Washers and dryers are for the WEAK

So after two weeks of doing laundry in my hotel shower (the sink was too dirty...) with its questionable water "pressure", I was more than ready to get back to Accra to have my clothes properly laundered and dried by our hotel's laundry maestro.  I was also looking forward to having meals right in the hostel rather than walking through a bustling, smelly market to get to a decent restaurant--not the most fun thing to do when you're tired and disoriented.

Turns out my expectations were 0 for 2.  The laundry guy was not back (and we're not allowed to do it ourselves apparently...), and the management had no idea of when he was going to return.  Now I'm a pretty lenient guy, but the prospect of wearing the same underwear for 72 hours (assuming he would come back the next day...)  in the West African heat and humidity was not particularly appealing.  I swear I'm more hygiene-conscious in the US.  But anyways I brought these handy-dandy Tide sink packets along with me, which I decided needed to be called into action.  

Which first required the acquisition of a bucket.  Just my luck: today it rained like no other (gotta love that mud) and the nearest place to buy a bucket, the "Bush Canteen", is about a 10 minutes' walk away.  Whatever.  At least my pants will get a nice wash.  I think the only thing that would have made an obruni's walk through the torrential rain with a bucket more ridiculous would have been carrying the bucket on my head pretending to sell water.  Maybe for another time.

Anyways, I got back to the hostel, filled up the bucket (it should have a name ... now accepting nominations) with cold water and dumped in a packet of Tide.  Oh, the glorious smell of detergent.  It doesn't take much to please me, apparently.  Next came the strategic selection of which clothes to wash balanced against the expectation of when the laundry maestro would (if ever) return.  

After about 2 weeks of handwashing, I think my left elbow is flaring up with some nice tendonitis. Lovely.  See, this is something they should mention in the Africal travel-health books?  Either that or I'll have dengue fever tomorrow.  But the smell of Tide in my clothing (as opposed to unscented soap, which has a scent, oddly enough...) left me with quite the sense of accomplishment.  I even rigged up a nice drying rack in my room!  I figured, hey, if I gotta do this for the rest of the summer, so be it.  Got plenty of emergency Tide packets to go around.

With my greatly inflated sense of self-pride, it was time to dump out the bucket of water.  At which point I ran into the laundry maestro.  

*sigh*

Anyways, today has also been the day of rather fruitless phone calls.  I have feverishly been trying to contact the Centre for Democratic Development to get some Afrobarometer data from them.  I have 2 of their telephone numbers, neither of which seem to have a person on the other end.  It turns out they have THREE MORE telephone numbers that I can try.  The expected value has got to be 1, right?  Maybe the 35th time's the charm.  

The other place I need to contact is the Ghana Statistical Service, which I've heard can be a bit of a headache for researchers (not least involving having to yell over the phone given the bad connections).  I was discussing this with my contact at the Ports Ministry (which is right next door to GSS), and he told me that the wife of a professor in Legon that I was working with is a statistician at GSS. *cue incredible sense of relief*  Definitely been really lucky with the contacts I've made.

In other news, tonight is two-for-Tuesday at the Pizza Inn.  Definitely makes up for my failed laundry adventures.