To Take a Bath

In Africa, everyone takes bucket baths (unless you’re in the city and have running water). I’m used to it by now and it’s not that bad. The only bad thing is when it’s cold outside. So, I and the majority of everyone, have an outside area to bathe. It’s an enclosed area, like a little hut.

First, make sure you have water. Houses here do not have the luxury of running water. We have large containers where we store water. I’m lucky enough to have a water tap in my yard that I share with my host family here. This morning, I didn’t have enough water in my water container to bathe because I used the rest to wash dishes. I went to the tap with the bucket to carry more water to fill up the container to find out that the water wasn’t running at the time. An hour later, it was so I carried two buckets. So, always make sure you have enough water in storage for your daily chores. Take advantage of when water’s running in the tap (it usually is), it runs more than it’s turned off.

So, once you have water, fill up a bucket. If it’s cold outside, you have to heat up water and then mix it with cold water so as not to burn yourself. You get your bucket of water and take your shower supplies, which are stored in a small basket, along with a cup, your undies, and take ‘em to the casa de banho (bath room).

My basket of shower supplies consists of: body soap, soap to clean undies, razor, shampoo, conditioner, washcloth.

You go to the bath room wrapped in a kapulana cloth. Everybody does that. It’s much easier since you already have a bunch of stuff to carry and there’s not a lot of space to set stuff down in the bath room. So, to bathe you use the cup to scoop water from the bucket and pour over your body. Because you can only use a limited supply of water, I have to schedule when I’m going to shave and when I’m going to wash my hair. I can’t do both at the same time because each takes about half a bucket of water.

Use the body soap to wash your body and rinse with cup and water. Once clean, you have to clean your undies with the bar of soap for that so you put water and soap on them and then you have to scrub them by rubbing the sides together between your hands. You must do this EVERY time you bathe in order to wear clean underwear. Also, every time you bathe, you MUST wash your feet and sandals. (Oh yeah, you bathe in sandals, never walk outside bare foot here). When you wash your feet, you must scrub them by rubbing them against the stone ground and you should wash your toes and toe nails because they get really dirty and I’ve heard of bugs that will get in there and lay eggs in your feet and it’s really painful. And that’s how to bathe here.