Wash house politics

31 January 2011

This is our camp wash house - two washing machines, a clothes dryer and a tub - which seems to be the modern equivalent of the village well.

I do around four loads of washing a day - there are cleaning cloths to wash, as well as aprons and cloths from the shop, bakery and takeaways - so I spend a fair bit of time in the wash house myself.

Lots of chat and news is exchanged here; the weather forecast has been a hot topic of conversation, particularly with the cyclone activity we've been having.

After a day or two of rain, there can be quite long queues for the machines. The standard practice is to line your baskets of washing up in a queue. It's acceptable to take someone's washing out when it's finished and put yours in - if you're the next person in the queue. But of course people put their stuff in the queue and then wander back to their tents or off to the beach.

And that's where things can get a bit heated. If you're second in the queue, how long do you have to wait before leap-frogging the person ahead of you to get to an empty machine? If the dryer has stopped but the clothes aren't quite dry, can you take them out and put yours in, or should you want for the owner to come back and add more money? If they haven't left a basket on top of the machine, do you just heap the clothes on the ground?

The clever ones just settle in with a book and a cup of tea while they wait for their washing or their turn at the machines. One group even had a card game going.