Good Friday

On a rainy Good Friday in Uganda, I’ve immersed myself in what I call “laundry therapy”. I woke up this morning feeling a little mopey. I know, I only have a few more days in Uganda, I should make the most of it by spending time with kids and staff and shooting pictures and walking around the community. But this morning, that motivation just wasn’t there. I spied the bucket of dirty clothes that I have been putting off washing for the last few days and decided it was finally time.

Washing clothes by hand takes time, especially when you have your own and two other kids clothes to do. On most days I would wish I hadn’t brought so many clothes. Not today. Hand washing is a sort of therapy for days when you just want to be alone with your thoughts. By alone in this context I mean, standing alone in the bathroom while 9 or 10 kids kick each other on the furniture, draw on whatever they can find, pick ice off the freezer drawers with knives, and bounce around a large exercise ball left over from a previous occupant. Today was not the day for me to police this. I really couldn’t care less what they were doing. I was washing. That was all that mattered.

There is a physical nature to washing by hand that makes you feel like you are doing something worth while. The cold water, the detergent eating into your skin, the roughness you build up on your knuckles, the pain you feel in your back and hamstrings while bending over a large plastic bucket. In all honesty, it is the kind of therapy where you work yourself out of a bad mood. The task is just mundane and monotonous enough that it allows you to escape mentally and process things.

After 2 1/2 hours of this, and a short break in the rain, I feel sane enough to exit my apartment and enter the world around me. Today we had planned to swim at the pool at a local hotel. If the sun shows up, we just might still do that. A little downtime by the pool with a soda in hand might also be a helpful therapy.

From Uganda with love,

Ali