Hodge Podge #1

One day John, Chad, and myself went to visit Father Peter, a priest in the Catholic Church in Sierra Leone.  He is also really involved in development of Sierra Leone (as I am learning that most people that care about the souls and spiritual well-being of this country need to be).  We went up to visit him and he offered us tea and coffee.  Chad and John chose coffee... I chose this tea which tasted like a fruit roll-up... it was Twinings brand Orange, Mango, and Cinnamon.  Later I found some in the store and bought it and would definitely recommend it (considering I usually don't like orange flavored tea).

In his office/house which is inside the church and catholic school there, there was the funniest thing!

A fireplace!!!!

In West Africa where heating is UNHEARD of.  Well, so is AC.  Most Africans hate going into areas where there is AC because it chills them to the bones!

I was laughing so hard because it was fake and emitted NO heat!! It was just for looks!  John and I loved it!

Another interesting part of living here in Sierra Leone is the lack of washers and dryers.  The Courtneys have hired somebody to do the laundry weekly and were pay 20,000 Leones (less than 5 dollars).  It was just too much for Robin to do while homeschooling and cooking pretty much every meal from scratch.  When John and I arrived, we added our clothes for another 5,000 Leones a week (just over a dollar). 

However, both Robin and I do not feel comfortable letting someone wash our underwear lol!  Mostly because of embarrassment.  Also, Alli (the guy who washes our clothes and is a night guard for us) uses a scrubbing board and then wrings them out.  This stretches most of our clothes out.  John had 12 inch socks that stretched to at least 16 inches lol!  I like that he stretches my pants out though... not as tight now!  For some of our t-shirts, the rough scrubbing board wears holes in our shirts after a few washes.

Because of this, I have washed both John and I's unmentionables, John's socks and dress shirts, and anything else that may be delicate.  Basically I fill the sink with laundry detergent and water.

Then I get to scrubbing! I wash whites and lighter colors first.  After the initial scrubbing I do two rinse cycles to try and get the soap out.  Getting the soap out is nearly impossibly and most of our clothes end up feeling a little starchy.
 I thought about showing you the water after I scrubbed all the clothes, but decided the mucky brown water wasn't visually appealing.  At first I thought it was the dirt from the clothes but I think it was more some of the dye from the clothes.  It was probably a little bit of both!

After the second rinsing, I hung them up in the room to dry. 

Don't tell John I posted a picture of his undies on the internet for the world to see lol!

After any of our clothes dry, we MUST iron them.  It does make them feel softer, but it has a second function... to kill the Mango Flies.

What is a mango fly you may ask?  Well mango flies deposit their larvae into damp soil or cloth (aka clothes out drying in the sun)  then they wait for a vector.  The mango fly larvae can live in dry clothes for up to 48 hours.  Once a person puts the clothing on, the larvae burrow themselves into our skin.  As the larvae morphs into a maggot, it can be see under the skin and is very painful.  Treatment is to suffocate them by putting a layer of Vaseline over the maggot until it breaks through the skin to reach air.  At this time, you can remove the maggot from your skin.

Because I really don't want to have worms growing under my skin, we iron all of our clothes which kills the larvae.  You can also just wait till after 48 hours after the clothes have been dry which I've done as well.  As I said though, the ironing does remove the wrinkles and makes the clothes not so stiff. 


Ok, hope enjoyed the hodge podge post.  Tomorrow (or maybe the next day) I'll take you to River #2, a beach that John enjoyed better than Laka Beach.