3 buckets, 1 bar of soap, and a load of vindication

To start, it needs to be mentioned that my Senegalese family is very well off by this country’s standards, and coming here from my village outside of Thiès it felt a little like I transitioned from country mouse to city mouse. Here I live in a small family (6 people), with one daughter going to school full-time and another part-time, and a well-to-do father who can afford to pay for a housegirl to come to clean, wash, and cook every morning to afternoon, except Sundays. So when I approached the topic of washing my clothes about a month ago, my host mother asked me if I could wash clothes, and I said, “well, yes,” but she didn’t really believe me. So she told me I could give my clothes to A., our housegirl, and she would wash them once a week or once every other week, for 1500 cfa each time (about 4 dollars US). I agreed to this, because 1. I had seen how much work it seemed to be to wash clothes here by hand, 2. I had heard of other volunteers who also paid someone in their family to do their wash, and 3. I was also sure that A. could do a quicker and more efficient job than I.

Since this agreement, I have given my clothes to A. twice, both times getting them back pressed and dirt-free, but smelling like what we had for dinner the night before. The other day I figured out that the reason the clothes smell like cooking is because the charcoal A. uses to heat the iron she uses for pressing is the same charcoal she uses to grill fish for our lunch. But besides the smell (I’m used to washed clothes smelling like soap, not fish), it was really starting to wear on me that no one around here thinks I can do anything a woman should be able to do, by Senegalese standards. And they not only think that, they constantly point it out. Again, and again. And again.

So the other day after lunch, I bought some bar soap at the boutique and set myself up around the back of the house, with my two buckets and my clothes, ready to prove that I really am useful and can do something for myself. I filled up the one bucket with water from the faucet at the back of the house, and had barely started to scrub the first piece of clothing when my very critical father poked his head out of the kitchen door, saying just “Men nga foot?”
(meaning “Can you wash?”)
To which I replied, already tired of this line of questioning, “Waaw, men naa.”
(Yes, I can.)

He said something to the effect of “hmm,” left, and I started to scrub the wet clothes with the soap when the younger of my two sisters, S., came around back. Looking at my work with a discerning but kind eye, she took the soap from me and rubbed it across a wet skirt, squinching and squelching the cloth with the necessary sound that seems to be an essential criteria for cleanliness in this country.
“Defal kom bi,” she said, (Do it like this), and then went about her business.
Ok, ok, I thought, but really I can do this myself.

I kept at it, but soon after, A. came back behind the house to feed our local inmates on Death Row - four chickens and a very noisy sheep. Since it looked to me like she was confused about what I appeared to be doing, I said that I was washing my clothes, that I thought she had enough work to do, and that I had time - have time - to do it myself. After this short speech, she told me I should “bay ko” (leave it) until the next day, and she would do it. But I said “no, no,” and insisted that I wanted to do it, that I had the time to do it, and that I would do it. At that point she decided that if I was going to do it, I should do it right, so she also proceeded to take the soap from me, unsatisfied with my scrubbed and squelching, showing me, just as S. had, how to soap and squish and wring out my clothes.
“Defal kom bi,” she said, looking at me and laughing a little, like she does when I’m sure she thinks I’m a little crazy, or stupid, or both.

So I kept going, and going, as A. went back and forth in her chores, periodically checking on my progress, and later showing me the “best” way to then hang my clothes on the line. “Do you want them to dry?” she asked me, and I said “Waaw,” (Yes), wishing there was a Wolof equivalent for “duh.” She replied to this by silently pointing me to the clothespins, and rearranging all the clothes I had already put on the line.

At one point my brother even came around back and gave my work an approving smile, and it seemed everyone had checked in on me when finally I was putting the last of the clothes on the line. A. came back just then to put the chickens away and sweep the yard before going home for the day. After she shooed the chickens back into their pen, she took a look at the line, inspecting my work. I followed her eyes as they looked critically at the clothes I had worked so hard on to prove that I can, at least, do one thing that as a woman I am supposed to be able to do. After a moment of decision, she said simply, in a tone of voice that could have been either a question or a statement of surprise,
“Men nga foot?”
(which depending on context can mean either “Can you wash?” or “You can wash”)
And since I wasn’t sure which it was, I said to her, “Men naa foot?”
(Can I wash?)
To which she replied, turning to me with words that never sounded so sweet,
“Waaw. Set na.”
(Yes. It’s clean.)