Tough on Clothes...
on Tara's Ethiopian Adventure (Ethiopia), 06/Apr/2010 04:42, 34 days ago
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Linen trousers are probably the best things for the hot sunny days here in Ethiopia but being so thin you can’t expect them to last long in this environment! The last of my four linen trousers wore through on Friday and now I will have to make do with my tougher jeans or cords until I can replace them. Obviously simply wearing clothes out here will wear them out but there are also many other (sometimes surprising) reasons for the shorter life span of the average item of clothing...Walking to work my shoes get a real work out over the sharp rocks and uneven ground. On rainy evenings, coming home, these shoes learn to swim through rivers of mud and who knows what else.When I go to observe lessons I sit in the chairs the students use and often realise too late that the chair is cracked or has a sharp edge jutting out when I stand too quickly and create another hole in my trousers.Being quite clumsy and not having had sufficient practice eating with my hands I do often find that some of my food finds its way onto my lap. The food here is normally quite greasy and comes in a fantastic array of colours designed for maximum stain impact!We are lucky enough to have a maid to wash our clothes but in an effort to get things extra clean she is less than gentle when scrubbing them to within an inch of their lives!The wet clothes then hang on a washing line that is made up of bits of metal joined together in a similar way to a barbed wire fence... even with clothes pegs, particularly windy days have the habit of dragging these clothes over the sharp barbs and creating more holes.I then store my clothes on a small bookshelf which recently also seems to have become home to some rather hungry moths.My poor poor clothes! It is no wonder that many people go around Ethiopia in nothing short of rags. What is, however, very incredible is that all my colleagues turn up to work beautifully dressed. Clean, smart, freshly pressed shirts. No holes, no stains. I think I need to learn a thing or two from them about increasing the life expectancy of clothes.
