Firstly, since many of the days since I arrived at my site have been somewhat uninteresting as far as my daily routine does, I think I will start writing more blog posts based on general topics instead of what I have been doing. Today's topic? Hard work.

Most household tasks here are the same as the ones that we do in the U.S, only much more time consuming. People of course wash dishes, wash their clothes, cook meals, and tend to their yard, just like Americans do back home, but everything is done by hand and takes a lot longer.

In college, my housemates and I used to gripe about not having a dishwasher in our apartment, and now? I don't even have a sink. And let me tell you, washing dishes is even more of a pain when you are doing it in a bucket without running water.

When I was in Namaacha during my homestay and the outdoor kitchen (which didnt have a lightbulb) was really dark one night, I brought out my rechargeable flashlight with one of those cranks that you turn instead of using batteries. I thought that my host family would love it since you don't need to buy batteries or anything, just simply turn the crank. My host mother played with it for about 30 seconds and then gave it back to me and told me that it was too much work. Hah! Too much work to turn a crank when they spend hours cooking their meals and heating water over a charcoal stove? I guess it's just what they're used to.

So yes, cleaning my house, washing my clothes by hang, washing dishes without running water, and all of those chores are time consuming and harder than work at home, but the one task (that I luckily do not have to do) that really amazes me, is how people cut their grass. There are no fancy John Deere riding mowers here, no motorized push mowers, not even the little manual push mowers. Nope, people here cut their grass by hand with a machete. They bend at the waist and just swipe back and forth at the grass with the machete as it cuts. It amazes me and looks like the most exhausting and time consuming chore ever, but when there's no other way, I guess it just has to be done! For that reason, I am thankful that my yard is mostly full of sand. :)