Pass the marigolds ...

Although I haven’t so much as flicked a feather duster around in the past four years, I find that cleaning is something I can not watch people do here. It is something that bothers me enough to make me leave a room, but not enough to motivate me to do the job myself! While I love returning home to find all my clothes neatly laundered and pressed and a sparklingly clean kitchen, I have sworn on several occasions, that I may well ditch teaching to set up a cleaning academy.
Let’s start with the greatest of the offences – mopping! I learnt at a young age, that to clean a floor effectively, all you need is the lightest drizzle of water and a strong dose of elbow grease. In Uganda, I find that elbow grease is in short supply and is substituted with copious amounts of detergent and enough water to cause a flood. The school cleaners can be relied upon to flood all available staircases just before break times and around home time, or any point in the day when human traffic is at its densest. I will never understand why they do not simply wait until all the people have passed through, but that would make far too much sense. Instead, they wait until the following morning, when the kids are pouring back into school, to clear up the muddy footprints … and make a few more in the process.
Now let’s move to the bathroom. This was always my most dreaded household chore. Ironing never bothered me, as you could always watch a film to pass the time and washing up in winter warms you up. However, I will never be able to shed the memories of cleaning out the feral shared bathrooms of student days. One of my pet hates is hair in the bath – it just makes my skin crawl, and even worse is hair in a plug hole. Just thinking about it makes me gag. I could just about cope with my own, but since I have dyed my hair brown, I even manage to freak myself out. I may have to go blonde again, if only for that reason. So it was inevitable that I would be number one customer for all of the disposable cleaning paraphernalia available in the UK. No need for skanky cloths or fetid toilet brushes – just throw on the rubber gloves, swish the ready-bleached cloth around and flush. All over and done with quite painlessly. None of this is available here and on occasion I cringe and wonder how many germs actually are killed in the cleaning process.
I recently discovered that my maid had been washing all the dishes and doing the laundry with cold water. Once upon a time, I would have refused to wash my underwear at any temperature below 60 °. Now I learn that everything, for almost two years, has been rinsed in cold water. I patiently explained that I would prefer her to heat the water and not to worry about the increased electricity bill.
I truly believe that this is one of the times when ignorance is bliss. I have not been struck down with disease and pestilence for not boiling the water and I have survived quite well in spite of a lack of disposable cleaning products. All of this is quite reassuring; after all I will not be able to afford domestic help when I finally return to the UK. Maybe all of this has made me immune to germs – meaning that I won’t need to bother doing any cleaning in the first place!