Not Cute!
On the outskirts of the village of Dodo a small river runs by. It is small now in the dry season, but it will become a raging torrent in the rainy season. Every time I’ve crossed this river on my way into to the village there have been children on the edge of the river doing laundry. Handwashing the family’s clothes that will then be laid out to dry in the sun. On other occasions I have witnessed the kids doing the laundry outside their homes. They usually have what we would consider an “old-fashioned” washboard to scrub the clothes on in order to make sure they get all the dirt out of them. To us it is old-fashioned, to the people using them today it is an important tool in the laundry process.
A lot of times when people see these photos of the kids doing laundry, or carrying water on their head the first response is that it’s cute. I think I understand what they mean by that, but let’s be clear, there’s nothing cute about it.
After landing in Minneapolis and driving home the first think I did was unload my bag. I took out the clothes and began tossing them into the washing machine. As I stood in our laundry room, yes, a room in the house designated for this purpose, my mind wandered back to the kids on the side of the river. They should have been in school, not spending their morning doing laundry in the river. I would not want my kids to be doing this.
On Facebook I subscribe to the Northern Ireland Historical Photographical Society page. The photos they post from the late 19th and early 20th century are reminiscent of the scenes I witness in Sierra Leone today. When you visit a living history museum like the Ulster Folk Park, or Fort Snelling then scenes like this might be considered “cute” because they remind us of another time. A time that we often look at through rose coloured glasses, a “simpler” time. What we miss is how hard these times were.
What we miss when we look at photos like these and think “cute” is how hard life is when lived like this. It disturbs me that people are living in 2023 in the same way the people of Ireland lived in the 1890s. It’s not cute. It becomes even less cute when you start to look at why this is the case, but that’s a topic for another time.
