Guess what Mum? I'm Ironing!

So Tanzanians are incredibly conscious of their appearance.  They like to look clean, dress nicely, and be neat.  Keep in mind that I said “appearances.”  People don’t really use deodorant, but many bathe at least once a day, if not more often.  (My family heats up water for me to bathe twice a day, whether I want to take a bath or not.)  Still, it’s Africa, and it gets hot and people sweat.  BO on bus rides is now just a fact of life.  You get over it.

            Still, appearances matter.  Someone explained it to me this way: dressing nicely is a way of respecting other people because you are giving them something nice to look at, rather than not caring about your appearance and therefore not caring about those around you.  I know a great number of people back in the States who would balk at this idea.  Regardless, I’m trying to be kind of conscious of wearing clothes that are not visibly dirty (I sometimes fail miserably at this), and am even ironing.

            That’s right, I’m ironing my clothes.  Much to my mum’s dismay back in Colorado, I hardly ever ironed.  Well, I’m going to tell you the secret to getting a bunch of lazy Americans to iron their clothes: do what the PC medical team did, and inform us that there are certain kinds of flies in Tanzania that like to lay their eggs in damp clothes (like the ones that you hang on the line to dry after hand-washing them).  These flies tend to hatch and burrow into whatever body is closest, lay more eggs, which later hatch out of your body.  So ironing is a health precaution and way of ensuring that you don’t have flies going into you like little aliens that later hatch out of your skin.

            So, Mum, I’m sorry to say, but if you had just told me that ironing would keep away burrowing flies, I would have been ironing for the past several years.  It’s a health precaution, after all, and one I’m going to adhere to!