stripped the beds, and I washed our sheets in Brynna's bucket bath tub (called a tina, the very shape and size women used to carry on their shoulders down to the river) behind our house. 

In so doing, I was promptly reminded of the strength of women's hands -- wringing out laundry is exhausting -- and the general assiduousness of women everywhere: women who tenderly and diligently wash school uniforms, scrub socks and shoes, work pants and jackets, not to mention sheets and towels and all the other stuff, so that their families are clean and presentable enough to confidently take on the world. 

Women are incredible.

(ps. I wonder when/if dryers will ever make an appearance. People here are so accustomed to hanging clothes, and electricity is not always reliable, but it can be challenging during foggy wet weeks in the tropics to get anything dry. We often just settle with "dry enough". Not using a dryer is definitely better for the planet; drying uses 5-10 times more power than washing and is a major contributor to emissions).