Laundry Day in the Village

Welcome! Today's blog update is brought to you from the comfort of our little house in Chebele village. It's about 10:30a and Shaun and I are just puttering about today- quite typical of our free days in the village. I am able to type up this blog entry thanks the long battery life on our handy little netbook, and also thanks to our “Zam-tricity” set-up. We have a car battery that we charge each month in the boma, and when I hook up our inverter and plug the netbook into the inverter, I am able to maintain a charge and use the computer. Cisuma saana! (“Very good!” in Cibemba)

I've spent the morning tackling the mountain of laundry we have spilling out of the dirty laundry Zam-bag, which is like a big re-usable grocery bag that zips up, hanging on the wall. (I hang it on the wall to keep creepy-crawlies and slitherers out. So far, so good.) I do all our laundry by hand, a chore I enjoy because it gives me some quiet down time (Shaun is usually elsewhere when laundry-time comes around, hahaha!). Also, splashing and scrubbing in the buckets of water keeps me cool on our hot, hot days. I am also lucky because we have little helpers always ready and willing to earn 500 Zkw (10 US cents) to fetch me a container of water, so I don't have to trudge back and forth to the stream with the laundry.

After washing and rinsing the laundry, I hang it out on the line to dry in the bright sunshine and warm breeze coming over the forested hills behind our house. The remaining, dirty water I dump out on the dry, sandy area of our front “yard” to help keep the dust down. If there are little ones around, sometimes we joke with them that it's “infula” (“rain” in Cibemba), and Shaun and I will sprinkle the water on them. The kids scatter as the giggle with delight. Last week, I did laundry was on an exceptionally hot day, so when we played “infula” it turned into a huge, hilarious water fight between Shaun and an army of kids from the village. We must have had 25 children running around our house laughing and splashing water on each other- and especially at Shaun. They were even running to the stream and back to get “ammunition”- it was great!