Wash Day

Most people in Botswana do not have washing machines and even fewer have clothes dryers. People do their wash by hand outdoors in large tubs. Many do not even have stands or tables to put the tubs on so they put the tubs on the ground and bend over. It is a lot of hard work but people keep their clothes clean and pressed.

People try to do their wash on dry sunny days and on these days you often see clothes hung out to dry. There are a lot of houses with clothes lines but popular places to hang clothes to dry are also the fences. In apartments people put up lines or hang clothes over the rails. Most of the time it is hot and dry so clothes dry quickly outdoors.

We are blessed to have both a washing machine and a clothes dryer. The washing machine does not do a particularly good job and leaves lots of lint on the clothes but it beats washing by hand in tubs. It does not have hot water so when we want hot wash water we use a pan to add hot water from the kitchen sink to the washing machine. We are grateful for our washing machine!

 

We rarely use the dryer because it is very slow and vents into the house and it has a tendency to leave black marks on the tips of collars. We usually hang our clothes on our clothes line. On days when we start the wash and it begins to rain we have a drying rack to dry the clothes indoors. This is not a common occurrence, however.