Mission Trip or Camping

Since returning to the Sahel, I have been grossed out by my “shower”. Looking back, I usually take a bucket bath in a tub because we don’t have running water so much of the time. But this time of year we often do have running water before bedtime and we are so sweaty, we must clean off. Of course with the joy of water comes with more bugs around. So as I scrunch down under the faucet, I often am looking at bugs that just seem to “come out of the woodwork” no matter what we do, as they crawl up the walls or around the drain. We do have a shower head, but it is so high that I have never used it (water pressure usually isn’t enough and it puts water all over the bathroom). This takes my mind back to so many mission trips where I didn’t have the best showers and had to “rough it,” but that just makes me sad because at those times I would console myself by looking forward to soon having a real shower at home. El Padre likes to equate these parts of life to camping, but some days even the romantic feel of camping gets old. I think it’s time for me to at least go back to bucket baths where I know there’s just a clean bucket and water under me!

Even the kids would rather bathe in the deep end of the local pool when it's like this!

-- La Maestra