Showers in site. There are Volunteers who maybe (that’s a big maybe) take a shower once a week. That is if it’s a shower, it’s probably a bucket bath in all reality. Now before you go calling us gross, I would like to speak out on the part of that poor weekly-showering (bucketing)volunteer and say that he/she probably does the “crucial parts” scrub down with a washcloth on a daily basis (so I hope). Then there are the once every few days shower-ers (bucket-ers). There are defiantly a lot more of them out there. And then there is the rare breed of the everyday or more showers(buckets).
Until recently I was a daily or more shower-er (bucket-er) due to it just being so dern hot in my site, with temperatures over 100 there was just nothing quite like a cold shower (yeah cold) to just make you feel human again. I even occasionally found myself taking a “longer” shower (when we had running water) of 8 or 9 minutes just to enjoy the water. I never thought I’d admit to liking a cold shower, but when it’s that hot, it’s really all you have to keep from going crazy. I can actually remember one day that I took 3 showers…but that day had an unusual amount of dirt and mud involved.
Upon return from Cusco, I’ve noticed one big difference in my site. Just about everything else is the same. But it got cold. It’s like someone flipped a switch on the nights here. Its gets brrr chilly (as we say in the Schwartz family household) during the night and stays that way until about 10 in the morning. Now I was originally happy, I love the cold weather after all, it’s way easier to put on another shirt or jacket when you’re cold than to want to take off a layer of skin to cool off on hot days. During the day now it’s…dare I say it?...nice outside. It’s a mid 60 or 70 most days, today it probably hit 80 again, but that’s a rare thing I hear. But it’s been nice. I don’t sweat when sitting still eating my lunch anymore. I actually don’t mind that the soup is piping hot and practically boiling, at least the temperature’s not.
The thing I forget when I say that I love cold weather is cold showers in cold weather. In the States we have this amazing thing called a hot water heater…those don’t exist in the campo of Peru. I can now say I’m starting to understand how it is that some volunteers go a week without showering (while stating that I’ve not actually resorted to that yet). Glacier cold water on a cold day is not ideal for many things, a long nice shower is defiantly one of them. So my daily showering has turned into a bi-daily, ok well really, I wash my body every day (thank goodness for washcloths) and skip the hair occasionally. After all, ask any of us female volunteers, and the worst part to wash when it’s cold is your head. It’s like an instant brain freeze…which suck even when you have ice cream as a reward.
Maybe I’ll get used to the cold showers, I mean the guys in Ancash did right? So I’ll suck it up and enjoy the nice weather. And try to only shower in the warm part of the day.
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