Journal Entry: The Bucket Shower

(This entry comes from a student’s journal — Daniel — written during his fourth week in Jinotepe, Carazo, Nicaragua, and posted with his permission.)

For my “free” journal entry this week, I feel like doing something a little different.  I’m not sure if it’s due to creativity or boredom (or both, ha ha), but this entry is going to be about something I’ve truly grown to love during the past 4 weeks of SST: the bucket shower.

I remember first arriving at my host family’s house on SST and being very apprehensive about taking showers.  Not because I didn’t want to (well, need to, actually), but rather because I really wasn’t too sure what the “right” way to take a bucket shower was.  Why where there 2 buckets?  Why were they both on the ground, with no water coming from the ceiling?  Where was the hot water?

I soon figured out that the smaller bucket was used for pouring water on oneself, etc., and that the large bucket was the water source, always to be kept clean.  After about a week of working out the kinks (hint: fill the small bucket back up before shampooing and soaping up) I really began to enjoy the ritual that went along with it.

Now, I welcome that initial shock of cold water.  It wakes me up, it reminds me where I am, and it never fails to make me think about my life in the US — where hot water is something always taken for granted.  In addition, 5 minutes under really cold water definitely cools me down after a long run, and makes me stop sweating, much faster than any shower I’ve taken in the States.  🙂  I think it’s one of those things that I’ll look back upon fondly in a few months.