As far as I know there are three places in town to get your laundry done, in walking distance that is. The first is at one of the marinas, where they charge a set price (which is ideal, no bargaining necessary) and are pretty cheap. The lady (name withheld on purpose) next to the local bar, who is efficient but her prices seem to vary for no known reason from decent to ridiculously expensive. We used to go solely to her but after a while we got tired of having to barter with the fluctuating prices for the same amount of cleaned clothes. Another fun fact about this lady, the area where she washes the clothes is centrally located in town, adjacent to one of the main bars, and across the street from the other main bar. She hangs all the clothes out to dry which means both bars get a nice glimpse into what type of panties you wore this last week. I find it quite amusing to see the clothes hung out for all to see. And lastly there is another woman in town, whom we have used only once, but she was extremely fast but priced on the higher end. I don’t know where she hangs the clothes to dry, but I have not heard any conversions at the bars about my panties out to dry, so that is a plus for her.
We normally bring ours to the marina, due to the set price, but the problem with them is that you never know when your clothes will be done, lets say it doesn’t seem to be their priority. I usually give them a few days and then start showing up, to purposely remind them that we need our clothes, in the hopes that my presence will speed things up. However, often we have the elements working against us, such as this week.
I brought a week’s worth of clothes to them last week. The three times we checked-in the laundry was not done yet, the first reason, no power, then the generator was broken, and now no water. This is a common occurrence. Usually we let it slide, but because they already have a week’s of our clothes, and we have now accumulated another week’s worth of dirty ones, we no longer have any underwear. Our closet is looking pretty bare actually. Today I had to go and ask for our dirty clothes back, pile the 2nd weeks of clothes on top, and bring this huge heavy load to the third cleaning lady, mentioned above, because we now need them fast, even if it is pricier.
On the rare occasion I will hand wash our clothes, but with four of us producing dirty clothes, the pile gets big and daunting real quick. And i have always been terrible at it, getting calluses and sore spits too quick. When I was in Burkina Faso they used to mock my attempts at washing my clothes, blaming it in my soft “whitey” hands, and would push me out of the way and show me how its done. I still suck at it. Also the fact that our boat is in full project mode right now, with sewing projects going on in the salon, wood projects lining the hallway, leaky tap projects in the head, vinyl projects in the aft cabin, and varnishing projects happening on deck, there is very little space to keep anything clean here. Our boat is a disaster at the moment. So no, I will not be hand-washing anything this week, we will all have to go commando until the laundry gets done in town.
Lets hope this isn’t how are clothes are put out to dry, on the barbed wire fence, at just the right height for the cows to nibble |
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