Every day is laundry day...down by the river

A rainy day!  Yipee!  What a better time than to blog about washing clothes.

With no automatic washing machines nor electric dryers in most homes, clothes are washed by hand.  My neighbors plunk themselves down beside a tub of water and a bar of soap and scrub away.  In many families, each person is responsible to wash his own clothes:  men, women and children alike.

There is a huge laundromat down on the river's edge.  I haven't figured out to whom all these clothes belong, but it most certainly is a laundry service.   I love to walk across the bridge just to watch the "washer-men" do their job.  I wonder if they are out today in the rain, getting an extra rinse for the clothes.

Bundles and loads of clothes arrive on the bridge in carts or back of bicycles on atop a man's head.

  

The empty carts are parked in an orderly fashion beside the bridge railing
and the bundles are carried to the water's edge. 

Let the scrubbing begin!  The river carries the suds downstream so no need to ever change the water.  

Scrub 'em, rinse 'em and lay 'em out to dry:  on the cement sides of the bridge, or on the few scraggly bushes or on the sand, when no grass is present.

 

Driving across the bridge in the mornings when men's slacks were the laundry item for the day.
They are always dried turned inside out. 

 Another glimpse into life in Niamey on this gorgeous, rainy morning.