Kisoboka: The Philosophical Importance of Doing One's Laundry

I can't believe it's happened, but it has. It always does. Time played its familiar, underhanded tricks once more, and I find myself standing at the edge of something. I've run out of time, I've run out of ground to stand on; after finally reaching the steady, flat plains of routine, I've discovered that the fields end abruptly in a steep cliff. If I don't slow down to consider, I might unwittingly walk off the edge.

You can never get used to the way it feels to leave a place where you've come to feel at home. But several things call me away from here. My real home, for one. I am beyond excited to see Mom, Dad, Pat, my friends, my neighbors, and my lovely green backyard. After that, I get to see friends from Notre Dame, many of whom have been absent from my life since spring of 2010 due to opposite study abroad semesters. There are so many people I cannot wait to see, so many stories I can't wait to hear and tell. And even though our kitchen is under construction and I may not get to taste Mom's pesto for a couple more weeks, I'll keep eating my African diet of rice and beans as long as I get to do it on the back porch in the sunshine of early evening.

And yes, I'll admit, I'm looking forward to clean bathrooms and steady water and electricity and paved roads. But I'm also trying to anticipate the degree of discomfort that will come with all of the comforts of American life. Everything will seem like too much. Too much space, too much material wasted to build that house, too much food thrown away from that plate. It will be disconcerting. I love the level of simplicity in Uganda. Everything is used efficiently; nothing goes to waste. Why would you throw away a scrap of wood when you could use it to build a market stall? The way people work here is beautiful. They toil diligently, but they also lay in the shade and talk to their friends. They always seem to be doing both at the same time. In America, there is too much work and not enough time; in Uganda, there is still too much work, but the people accept that some of it will have to wait until later, so they don't worry about wasting a few hours. And in the end, it's not a waste at all; it's what defines the way they live.

Today, for instance, I did my laundry for the final time. My first attempt, a couple of weeks after arriving, was unsuccessful. As a typical college student, I let the dirty clothes pile up until I had nothing to wear the next day. This left me with an unmanageable heap of stained shirts and skirts to wash by hand (you thought there were washing machines here? No way, Jose.). I didn't have a bucket, so I tried to use one of the two functioning sinks in the dorm. Since there was no way to plug the drain, I wasted a lot of water and wasn't able to soak my clothes and get out all the soap. When I plucked them off the drying line the next morning, they were stiff and coarse. The second try, a couple weeks later, was better. We had invested in the ubiquitous large plastic buckets used for washing, and I let my clothes soak in clean water for several minutes. But I was too hasty. I didn't yet understand the philosophy of laundry in Africa. Again, my clothes retained a soapy residue. Again, they hardened in the hot sun. The third time, one of the dorm cleaners smiled indulgently as she saw me crouching over my bucket, clumsily scrubbing cloth with a bar of soap. She took pity and showed me how Ugandan woman clean. You'd never think watching someone do laundry could be interesting, but this was beautiful to see. The woman, bent at the waist over the bucket, methodically scrubbed, twisted, and rinsed. This was a full-body exercise; she used every muscle from her legs to her shoulders to her fingers to exert the power of a washing machine.

I never managed to replicate the housekeeper's efforts. I tried, and the next day I woke up with an aching back and sore legs. Today, I settled for a hybrid method that allowed me to crouch next to (rather than bend over) the buckets as I scrubbed the clothing with my dwindling bar of soap. Any repetitive activity leads to meandering thoughts, and hand-washing is no exception. As I wrung the soapy water out of my shirts, I thought about the African philosophy of washing. It is very easy to become dirty here, especially now that it's the dry season. Set foot on any road, and you'll soon be covered in a fine layer of dust that will make your nose run and your eyes water. I quickly become disheveled and dirt-caked. My clothes get stained, especially the lighter-colored ones, and since I'm a sub-par laundry woman, they always retain a hint of brownish tinge. Ugandans, though, are immaculate. Sure, the children running around the villages are often dirty and semi-clothed, but that's universal for toddlers. For the most part, people keep their clothes crisp and spotless. The white skirts that dry next to my plain white tees on the line show just how the latter have suffered from my clumsy washing. When women do laundry here, they accept that it is an investment of several hours. Cutting corners, trying to force efficiency where it is futile, will only destroy one's own clothing. And in a place where overstuffed closets are a ridiculous joke, preserving clothing is extremely important.

So the perception of time crops up once more. If you worry about time, you don't successfully fulfill your tasks, especially the ones you'd rather not do. Instead, you accept that time will pass, as it inevitably does, and that you cannot fit any more into an hour than you could yesterday. You wash your clothes slowly and thoroughly. Your friend does her washing at the same time, and you have a long conversation that makes the task not only bearable, but enjoyable. When you go to hang your clothes on the line, you look with satisfaction on the spotless whites and bright colors. It is a job well done, and it was completely worth the slow pace at which you accomplished it.

As my mom likes to remind me, "When you drink tea, drink tea." Tich Naht Han was wise beyond measure when he advised us to focus on our present actions. When we worry about what happens next, we will never find peace. This is especially important to remember as I reach the end of my stay in Uganda. I could let my mind wander in so many unhelpful directions, worrying about thesis work, move-in preparations for my apartment, and making the most of my short time at home. But that would be wasteful. It would be like the first time I did laundry, when I let the water slip down the drain before it rinsed the soap out of my clothes. Sometimes, you can't do anything right now; you just have to wait idly for the clothes to soak in the bucket. You have to relax and enjoy the break. Only then have you done something worth the effort it took to bend over and scrub.

That was a lot of philosophizing; I hope it didn't sound pretentious. It's not really aimed at you, but at me. As you might know, I hate beginnings and endings. I much prefer the comfortable middle of the journey. But as long as time continues to play its tricks, beginnings and endings pop up out of nowhere, and wishing them away does nothing. I'm sad to leave, but happy to go home. I wish I could stay, but I want to go. In the coming months, I'll slowly try to figure out exactly what these months have meant. For now, though, I'll simply enjoy the end of the adventure.