Car washing 101

A bird decided that if the thick layer of dust covering my car could not make me wash it, avian poop on the windscreen would. Well, the little birdie was right. My car can be caked from bonnet to boot with mud and I will not bat an eyelid. But bird poop I find disgusting, and that usually forces me to grab a bucket or look for the nearest car wash.

Car repair, thankfully, only occurs occasionally, but in this city, you have to wash your car every day! I have no idea why my car gets a fresh film of dust every morning. Ugh, the agony.

My landlord is an avid car washer. Cleaning a car, to him, is like watching football. And he does it with ceremony. I won’t be surprised if I see him one day going over his wheels with a toothbrush. He gave me my first taste of car washing 101. I had filled the bucket with water, poured in a little car washing liquid, wet the rag and sloshed it onto the windscreen. “Oh, no, no,” shouted my landlord.

He abandoned his jeep and proceeded to show me how to scrub beneath the car, around the wheels. I learned that I needed two buckets: one for washing and one for rinsing. There was never this much drama involved in washing dad’s car back when I was growing up at Obafemi Awolowo University staff quarters. But then again, the university’s tarred roads meant your car never had to wallow in a mudbaths/roads like a hippo.

When I was done, my landlady came out and declared that I had done a better job than my former driver. My grin matched my now gleaming car. I swore to get up and wash the car every day. The next morning, I figured the car still looked clean enough and didn’t require a fresh washing. Somehow, I managed to stretch that one washing into a week later, when my grandmother came to visit and I was going to drop her at the motorpark.

“Lola, this car is so dirty,” she said. Now Grandma cannot see without her glasses and she wasn’t wearing them. Geez, how dirty was the car? I peered at it. Yes, it was quite dusty. Arrgghhh. I dusted it off with a dry rag, and with Grandma safely on her way back to her home, I proceeded to convince myself that the drycleaning I gave the car was sufficient for the next four days. Then the bird from hell pooped on my windscreen. I hope I can work up the strength to wash above the tires.