Laughing at Laundry in Cameroon

I have not washed my laundry in over three weeks. When I realized that I would literally have to wear my bathing suit under my dress this morning, I knew I just couldn’t put it off any longer. I begrudgingly went through the frustrating routine of turning my apartment upside-down in search of enough quarters for the washer and dryer. As I waited for the elevator to bring my laundry downstairs, I began complaining to myself about how long this whole process had already taken and I hadn’t even started yet. Then I suddenly, literally, laughed aloud at the memory of attempting to do laundry in Cameroon. What a mess…

…We had just returned to Yaoundé after spending time in Limbé, and arriving back at the peace house felt like coming home after a long journey. We were all excited to sleep in a familiar place, with familiar sounds and smells. Gabby and I settled into our room and about 10 minutes later we heard noises coming from the bathroom. The shower hose had somehow managed to turn itself on and began flooding our room! After we realized what was happening, turned off the water, and convinced ourselves that there was no such thing as a shower ghost, we decided to do our ‘laundry’ (after all, we were already wet and at this point in the trip, our clothes were really starting to smell).

We figured we couldn’t make anymore of a mess, so we proceeded to fill a bucket with soap and water. Somehow however, we managed to turn the small puddles that had gathered under our beds into what seemed like a full on river running across the room - It was quite a scene. Once we had done our best to get the dirt and stains out of our clothes, we hung everything to dry. Because we had been warned about bugs nesting in our underwear, the mental picture of which was fairly disturbing, we decided to hang our laundry inside our room rather than outside on the patio. We enthusiastically began what we called our “installation artwork”, which basically consisted of a tangled clothing line, crisscrossing over our beds. It took us an inordinate amount of time to figure out how to hang everything so that our clothes wouldn’t drip over us while we slept. But once we had finished, we were pretty proud of our contraption.

The following day we left early in the morning and were excited to return that afternoon to clean clothes. That is until we actually came back to find that although our clothes no longer smelled like the body odor of ten different people mixed together, they did reek of mildew - the stench of which is far worse when you are not use to it. Not to mention, everything was just as wet as it had been the night before. After we were told that we could use an iron to kill any bugs that decided to take shelter inside our clothes, we quickly moved everything outside. It was hilarious watching us iron - I have never seen people so intent on ironing every inch of their pants and paying special attention to the crotch…

…A laugh much needed - I guess there’s even beauty in doing the laundry.