The challenge of living (and washing)

A blog post by Adam. We've been back in the DR about a month and a half since our trip to the US. And of the many things that have struck me since returning to our temporary tropical home, nothing has been more ever present than the difficulty of life here. Unless you are among the super wealthy elite, most daily tasks are just more challenging than in the US.

Sometimes there isn't electricity and on rare occasions there is no water. When there is water it is always cold, including in the shower. And sometimes we get unsolicited water (and bugs) entering our glassless windows during torential downpours. Baking isn't possible because like many (perhaps most) Dominicans we do not have an oven. 

But nothing epitomizes the challenge of daily life like washing clothes...and we have a washing machine (sort of). Washing here is a several step process....

First we put our washing machine out on the sidewalk in front of our house. Next we fill manually fill the washing machine with water, soap, and clothes.

After the machine "washes" the clothes, we take out the clothes for the rinse cycle (i.e. put the clothes in a bucket of clean water and rinse them by hand).

Once the clothes are more or lense rinsed we dump the sudsy water into the drain in front of our apartment so that it can drain into the street.

From here the clothes goes into the washer's second chamber - the spinner.

After spinning for 5 minutes, we put it in a bucket and hang it up on the roof to dry. Usually within a couple hours it is dry and ready to go.

Given our space challenges and our economical ways we further complicated an already complicated situation by buying the smallest and cheapest washing machine we could find. For this reason we are only able to wash one sheet at a time, or maybe a couple towels at once. It leads to a lot of loads and a lot of time. Following camp, Melissa cleaned our entire home and made two meals while I spent at least four hours straight on 15 loads of laundry (not including the time waiting for the clothes to dry). Just another long Sunday morning in the sunny DR.