Laundry

Each morning at Shanti Dan we start the day with laundry, and there is lots of it - today 12 of us spent the first hour washing! We do the laundry outside. First the dresses, bedsheets, diapers, and bibs are washed and scrubbed in buckets.Then there are two huge cement tubs on the ground for rinsing. Sisters, Mossies (Indian women who are paid to work at the home) volunteers and residents help with the laundry. Asha loves to tell us what to do with out words. She points and smiles. When she gets really silly she likes to throw the washed laundry into the rinsing tanks with hopes of splashing you! Then the buckets of clean laundry are taken up to the roof - two flights of stairs and hung out to dry. When the lines are full we double hang the clothes. The first day we were there it started to rain and everyone dashed to the roof to move the laundry into a covered area. As of this morning we began hanging the laundry in the covered area in case of monsoon. By the time we leave Baby is folding the dry laundry and putting it away. She doesn't speak but she takes her job very seriously. If you take anything out of her pile she will let you know that she is not happy!
Basically, we follow this same routine at home at the hotel to do our own laundry...