By Getachew Engdayehu
Sewnet Mitiku Gashaw, aged around 47, is among hundreds of laundry women working in this domestic business for many years in Bahir Dar Town, Ethiopia. She migrated from her rural village before 27 years. Sewnet has 25 years old boy and 15-year-old girl children. She got her children from different husbands. Both fathers of her children died early, leaving her is sole responsibility to raise the children.
To make ends meet for the family, Sewnet worked as a wage laborer in construction for 13 years. It was hard perilous work. Ten years ago, she shifted from construction to becoming a washerwoman, washing clothes for families in Bahir Dar Town in Ethiopia, besides doing some domestic work. When she started, she contracted with nine households on a monthly basis, and many others on a daily basis. The payment was made per cloth for daily jobs, and for a fixed amount for the families whose clothes she washed on a monthly basis.
Currently the work is much less. She has only two households as customers on a monthly basis. The daily customers are also minimized. The reason is that before a year she was sick for two months: in the meantime, her customers shifted to other washerwomen. Besides in the current economic dire straits in Ethiopia, many households start to wash their clothes by themselves since they can not afford money for washerwomen.
Now Sewnet is getting around 47, though she does not know her age exactly. She is not strong enough to work fulltime and due to this her life is challenged. Laundry by hand involves thorough scrubbing of all surfaces. Jeans cloth is very though. Washing children cloth is also very hard since it gets so muddy. The buttons in the clothes damage her hands sometimes up to bleeding,
From: How the Other Half Lives
