"Is that how you are washing your clothes? Oh my God."

12/15/09

So today I head out back to wash some clothes, and Sr. Charlotte is there doing the same. So I fill up a bucket with water and suds and begin washing my things.

“Is that how you are washing your clothes? Oh my God.” I hear come out of the mouth of Sr. Charlotte.

“No no no, you have to do it like this.” And she takes the shirt I was washing and demonstrates how to properly wash. It really didn’t look too different from what I was doing, or so I thought. So I said ok, I’ll try doing it a bit more like she's doing.

“No, did you see me doing that? No! Like this!”

And now I’ve bursted out laughing and am stifling all those prideful excuses that want to come out in order to defend my former way of handwashing my clothing. She’s the African and therefore the expert, so I figured I better let her show me the true way.

“You hold one hand still and the other works. Hold and work, hold and work, eh, eh? You cannot just rub it with your hands.” and she mocks my style of washing with an exaggerated way-too-gentle-to-remove-the-dirt hand motion.

Well after about a half an hour of working the pit stains out of one top, Sr. Charlotte let me finish the rest of my laundry. She pretty much washed this white shirt for me, and went and got some stain remover for this bleach spot that my Tide To Go pen left. It did not come out. I don’t think a bleach mark really can come out…sad day for white shirts.

Let me tell you, this was the most exhausting bout of laundry that I’ve ever done! Scrub, scrub, hold and work, hold and work, man oh man. But never have my clothes been so clean!

Also today, I did two new exciting things. I went to confession and I baked a cake! I was privileged to teach the Father's at Muhato how to say Mass in English, and I figured why not tack on another sacrament as well. That would be good for me too so that I am able to go to confession throughout my 7 months here. So, I taught Fr. Antoine the words in English, and he was so passionate about it. I think I've already written about this, but you should have seen this man recite the words "God, the Father of Mercies, through the death and resurrection of His Son…" he had his eyes closed and was saying it so prayerfully, with such conviction and determination to memorize these words, and to memorize them well. So today we did the "Good Rites," as Fr. Antoine called it. It was pretty great. He was much more solemn and silent than what I'm used to. Really he didn't even nod or give any kind of acknowledgement of anything I said, he just let me keep going and going till I was done listing my sins. I have to say, I prefer when the priest gives some acknowledgement. Its encouraging. But its ok, to each his own. I am not entirely sure he really understood all of what I said, but he didn't ask for clarification or repetition, so maybe he did. Then when he gave me some advice, it was again very serious and solemn, and quite long too! He stumbled with words here and there, and stumbled a bit in the words to the absolution, but God's cool with it :) So now my soul is clean and a priest in Rwanda has gotten a little more practice with his English skills. Life is good.

Now, at the same time as my confession, I had a cake in the oven. We had a ton of bananas – more than we could feasibly eat. When the Canadians were here, Lorraine had made a loaf of banana bread, and she gave me the recipe. So I offered to make banana bread with some of our surplus bananas. I was quite happy to do this, because I felt that I should contribute something since I am always eating our food but never really helping prepare it. It would be a really nice "thank you" to be able to make something for them for a change. But since this isn't really my kitchen, and since the resources here must be economized, and since I don't even know if we have things like baking soda, I never asked if I could. That is something I'm trying to be a bit more assertive about – asking instead of assuming. Really, assuming only makes an "ass" out of "u" and "me". So I'm glad that this opportunity was plopped right into my lap without me even having to do any labor to get it.

It turns out we do have flour, sugar, baking powder, and baking sugar. However, the sugar is "raw" sugar (brown crystals) and comes in a huge plastic tub, as does the flour, and the baking soda and powder were brought from Poland with Sr. Iwona. We have an electric hand-mixer, so really it was no different from baking at home. But this was the first time I have ever baked with Polish leavening agents and home-grown African bananas. I left it in the oven for 7 minutes longer than I had planned (on account of the longer-than-expected advice at the end of my confession), but it still tasted good. Not burnt. The Sisters all liked it very much and said I'll have to make it again. Yay!


.