Rain, Rain and More Rain

I think I mentioned in the post yesterday that we are in a tropical depression. It is sitting over Central America. Yesterday the info that I could find said that it was right over Honduras which is to the SE of Guatemala. We have had solid cloud cover since early Thursday morning. It has rained with very small breaks since then. Everything is very wet and it is hard to get the clothes dry. What I was reading yesterday said that is was suppose to dissipate yesterday. Well, we woke up this morning with sprinkles, clouds and no electricity. I am not sure if the "no electricity" is related but it made for an interesting morning. Thankfully, someone has given the Fickers a large generator that can power all of their house and the clinic with electricity. Duane started it this morning so I am trying to do the things that need to get done with electricity.

Things such as laundry. Then I started thinking that many people in this country do laundry by hand. They use a pila. I love the pila. Here is a picture.



On the left side is a "washboard" molded into the concrete. The middle is the biggest and is used to hold water. The other side is for draining etc. The idea is to keep the middle "clean" so you do the scrubbing on the left and then scoop water from the middle to wash. Here I am scrubbing socks.



Then dipping in to get clean water.


Then rinsing my socks.


The pila works great for cleaning or scrubbing muddy clothes, socks, etc. When we would live at the children's home on previous trips, we would also use the pila to wash dishes. You clean the dishes on the left then rinse with the water from the middle. Then we would soak the dishes in bleach water on the right side. Now as much as I love the pila, I enjoy having an actual sink in a kitchen here and I also really like having a washing machine. Having no electricity makes me really appreciate it when we do have it! We are so blessed!