updates

Well hello everyone! Instead of telling you play by play what I have been up to lately, I figured I would try a different strategy. I wanted to tell you a little bit about Honduras, and today’s theme is household chores.

I know, at first it does not seem very worth while, but some things might be surprising.

Laundry. Now, I know I have talked a little bit about laundry before, but I figured I would recap. Washing clothes is normally a very physically exhausting prospect (at least for gringo volunteers). It involves rubbing your clothes with a stick of laundry detergent, and then rubbing the article over a cement washboard, all the while dumping small buckets of water over said article. Now, I can now wash underwear and small items well, but I am still missing an effective strategy for larger items, like jeans.

While I was living at my host family’s house, we had a washer, which has lead to my still incompetent form. For the really dirty stuff I do prefer to hand-wash because washing machines just never get out the big dirt and grass stains.

Mopping. This one is a real treat. In the States you have these handy little mops that you can rinse out so easily in a bucket. Not so here. Now, for those of you old enough, try to remember those mops that were used in comedies over someone’s head as a wig. We have those types. They are impossible to wash on those cement washboards. And that is what you have to do. You rinse them with water, and then spill some washing liquid over the floor, and then just kind of splash it around. Follow this up by rinsing the mop again.

Now, lately we have had some little house-breaking mishaps, and as such my mop is kind of smelly from puppy pee. This in turn makes washing the mop even harder since I have to use gloves over my hands. Side not: puppies are not good for mopping. She was chewing on a rawhide stick throughout the mopping escapade, but then afterwards decided to bury that rawhide in the world’s smallest garden. So, now my floor is very dirty again from her muddy paws.

Dusting: My least favorite chore of all time is dusting. I don’t mind sweeping, I can mop, and I am not opposed to ironing, but I can’t stand to dust. Well, that’s a bit of a problem considering I live in Honduras, and in a very dusty town at that. Aside from the dirt that gets tracked in from shoes and paws, there is also the dirt in the air. My roof is a tin roof, and my landlord has yet to fill in the spaces below the curved roof, so dust can get in there. Put it all together, and I have to dust a lot. After three days you can see a visible build up of dust.

Flushing the Toilet: Now, why on earth would someone put this as a category, you might be thinking. Well, I will tell you, because I don’t have running water and therefore cannot flush. Most toilets you can just dump a bucket of water into the toilet bowl and it will naturally flush. But, in my apartment, the toilet does not want to work like that. Instead, when I have to flush, I have to bring two buckets of water from the kitchen through the bedroom and then fill up the tank of the toilet, at which point I can flush. And, if for some reason, I do not fill up the tank before going to bed, I am awoken at around 3:30am to the god-awful sound of the water when it comes. For some reason, the water makes a horrible sound as it tries to fill up the empty tank.

Shower: Who Showers.

Bathing: Now, I have a shower, and when the water is running (occasionally happens while the sun is up) I could shower, but there is no hot water. I don’t like cold water showers. Even in the hottest day, I will have a hot water shower. So, instead I heat up two pots of water on my stove to bath. I heat them until boiling and then that water and some cold water into a large bucket and bath using that. This works, except when they have a scheduled power outage day (like today) where I cannot turn on my stove to heat up the water. It’s a bit of a pain.