One of the things that Westerners living in or visiting poorer countries tend to comment on is how pristine school children look dressed in their uniforms coming out of areas which look like it should be impossible to keep anything clean and that running water is not something to be relied upon or taken for granted. I remember the shock I first felt seeing school children in some areas of Guyana and it is no different in Nicaragua or the Philippines. Each day as I'm driven to work we pass very poor communities with children coming out in beautiful white shirts and even going home looking as pristine, or as a friend put in his blog recently looking cleaner than his kids did when they left for school in the morning (Krish's impressions of Haiti).
In Guyana many of my local friends used "blue" a laundry soap which you'll be amazed to hear is coloured blue! However coming from a land of washing machines I felt it must be much better to use laundry powder to wash my clothes even by hand than a bar of soap. Of course I should have known better: that it's normally worth following the local way of doing things as there is a reason why it's done that way, but I never ventured to try. That was over ten years ago.
On moving to Malaysia a couple of months ago and not having yet found my well hidden washing machine in the apartment I thought I'd have to resort to hand washing again and stumbled across "blue" in the supermarket so I thought I'd give it a try. I have a great propensity for spilling things on my clothes or getting mess and oil stains from work and I've never found a good way to get the stains out, not long soaks or scrubbing nor Vanish, so I finally decided to try "blue" and so easily the stains scrubbed out. I am converted and could have been over 10 years ago if only I hadn't subconsciously felt my ways from mechanised, developed countries must be best.
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