Typical Day in the village
There is no such thing, but there are things that do happen daily.
Waking up at 6:30am.
Pump the manual pump 200 times to fill the water tank on the roof, which
feeds the sinks
via gravity. Then there's breakfast. The stove runs on gas, coffee
water is boiled in an
older fashion metal tea pot, and then poured through individual cup
filters, making 1 cup
at a time. Dishes require we boil water as well. Sleeping happens on a
foam mattress on
the floor (no bed frames). It is hot and humid and sometimes if there
is a breeze we go
outside and sit on the steps.
The house is on stilts, 10 feet up, so when you move around the house,
it shakes. Until
you're used to it, you will continue to think it's the beginning of a
4.0 quake. And then
there are the actual quakes too, since we live within sight of an active
volcano.
Clothes are washed manually in a tub, unless we have a generator. You
know the saying 'run
through the ringer'. Well this one has the actual ringer on it. Then
dried on a line in
the sun.
We daily take in anything left outside to avoid tempting the local youth
into thievery.
The Baining people are not especially extraverted, so there is rarely
people dropping by
simply to talk. They seem to leave us alone, but there are opportunities
to meet them.
And that is about all that is typical about a day, all the other hours
are filled with
whatever work we're doing, punctuated by water breaks.
The bucket shower.
A word on this, for those who have never used it while camping. There
are 2 ways to do a bucket shower. Some, heat water, then pour it into a
bucket,hoist it up onto a hook, and let it dangle turning on and off the
water.
The second way is to stand next to a bucket and use a cup. This is the
way we're doing it here.
You have 4 gallons of water gathered from the rain the night before.
(rain hits the roof, drains into a gutter, to a pipe, down into a
bucket.... if you ever see this in the village, it means the houses cost
a little more to build (metal roofing) but, the health standards will be
higher, because they are drinking clean water instead of river water
filled with disease).
The trick with a bucket shower, is to avoid getting too much soap on
you, lather up a washcloth, and you'll do fine... apply the soap to you
with the cloth, and it comes off much easier.
Then, bend, dip the cup, stand, pour it over your head.
Repeat about 30 times. And you're done.
Hard on the knees, but easy on the water wastefulness.
They told me we could heat a kettle to take the edge off the rain water,
but I wanted a nice cold shower.
Let me tell you, a bucket shower at 6:30am, with water that came from
the previous night's rain, EVEN in a tropical humid climate, is STILL
FREEZING COLD! Not refreshing freezing, but BRACING freezing.
I take the edge off now with water from the kettle.
If you've ever bathed in a river from snowmelt, you know what I'm
talking about. (it's relative, I'm sure the water is actually much warmer).
And that, is the bucket shower.
The only real skill you need is to remember where you put the cup once
you put the soap in your face, otherwise you have to open your eyes and
get soap in them.
This all seems completely easy to do, and it is, but when you return to
your nice shower at home, you suddenly appreciate it a whole lot more.
One thing the translators here said was 'it's good to have a visitor
with fresh eyes, we learn to take a lot of things for granted, it's nice
to see our place through your eyes.'
(in other words, I'm snapping a lot of pictures.)
