Bucket shower

Tuesday, August 31

After a day of observing the lab in Atua, Brie and I came home and got ready to head to Volta lake with a bunch of the girls from the house. It is only about 20 minutes away from where we are staying and we decided to rent a boat to take us out on the lake (about $1.50 per person), which was beautiful! A few minutes after we left the dock we came to a stretch of mud houses along the shore. There were wooden fishing boats pulled up onto shore, women collecting water from the lake, kids playing in the water, and even a man bathing who was probably not too thrilled by our appearance. It was exactly how I imagined Africa to be and it was so fun to get this glimpse into life near the lake.

Upon arriving in Ghana three weeks ago, one of the first things I noticed was the bucket sitting next to the bathtub. The second day at the hotel, the bucket had been moved into the tub as if the housekeeping was letting me know I should be using the bucket to shower. I stared at it for a minute contemplating using a random bucket that other people had used to shower and quickly decided to use the “sea shower” approach that I used while boating with my parents (turn on and off the water for a total “on” time of about 2 minutes). Up until today, I had been successfully taking sea showers with the shower bucket sitting nicely next to the shower. However, since the water has been out for the past two days, I reluctantly had to consider the bucket shower approach.

I had planned on taking out my braids when we got back from the lake because they were still hurting even though it had been 4 days. Since I definitely need to shower after taking out the braids, and because baby wipes can only get you so far, I finally decided that I would just have to take a bucket shower. Pricilla came over and she and Brietta quickly undid the braids. Instead of feeling relief, there were two spots on my head that were still really painful. They look and feel like I was burnt a few days ago with boiling water or a hot curling iron. Pricilla said that this sometimes happens when they braid it too tight :(

In the end I was surprised at the bucket shower, it was much more refreshing that I would’ve guessed. We have a big drum of fresh water in our kitchen for when the water goes out, so I just filled up my shower bucket from that. The actual showering involved a mini bucket, in addition to the shower bucket, used to pour the water over my head. I’m definitely not planning on making the bucket shower a regular thing, but for one time it worked out pretty well.