Sarah and I got back from the very, very long outing described above and were thinking that we really couldn’t put off showering any longer. Of course, we’re both afraid that by showering we’d be doing something wrong (even though there’s clearly a shower in the household). Sarah volunteered to ask our host, Mubanga, about showering. The conversation went a little bit like this:
Sarah: Could we take a shower?
Mubanga: (prolonged stare) Shower? Okay
Sarah: Are you sure? Do you want us to use a towel to wipe any water up off the floor if it spills?
Mubanga: Okay, here is a towel to wipe up the water after you bathe.
He hands us a teensy tiny face cloth. We go back into our room and are completely confused. First of all, he stared at us for so long we were convinced we’d crossed some sort of personal barrier. Then, he handed us a tiny towel to mop up the water.
So I figure “Okay, I’m a Duke student. I can totally do this.” I set all my things down in the bathroom and turn to turn on the shower. There’s no shower curtain so my original thought was “Oooh that must be the purpose of the towel!” I turn on the faucet and step into the bathtub and start fiddling with the lever to get the shower to start and all of a sudden this huge squirt of water comes flying out of a leak in the pipe and hits me square in the face. So now I’m just completely in a panic and go running back into our room to get Sarah’s help.
So now, we’re both in the bathroom thinking, “Ha haaa this is one of Mubanga’s jokes again. He told us we could shower even though it was broken. What a funny Zambian. Guess we’re not showering, great.” And then a little light bulb goes off over Sarah’s head and she goes, “He said bathe, not shower!”. And before you know it the two of us are bent over double trying not to laugh, because we’ve just realized Mubanga must be wondering what the hell we’d be doing in a bathtub to cause sizeable amounts of water to spill over the side. He’s probably like, “…muzungu (white people)”. And then, we realize we’re wrong again. Sarah seizes an empty water bottle with the top cut off and explains that we’re clearly supposed to fill it from the faucet and then pour it over ourselves. Recycling = bucket shower, who knew? Thank goodness Sarah was there, because I literally had not even noticed that stupid bottle. I would’ve just figured my next shower would be on August 1. Woof.
So I start my shower, and spend a good 5 minutes just looking at myself in the cracked mirror and trying to decide the best angle at which to empty the bottle over my head. (You may laugh and think that’s obvious, but Sarah tried an angle which got tons of soap in her eyes, and fearing creepy parasite contamination in the water, she apparently stood with her eyes clamped shut groping around for her towel for a solid few minutes).
Anyway, we made it through our first shower in Zambia. It’s lucky we have our own room, because we’re going to need a solid Americans-only counseling session to relieve all the stress that caused us. And laugh at how far our elite education at Duke is getting us in the real world.
Oh, by the way, Mubanga just came in here to tell us that he was black out, passed out when we asked about the shower, and he hopes he didn’t confuse us. Then he asked if we enjoyed our “baths,” and if we remembered to use the hot water since it’s winter à ?!?!?!. We’re happy that he explained to us that there is sometimes hot water, and if not, there is a gigantic pot in the kitchen that you can use to heat water for bathing. Yay we finally figured it out (with some help). He just went back out to the pubs for the night. It looks like we’re starting to get a pretty clear picture of weekend life in the Zambian culture.
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