Sunday=Laundry Day

Sunday, finally a day for rest. We slept in a bit and then decided that we desperately needed to do laundry and get access to internet again. Laundry is quite a different process here. There are no laundry machines, so Jen and I had to learn how to do laundry by hand. It is a painstaking and long process. The laundry detergent doesn’t smell good and the clothes don’t feel clean. I think the water quality makes getting soap out of clothes and off your body difficult. There are a lot of differences here that make me miss the amenities of home. I do not have air conditioning. In the hospital, there are multiple fans, but at home, there is only one fan that moves locations. Every half of a rotation of the fan, the breeze takes away the sting of the Ghanaian heat, but the rest of the time it is hot and sticky. Additionally, we have to take bucket showers because the water pressure is not high enough to take normal showers. It is quite the experience and I do not think that in the next month I will ever get used to it. The toilet does not have enough power to flush toilet paper, so toilet paper is placed in a waste bin. Compared to the majority of Kasoa, this house has numerous amenities that none of them have. Some people do not have a roof over their head, so I am very thankful to Eric for his hospitality. He has been so gracious for opening his house to both myself and Jen. Another missed luxury is clean drinking water. All of my drinking water has to come from bottles. I came with some bottles from home, but now I have to buy bottles. Thankfully, the water is cheap. Bottles are more expensive than bags of water, but the bags of water are allegedly less clean. I try to minimize the number of times I drink bagged water because I do not want to get sick. In order to brush your teeth, I have to pour bottled water onto my toothbrush and rinse with the bottled water. It makes brushing your teeth more of a hassle. Majority of the roads are unpaved and filled with trash. I do not wear sandals outside because I am worried about the amount of bacteria outside. I cannot even imagine what is in the ground. Anyways, I have survived my first week here. I have had a lot of great experiences thus far, but of course there is no place like home. I am 25% of the way there. 

The fan-the only relief from the heat

Laundry old school style

Bucket showers