Saturday 7 May 2016

I started the day feeding Frank, cleaning out the orphan care unit and washing the towels, uniforms and other cloth materials that needed cleaning.  There is no washing machine, obviously, but instead we have a 4 bowel system, each bowl being about 6 – 8 times the size of a washing up bowl in the UK. Bowl 1 has water and washing powder, bowl 2 is clean water, bowl 3 is bleach water, bowl 4 is clean water. 

First, you take one item out of the pile and flap it energetically to get rid of monkey poop and other unmentionables.  Then into 1, a bit of kneading, and onto the wooden planks.  There the cloth is stretched out and examined for marks, which are manually scrubbed by an sweat soaked operative with a wooden scrubbing brush, to wit, me.  Then kneading it on the warm wooden planks, which is surprisingly therapeutic.  The washing powder has made the cloth soft and sweet smelling, and the kneading causing the aroma to rise in the warm air. A soft cool breeze, the gentle movement of exotic trees in the wind and the calls of birds, lions and monkeys – what’s not to love?  I could have stayed there all day, happily pounding bits of old towel.  Buy hey ho, there are monkeys bums to wipe.  So I take the cloth back to bowl 1, rinse it out, and put it in bowl 2 for a soak.  And back to the pile for the next dirty cloth.  Each piece of cloth is treated in the same way, then all are transferred to bowl 3, the bleach bowl, at which point I potter off for a drink of water and to do a couple of other small jobs while the items soak.  Then it’s into the rinse, hand wring, and up on the washing like.  I did a crap job of wringing the water out but the Malawi sun and the soft warm breezes will soon have them dry anyway. Actually, I sort of did a crap job of washing too, if the aim of washing the clothes is to get them white.  Fortunately, it isn’t.  These rags and clothes have had intimate contact with too many anal passages to ever see white again, to which the rich multi shaded hue of the rags is testament.  No need to get obsessive about getting a blue white glow here. So I finish off rinsing, hang them, and after an hour in the Malawi sunshine, they are wonderfully dry.  I fold them all up, find the smallest one, and go and wipe a monkeys bum with it.  It’s called the Circle Of Life.  Watch your Lion King and learn.

My next task was to clean out the antiseptic foot baths placed around the orphan care part of the sanctuary.  The first day I arrived, while being shown around the facilities, I was a little taken back by these.  I saw my guide dip each boot into the foot bath, and tried to work out exactly what form of exotica this was.  It had the appearance of a square of very dead turf, or some kind of peat.  I tried to think where there might be peat in the area, and knowing less than nothing of African geography, couldn’t imagine.  Perhaps it was a hessian bag of sand? I put my trainer into the foot bath expecting to meet resistance but this didn’t happen, my trainer hit the bottom of the foot bath and cold dirty water flooded my foot.  Lots of apologies were called out, a touching habit of the Malawi’s being that they always apologise when you are making a fool of yourself.  Hastily, I withdrew my soaking foot and carried on with the tour, still wondering what was in the foot baths   I shelved the problem back then, but now I had the change to examine this unusual item intimately and see what I could make of it.  Of course, it turned out to be a lump of old bed mattress sponge soaked in bleach.  Fooled again. This is Africa.  What’s the matter with me?