After bathing, I put on the same clothes I had on before and the Help quickly pointed that out. “You do not put back on dirty clothes after you bathe”. Dirty my foot!! I thought to myself. Those were my Sunday best clothes, that is why they qualified for the trip to the city, and they were not dirty, I just put them on that morning, how dare she call them dirty? This woman was going to be nothing but trouble, I realized. She was acting just like my mother. When will I ever get a break?
Grudgingly, I went to “my” room and changed. The clothes I had packed neatly in the bag the previous night in OlKalou were now wrinkled, but I knew they would straighten out on their own, eventually. They always did, and if not, so what? Not in this house, they didn’t. The woman came back carrying a funny looking table: long and thin with steel scissor like legs. I later learnt it was an ironing board. Then there was the iron box, a kind I had never seen before. This one had a long cord that plugged into a socket on the wall, it did not require charcoal. Even our dry cleaning professional, Mwangi Dhobi in OlKalou town used a charcoal iron box. I was now “seeing” with my mouth (kuona na kanua). The Help asked me to take off the dress for her to iron. At this point, I knew not to disobey this woman. I pulled off my dress and handed it to her as I stood there in my petticoat (kamithi).
She asked me to hang my other clothes in the closet. What in Gods name did she mean? We keep our clothes in wooden boxes back home in OlKalou, what is this “hanging in the closet” is she talking about? “What is a closet?”, I asked. “Right behind you”, she answered. I looked behind me and there was nothing but a ‘wall’. The only unusual thing I could point out was some two shiny gold color handles attached to the wall. Not to look entirely dumb as a rock, I decided to take my chances and pull those handles. Walaah, there was a “hole in the wall” with a rod running across it with some hangers on it. So this is what she called a closet. In my petticoat, I walked across the room and unpacked my few dresses, put them on hangers and hang them in the closet. My clothes must have been in shock just like I was. They had never been on a hanger, and they had definitely never been in a closet.
I got my ironed dress back and I can tell you, my wrinkled “Ng’atho Designer Label” dress looked new again. Not bad at all.
