WASHING IN AFRICA

Greymouth Evening Star, 10 December 1928, Page 2

WASHING IN AFRICA

SOME LAUNDRY PROBLEMS. Ten shirts and half a dozen pairs of white trousers is quite a normal weekly wash on the west coast for any one who would present even a passably respectable appearance (writes “A Coaster” in the London “Daily Mail”). Nearly all Europeans employ their own washman. Washerwomen are unknown as far as the white population is concerned, though they do a thriving trade in the somewhat sultry waters of creeks and lagoons, washing the long white “burnouses” of their menfolk, and their own gaudy, manyfolded wraps. Large firms, which provide servants for their employees, usually secure a whole-time man whose wash day lasts from Monday to Saturday. From the European’s point of view, this is not altogether an advantage. There is always time for the clothes to be washed twice, a fact which these dusky knights of the soapsuds are not slow to turn to account.

The West African native yields to no one in his respect for dress. To be in the fashion he will even wear tinted glasses and cover his sunproof skull with a solar topee. When, therefore, the washman finds himself on Tuesday morning with half a dozen freshly laundered white suits on his hands, what is simpler than to hire them out for a couple of day? Scores of bis friends will pay (id for the privilege of disporting themselves in a “white ma.ssa’s” well-cut suit, and there will be plenty of time to wash them again on Thursday. The possibility of recognising one’s favourite trousers gracing the nether limbs of a not-very-hygienic-looking | native is not a pleasant one. Quite

■■■ aparTfrom the idea of the thing, there is always the very real risk of “dhobie itch” or “washman’s rash” to consider. Unfortunately there is very little chance of detecting these activities on the part of the commercially-mind-ed washman. • Suddenly to pounce on them and demand the instant production of one’s entire wardrobe is simply to invite a helpless gesture in the

direction of a mountain of linen in all stages of laundering. Tho wise coaster soon realises that jn this, as in many other phases of his life, it does not pay to be too inquisitive. Provided his garments are reasonably well laundered, he refuses to let his imagination dwell on the Jekyll-and-Hyde existence which they may be leading.