I really do not want to shower right now. I need to - desperately - as there is no way I can go to bed this dusty. But I'm having so much trouble convincing myself to face the shower.
To begin with, I'm dreading the cold water. Cold showers feel amazing in the middle of the day or when you've just come home from the bush taxi and you're over-heated and sweaty and just gross. They don't feel so good after the sun's gone down. I try as often as I can to shower when the cold water is a pro, but sometimes it's just not possible.
Tonight is one of those nights. I may be able to convince myself that the cold water isn't such a dreadful thing (you do adjust after the initial shock, after all), but I'm also very tired and not looking forward to shower aerobics.
The shower head is a sort of wand which is attached to a hose. The hose is about four inches to short for me to stand under. Or at least, it used to be. Our shower head broke and now we're left with the hose. So, washing my hair and anywhere above my shoulders requires a bit of work.
Showering is also very frustrating because it's very difficult (if not impossible) to get entirely clean. It's dusty and sandy here and the dusty sand seems to cling on to you, no matter how hard you scrub. It's very disconcerting and a little depressing as your scrubbing clean-looking feet to see that the soap suds gliding toward the drain are decidedly brown in color.
The good news is that the water pressure is always much better at night and I don't have to worry about not having enough pressure to rinse the shampoo out of my hair. The power has stayed on tonight so I won't have to shower by candle or flashlight. And the two girls who share my shower have already showered, so I'm free to shower whenever I can finally convince myself to stop putting it off.
All in all, I'm pretty lucky with my showering situation. The water pressure is so bad at my Swedish friend's house that some days there simply isn't enough to shower at all (on those days, he showers over here). And I only have to share my shower with two other girls as opposed to a whole floor (or a whole compound, which I suppose is the Gambian equivalent).
Even so, I'd give a lot to be able to have a hot standing up shower with real body wash and not the bubble bath I accidentally bought because the bottle was in Arabic and I couldn't understand it. Ah, well, imagine how much I'll appreciate my first shower back in America.
For tonight, I'll just savor the feeling of cleanliness. Until tomorrow when it's time to hit the (dusty) road.
Yuck. I definitely feel you on this one. Showers in Africa (everywhere I've been) are pretty miserable. I think you hit on all the relevant points (too short--what's with that?, nearly always cold, lack of power, bad pressure, etc.) except one. It's always a problem in Nigeria for me when it's usually one billion degrees...as soon as you turn off the shower you are sweating again and it almost seems to defeat the purpose. Boo on that.
ReplyDeleteI like your Arabic bubble bath addition though. Can't say I've had that happen and it sure did make me giggle.
You should start making bets with Nags over random stuff...then the prize can be "If I win then I get to come take a shower at your place" because we took showers there during the trip (cause we were staying there, not cause we were being weird or something) and it was pretty good by African standards. Still weird short height, but hot water!