It was Dolly Parton who warbled about Washday Blues. She complained of “…rubbin' and scrubbin'…” and of how her “good lookin' good lovin' no good man” spent all his pay elsewhere rather than on buying her a washing machine.
The residents and staff of Othandweni, The Domino Foundation’s safe house are not in Dolly’s unenviable situation. They are celebrating that laundry days are no longer the daunting affairs they have been. Their old washing machine was in desperate need of retirement. Resorting to hand-washes was becoming increasingly the order of the day…every day. A robust new machine was needed to tackle the daily load from the wash basket. Gill Hammond, house manager at Othandweni, said a replacement appliance had been on the wish-list for some time and, when the Durban offices of an international corporate offered to play the part of fairy godmother, the delight in the safe house was enormous.
“The people we work with at Othandweni, all of them survivors of sexual exploitation, have come out of very testing backgrounds. Our restoration programmes are very structured and focused and need as much time as possible to be really effective. While making sure the important domestic chores are done each day, (and they are part of the restoration process), having a dependable washing machine takes unnecessary pressure off our schedule.”
Gill commented that this was not the first time the corporate, which wished to remain anonymous, has come alongside Othandweni: “They have seen the effectiveness of the work that is done with survivors of sexual exploitation.”
