a year to indefinite: Waiter! There's a stone in my rice...

This week I did my own washing. I was quite proud of myself. This week I also watched a few videos online from a guy called Hans Rosling. I find the stuff that he talks about so interesting. You should definitely watch this video of his (but you might need to make sure you have the time - it's about 10 minutes long) because it's really good and you should then look at some of his other videos and free software. It makes being informed about global issues through statistics entertaining, which is I think, no mean feat.

Hans Rosling and his magic washing machine

The connection between me doing washing and Hans Rosling is the fact that he was talking about washing machines. An invention that I am now acutely aware of the benefit of. I spent a couple of hours on Saturday morning scrubbing, rinsing, re-rinsing and wringing my clothes. And they were just my clothes. And I had also washed during the week. While I know that a wash cycle can take that long (depending on your washing machine) the beauty of the technology is that once it is loaded you can walk away and do other things.

This got me thinking about all the other things that I don't think about. Like rice. Has anyone ever found a stone in their rice? No? I thought so. You buy rice in a plastic packet that is washed, sorted and has perfect proportions. But when I eat rice here there is always a sense of trepidation as I eat. At any moment I could find myself biting a rock and feeling it reverberate through my head. Every time I bite one I am scared that this time I will have lost half a tooth. Thankfully though up to this point all my teeth are still intact. Here we buy rice from a market. And it has stones in. Before you cook it, you sift through it looking for that one elusive stone that will cause your head to ring. I personally had never before thought about someone harvesting the rice that I eat or about the process it takes to get into that plastic packet with it's perfect grains.

I also have a new found appreciation for the electric oven and stove that I grew up with. I remember complaining on numerous occasions about the stovetop. It was not my friend. Some elements were slow to heat up and would not maintain a constant temperature. Others would only give out full heat and would not stop anywhere in the middle. The oven also was slow to heat up and would only begrudgingly reach a top temperature when preheated for at least half an hour. I constantly lamented the lack of facilities to cook my food and the inferior quality of the food I could produce. Here, the charcoal stove abounds. To boil water, it goes on the stove. If you need hot water for bathing, it is boiled on the stove. Cooking dinner can take up to five hours. There is no thermostat. There is no timer. There is no such thing as a 'quick meal'.

These things are laborious and time consuming. And I realise that much of the time that I saved, while I had the use of technologies that I took for granted, was wasted. Sadly I have to admit that while cooking dinner instead of doing something constructive I would sit down and watch TV to unwind after a long day. Or instead of getting up early I could sleep for at least an hour longer because I knew that I had set the washing machine to come on automatically the night before.

On a slightly different note, I have seen very creative ways of overcoming what we would generally see as 'lack'. For instance, although many have electricity, there are not many who have stoves or ovens. Which makes it difficult to make cakes. But some genius thought of using the humble toasted sandwich maker as a mini oven. And so today as I typed this and caught up on emails from the weekend, I ate a homemade cake that Anne and the kids made last night, with my hot chocolate.