Living Above the Wash Line

I didn’t expect to have a washing machine when we came to Tanzania because we never had one either here or in Congo and Uganda. All over Africa clothes are still mostly washed by hand. But small washing machines are available now and our house even has the required plumbing in place.

So the question arose, should we buy a washing machine? A couple of things went through my mind. The machines available are somewhat flimsy. They are subject to import duties of about one hundred percent so they are expensive but not durable.

But the larger question was about energy. Washing machines consume a lot of energy and I didn’t come to Tanzania expecting to leave as large a footprint as I leave in the United States. Washing clothes by hand doesn’t use electricity and, if everyone on this planet begins to consume energy at the rate we Americans do, how sustainable is that?

Here’s the standard "green" method of washing clothes by hand here in Tanzania. Fill a large bucket with cold, soapy water and dunk several pieces of clothing in it. Bend over the bucket and pull up one piece of clothing. Wring it out in a spiral twist, put it back in the bucket to re-soak and wring it out again. Do this over and over until it’s clean. Then take up the next item of clothing and repeat. There will be lots of water spilling around so do this outside on the ground and barefoot. Be sure to bend from your hips because you are going to be in this bent-over position for a long, long time until all the clothes are clean. Tomorrow you will start this whole process all over again.

Of course, I never anticipated that I would be the one doing the laundry by hand. We hire a young woman to work in our house and hand washing clothes is an expected part of that job, a job she knows well because she’s been doing it since she was a small girl.

I gained a bit of perspective on the question of having a washing machine when I watched a short video of a TED talk given by Swedish scientist Hans Rosling. He builds on the concept of living below the poverty line, (i.e., living on less than $1.25 a day) to develop the idea of living below the "wash line.” Only two billion of the seven billion people in the world live in households with a washing machine. That means that five billion people live "below the wash line."

Rosling points out that washing clothes by hand is women’s work around the world. It’s back-breaking work, the kind that keeps girls home from school and mothers too exhausted to spend time with their children or doing other things to improve the family’s livelihood.

Rosling often speaks to large groups of committed environmentalists, people who alter their diet and lifestyle to leave a smaller footprint on the planet. Sometimes, he says, he asks his audience to raise their hands if any of them wash their clothes by hand in order to save energy. Not once, he says, has anyone raised their hand. The most committed environmentalist uses a washing machine.

When he was a small boy, Rosling says, their family got their first washing machine. It saved his mother hours of back-breaking work so that she had time to read to him and his brothers and they all developed a love of reading and learning. In a way, their washing machine gave them a love of books, he says, and helped lift them into a better life. We all need greener washing machines, he suggests, but do we really want to ask other people to forego entirely something that we cannot imagine living without?

The Rosling video is at http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing_machine.html and it's worth a look.

Well, recently, we got a small, twin tub, semi-automatic washing machine. It requires no special plumbing, only electricity. Yes, we are living above the wash line and I’m happy that no one in our house has to engage in hours of back-breaking work to clean our clothes this time around.

Instead of washing clothes by hand, the young woman who works for us has enough time each afternoon to take classes in town that we pay for in order to build on her primary school education. By the time that she has a home of her own, maybe she will love reading and learning enough to read to her own children and give them a better start in life. If she gets married while we are here, I think my wedding gift to her just might be a small, twin tub, semi-automatic washing machine.