Clean (?) Underwear

I just finished showering. One would think that taking a bucket shower (which we were actually TAUGHT to do. The Peace Corps takes REALLY good care of us) would be interesting enough. This shower was made ever MORE interesting because I washed two pairs of underwear along with my body.

In Togo it is rude to give your underwear to someone else to wash. One can understand that piece of etiquette if one remembers that all clothes are washed by hand (NOT a fun thing to do! I hardly did laundry when the machine was across the hall from my room. Imagine me having to wash everything that hand!) One of the girls in my training group has a very funny story where she was trying to wash her underwear in the yard (everything is done outside) when her host brother came over to her, grabbed one of the buckets and proceeded to help. This meant him picking up each piece of her underwear, scrubbing it, and then scrutinizing it to make sure it was clean (at least he was thorough!)

One of the tricks they taught us while teaching us how to bathe ourselves was to wash our underwear at the end of our shower. It was actually very rewarding to walk back into my little room and hang up the two pairs of underwear that I had just washed with my bare hands. I think the experience was more rewarding than it was sanitary. But does that really matter?