So, laundry
in Rwanda is not for the faint of heart. Or hands, apparently. Even though I
have helpers who do my laundry for me (ugh, that sounds disgustingly privileged.
Which it is :/ ), I wanted to be able to do it myself. So two Thursdays ago, my
helper Bibianne showed me how to wash my clothes by hand like she does. What
this basically amounts to is separating your clothes by underwear, shirts,
skirts, pants, dresses, and sweaters, filling a wide and shallow bucket with
water, adding powdered laundry detergent, mixing that up and getting it all
sudsy, adding your clothes and letting them soak, scrubbing them with a bar of
soap and then back and forth with your hands, putting them in another bucket of
sudsy water, scrubbing them again (no soap this time), putting them in a bucket
of clean water, and then squeezing them out before hanging them up on the line
to dry. Long and laborious work to be sure. And a little taxing on your hands.
The first Thursday I did this, my hands were a little raw by the end,
especially my cuticles and skin below them. The second Thursday I did this, my
fingers had apparently not healed enough since the first time, and by the time I
was halfway through with my underwear, one of my cuticles was bleeding pretty
badly. My hands are lazy, as Bibianne put it. I’ll have to whip them into shape
before we live on our own in May!
And the follow
up. So, many of the criticisms I found of the Missionaries of Charity homes in
India are not evident in the home here in Kigali. Granted, I think some things
could be improved, but by Rwandan standards, conditions are pretty good. The
children are fed good food, they receive physical therapy if they need it, they
have toys, they get medicine when they’re sick, they have a stocked medicine
cabinet, they have well-kept records of each of the children, they weigh them, they
have a doctor who comes to care for the children, they respond when volunteers
have a concern (they had the doctor look at a boy when he had a large, soft,
oddly shaped bump on his head that I brought to their attention), they know
everyone’s names, etc. The only thing I can’t see here is the financial side of
things, but I am only a volunteer. The sisters did mention spending a ton of
money (I think she said a million) on leg braces for the children, but that’s
about all I’ve heard. Again, by Rwandan standards, the place is in good
condition. All I know is that the Vatican controls all of the Missionaries of
Charity’s funds, so who knows what the story is for the order as a whole, but
as for this home, things look pretty good.
No comments:
Post a Comment