Cleanliness in a Fourth World Country...

Saturday, April 17th, 2010 10:00 a.m.

Another difference we deal with here in Haiti is the topic of cleanliness...I've decided to focus on one aspect of it: bathing. Though at the beach we sometimes had running water, even there just taking a bath required more energy than we often wanted to put out. Now that we are at the uphill property we are back to taking bucket baths. Let me enlighten you on the amount of effort a "bucket bath" requires:

First we decide we want to expend the energy bathing takes...usually this means either the heat has become completely unbearable and the only relief we'll get is pouring cool water over ourselves, or we just returned from a long ride in the truck and are covered with dust and exhaust smoke from other vehicles on the road.

Next we gather our clothes and begin the search for a towel and soap. We have places for these things, but when eight to twelve people use the same shower these items are easily misplaced. Twenty minutes later we walk behind the house, laden with our accessories, and upon seeing the padlocked door, realize we forgot to ask for the keys. After a few minutes of searching for the person who last had them, we open the door, place our items on the 1 ft. by 1 ft. "table" inside, and look in the bucket...no water.

Then the battle begins...is there water in the barrel? Not enough. Does the reservoir have enough water? Yes. Is the hose connected? Not yet. To connect the hose someone must go around the house, outside the gated yard, up the driveway to the reservoir. Once the hose is connected, and the water is slowly flowing out into the bucket, we wait about twenty more minutes until it is full. Finally our bath is ready. Once the door is shut behind us and we are sure nothing else can delay it we look into the bucket once more and realize there is no cup with which to dump said water on ourselves. By now we are too exhausted to look for one on our own, so we call out the door for a "gode" and wait for someone to find one, clean it, and hand it in to us. Now our bath is ready.

And finally, fifteen minutes later, we emerge clean and cooled off...at least for about seven minutes.