Clean/bright clothing in third world countries

3/14/2016 11:38:41 AM

This is based on my experience living in Sierra Leone for close to a year, I can’t speak for anywhere else in the world but I suspect this is typical. A few differences from existing answers:

  • Clothes here are phenomenally clean every day of the week (not just Sundays or Fridays), school uniforms especially. People do have Sunday and Friday Best, but that’s in terms of the clothes themselves, not the cleanliness which is consistent all week.
  • People tend to hand-wash using cheap imported soaps (so it’s not just some magic handmade soap that makes the difference). Don’t underestimate how far into the bush certain imported goods reach, though the very remote villages make their own too. Simple things like leftover fat from cooking can work as a soap.
  • The difference is visible indoors and outdoors, on light, bright and dark clothes, and against colourful backdrops, it’s not just an optical illusion (though bright sunlight does really bring it out and make it show)

The difference seems to be hard work, hard scrubbing, and more attention paid to little habits that help keep clothes clean. Meticulous cleanliness of clothes seems to be a point of family pride, i.e. if you go out looking at all dirty, it reflects badly on your family, not just you. So they really do go above and beyond.

Since washing machines are both expensive and impractical, and unemployment is high, we hire a local housekeeper to clean our clothes. She hand-scrubs them meticulously, and they really do come back cleaner than from a washing machine. They also occasionally come back stretched a little… which shows how rigorous her scrubbing is.

It’s the hard work that makes the difference, but there are also some other little habits I’ve noticed that contribute, for example:

  • Putting things on the floor, even indoors, even temporarily, seems to be quite taboo here.
  • Local people seem to be more careful about where they step. For example, they’ll habitually walk in the road, out of the dust that builds up on the side of the road, trusting cars to weave around them, whereas I’ll keep off the road even if that means walking through dust. Result: their shoes stay amazingly clean, mine get dusty very quickly.
  • When carrying heavy items, I’ll tend to carry them in my arms with the weight against my chest, whereas locals will tend to carry them on their heads, or if that’s not possible, over a shoulder or just in their hands. I get dust, dirt and grime on my shirt, they don’t.
  • People seem to be a little more careful about wearing scruffy old clothes when doing dirty activities or using rags etc to keep clean with, then changing back. Similar to, say, my grandparents’ generation.

Somehow, local people manage to keep their shoes clean even during the rainy season when half the country is mud. I’ve tried to work out how they manage that, but I haven’t managed it yet.

3/13/2016 12:42:04 PM

This is really late, but no the clothes are so bright because they hands ash with handmade soap. I recently returned from Haiti and yes their whites were somehow whiter than my clothes with bleach. Their soap is homemade and lacks all the chemicals of ours. Plus the hand washing means you can focus on stains better unlike a washing machine.

6/24/2014 3:47:57 PM

In many parts of the world, including remote villages of 3rd world nations, people have a special set of clothes, their “Sunday go to meeting” outfit. Clothes that they wear only on special occasions, a village ceremony, going to the temple, the marriage of their children or the death of their parents. Sometimes these outfits are simply a nice sarong or a colorful shirt, sometimes they are full ensembles. They usually get hand-washed after being worn, neatly folded and stored away until their next use. And the arrival of a TV crew from another country would be grounds for the villagers to break out their Sunday go to meeting outfits.

Credit:stackoverflow.com‘

About me

Hello,My name is Aparna Patel,I’m a Travel Blogger and Photographer who travel the world full-time with my hubby.I like to share my travel experience.

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