i iron everything

the orange stripes are for when i'm feeling funky!

one perfectly understandable cog in the conservative machine of ugandan culture is an unwritten rule that one should not hang his/her unmentionables outside where others may see or perhaps mention them. this is, of course, fine, and i make my best attempt to comply by hanging my wet (from washing, come on!) underthings on the three dental floss clotheslines in my sitting room. i find it mildly amusing, however, that it is perfectly acceptable in our american culture to post a photo of those same underthings on the internets where anyone in the entire world (including my neighbor who i am trying to protect by hanging them inside) may view them. so be it. this is just part of the delicate cultural balance i have struck since my arrival here - adapt as much as possible while still maintaining my own identity. my underwear is safely out of sight in my house but freely available online. excellent. everyone wins.

the rest of my clothing i am free to hang indiscriminately on the line outside my house, where it will dry at an amazing rate of speed in the direct equatorial sunlight - a convenience that sadly does not come without a price.

enter the mango fly. said fly enjoys good conversation, long, lazy flights in the bush, ripe mangoes, and laying eggs in and/or on warm, wet fabrics...exactly like those on a clothesline! if undetected and undefeated, the spawn of the mango fly may hatch from its egg in your shirt and burrow into your skin, leaving behind a hideous boil and a small hole through which it will breathe and perhaps wink at you. if this occasional eye contact with mango larvae makes you uncomfortable, you are free to smear a bit of vaseline over the airhole of the boil, effectively suffocating your little friend, who will soon expire and be forced out through the very passage meant to keep him alive.

thankfully, i have yet to play host to one of my mango brethren. we had been told in peace corps medical training classes that we should, for the purpose of neutralizing mango larvae with heat, iron all of our clothes. at first i thought it was a cruel ploy to frighten potentially slovenly pcvs into pressing our clothes and looking smart, but after checking my facts, i realized that these mango flies are indeed real! so now, i have made a complete 180 degree turn away from my wrinkled american lifestyle, where i may have ironed five items of clothing in my entire life. in uganda, i iron everything - underwear, socks, pants, t-shirts, dress shirts, towels, bedsheets, and more! it's completely mad! but so is allowing a tropical insect to hatch in my skin. this is one time i am more than happy to be called conservative.