We arrived in Dar Es Salaam on September 21st at 9:30pm, got into our hostel at 10:15pm and promptly passed out by 10:45pm. The next morning, when I could think a little more clearly and my nostrils were working, I realized hat my clothes desperately needed to be washed. After all, we had been on a cramped African bus for 15.5 hours. Let me just say that if I never see another African music video for the rest of my life, I will be more than okay with that!! Back to the problem at hand, my clothes smell. Intitaly I thought ‘I can just wait until we are in Bangkok’ but hen I remembered that some of my clothes had gotten “lost” in Africa. By lost I mean that the women who did our laundry mixed up the pile of clothes we wanted washed before we left with the pile of clothes that we were giving to them. Needless to say, I now had two pair of bottoms to wear, and now one of them stunk. At many hostels we have been at there is some sort of laundry service, or a place to wash your own clothes, or a laundry mat around; but not at this one 😀
So, this is the way I washed laundry at the Jambo Inn.
Step 1: Say a prayer that the water was on and would stay on long enough to wash my clothes (I’m dead serious)
Step 2: Grab my dirty clothes and throw them in the bathroom sink and get them wet. This step caused me to have a flash back to the many campgrounds that I have been at in my lifetime. I remember seeing signs in bathrooms at the campgrounds that read something like “no gutting fish, no bathing children and no washing clothes in the sink”. And I remember thinking who in the world would wash their clothes in a bathroom sink – that’s gross- that’s what washing machines are for. And then standing in a less than stellar hostel in Dar Es Salaam I suddenly understood……oye traveling around the world, the things you have taught me.
Step 3: Use a sock to block the drain and fill the sink up with some water.
Step 4: Grab a few of the already soaked clothing items, put them in the sink and sprinkle some powder soap over them. (thankfully I still had some leftover from Kenya)
Step 5: Scrub the clothes in the sink and do your best not to move the sock out of the drain- this is a little harder than I thought it would be.
Step 6: Let the items soak for a little bit.
Step 7: Move the sock out of the drain.
Step 8: Turn the faucet on and begin rinsing the clothes. (During this step it’s important not to push down too hard on the sink because it is not really attached to the wall; at least not very securely).
Step 9: Once they are as rinsed as you can get them, ring out as much as the access water as possible.
Step 10: Decide where to hang the clothes to dry: If you will be around the room for the day you can open up the back room door and hang them on the little balcony.. However, if you will not be around the room you need to hang them in the room – over a curtain, in the window, over the closet – because your room is on the second story and it’s likely that a local will climb up to your balcony and take your stuff. (Dar Es Salaam is NOT the safest place)
Step 11: Repeat Steps 3-10 until all items of clothing that needed to be washed are now clean and now less African smelling. 😀
