The two cleaning
ladies in the Kosti office can really keep me busy; they provide me with my
daily amount of Arabic teaching and they love to chat, sing and dance with me.
This morning I asked one of them to show me how the washing machine works,
because it looked a bit complicated with the signs and different buttons (and I
have learned that a lot of local devices here have their own specific ‘guidelines’).
She was very happy to show me how to operate this washing machine, and besides
that she was very eager to show me how she always organizes the clothes to be
washed. To make life easier, I had already divided the light colours from the
dark colours, so I thought it would be a piece of cake to first wash all the
light clothes and after that the dark ones. But, to my great amazement, my new ‘washing
teacher’ had a whole different method. Instead of looking at the colours, she
said it is important to put all the similar kind of clothes together (so all
trousers together; all t-shirts together; all skirts together etc..). It didn’t
seem to matter whether they were bright pink, white, black or blue. “Same!” she said while pointing at the
different colourful trousers disappearing in the machine that slowly filled with
the muddy water coming straight from the river Nile. I have to say, I have never been so curious to see the results of a washing activity. ;)
