Yesterday was World Hand-Washing Day! I'm sure everyone knows the importance of washing hands and in Ghana where people eat with their fingers it is even more important.
Only the right hand is used for eating and for giving things to people as the left hand is used for more unsavoury things like cleaning the bottom.
I was aware of this and the implications of hand-washing but yesterday when I first heard it on the radio I thought they were refering to washing clothes by hand as that is how it is referred to in the UK. Also I had done a lot of 'hand -washing' in Hong Kong not having a washing machine in my flat and using the laundry service for bigger items.
Just at the moment I heard the term 'hand-washing' I was loading the washing machine and suddenly felt very guilty as I thought I should have been washing my clothes by hand.
It was only later I realised how studpid this was as very few Ghanaians wash their clothes in a machine.
I remember sitting in the yard of my house in Enchi with a huge bowl of water washing all my clothes and what hard work it was. I wasn't as hard on my clothes as a Ghanaian lady would have been as they seem to scrub clothes within an inch of their life and then ring them out and hang them in the sun. As a result clothes age very quickly. My husband made the mistake of handing over his clothes on one of his visits only to find someone had washed his suit! It was never the same again.
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