Dishes

Somehow, sinks everywhere are suddenly completely full of dishes still covered in food.  Dishes are a  big pain, and are definitely not a lot of fun to do, but after doing my first load of dishes in Uganda, I feel like I probably shouldn’t be so dramatic about the chore of doing dishes. 

We don’t use that many dishes here, mainly because we mostly eat out.  Breakfast is the only meal we really eat at home so far.  But as dishes always do, they manage to build up to a point where the kitchen is unusable.  So because dish doing is my favorite, I decided to take on the task. 

When the sink is real full of dishes, at home, if you have a poor-college-student-apartment dishwasher, the process consists of scraping the food off the dish and finding a spot for it in the dishwasher.  There will probably be a few pieces of cookware that do not fit in the dishwasher that you may actually have to wash by hand.  If there are lots of dishes that have been there for a long time, it will probably be a relatively gross task, but it shouldn’t take too long.

Here, the task is a bit more of a pain, literally because the people here are kind of small, so the sink is short and not so fun to lean over.  The first part of the task is the same.  You scrape the food off of all of the dishes.  After you have cleared the sink of all dishes, you must fish out everything that is now blocking the drain because you do not have a disposal. 

Next, you fill the sink with dish soap and water.  You cannot use hot water, because you do not have hot water expect sometimes in the shower when it does not shut off the power.  Then you scrub all of the dishes, and stack them precariously on your small counter.

Once this part is finished, you can drain the sink.  Then refill it and add on capful of Jik.  Jik (we pronounce it Jix) is bleach.  When we need to rid things of disease such as fruit or other things that may have come into contact with contaminated water such as dishes, we refer to this is jixing.  Basically, all things need to be jixed.  Each dish must be dipped in the jik solution, preferable for a few seconds or more.  Because I feel like all of the surfaces in our kitchen are probably not that sanitary, you must find a clean rag (also a hard task) to try off each dish as you finish jixng it, so it can remain clean. 

I suppose that dish washing here is teaching me to be grateful for what I have.  It is quite the task here.  Next time I have a bad attitude about doing the dishes at home, I will think back to my time here when it took almost an hour to clean and sanitize the equivalent of about a normal day’s dishes.