Water

As I mentioned before, I am given 1 bucket (about 14 litres) of water a day, for all my washing, laundry and flushing the toilet needs. When you hear the number, 14 litres may seem like a lot, but you think about it, seeing that it takes an average of 5 gallons to flush the toilet, the average person uses 70 gallons of water to shower, and the average load of laundry uses 60 gallons of water, 14 litres is not a lot of water. However, because you have to make due with what you have, you learn to be resourceful. For example, I have learned to shower using exactly 1 litre of water and somehow manage to get cleaner than when I use a shower with running water while traveling. On days when I need to do laundry, I then use about half of the remainder to do laundry (I can’t use it all, as that would use up too much of the liquid laundry detergent that I brought from home, so a portion of the water remaining goes into the back of the toilet tank to flush the toilet. Laundry here is a 4 step process, soaking, washing, rinsing and drying. And I have found since being here, if you don’t do it right, your clothes end up smelling all mildewy. Seeing that I have only one bucket for laundry, and there are 3 steps in the laundry process involving water, I have too had to become resourceful with this. So with the remaining water, about 2 litres goes into a Ziploc bag (that now has some holes in it, so placement is key) with some soap, 2.5 litres goes into plastic bottles I have accumulated for use later in the laundry process, and the remainder stays in the bucket with some soap for scrubbing.
1. The first step is to place the dirty clothes (you can only do very small batches of laundry with the Lisa Method) into the Ziploc bag of soapy water and let sit for 20-30 minutes.
2. After that, transfer clothes into scrub bucket. Dump remaining water from Ziploc into back of toilet. Scrub clothes vigorously in scrub bucket by rubbing fabric together to remove tough stains, then ring out clothes and place them aside. Transfer scrub water into back of toilet.
3. Empty water bottles into former scrub bucket (now rinse bucket). Place clothes into rinse bucket to remove soapy residue (this is psychological only, your clothes still remain soapy after rinsing).
4. Ring out clothes, and transfer remaining water into back of toilet.
5. Hang clothes on headboard and footboard of empty bed in room. Turn fan on 3. (Note: laundry is best done in the evening, as you have several uninterrupted hours of fan time, with the exception of power outages, to facilitate the drying of your clothes, if you leave the fan on during the day, when you are not there, Oye gets very angry).
There is also the option of having a local woman that Oye knows do your laundry for you. However, it seems that this isn’t always the best option. First of all, a load of laundry costs 5 Cedi, which is more than double what any of the other volunteers in the Hills pays. Five Cedi is about $4.50, which isn’t much back home, but here, that is enough for 4 tro rides to Koforidua, or 8 taxi rides to the wood market. Secondly, the service has proven to be unreliable, as in the past Emma has had to wait over 2 weeks to get her laundry back (I have only given her laundry once, and it only took 2-3 days, but I don’t want to chance it). Thus, here, if it looks clean, and doesn’t smell too bad, you consider it clean. Hopefully the family I stay with will have a more relaxed water policy, so that laundry will be less of a chore.