Notes on Hygiene, Part 2: Showering

Showering – I shower every day. That said, showering here is different: I have running water (I’m spoiled), but it’s cold only, and at 6am when it’s still dark outside, a blast of ice water to the naked flesh is not something you really want to withstand for very long. I’ve developed the dunk-scrub-splash-dash method in response.


Step 1 (Dunk): Take deep breath, turn on faucet. Edge toward water, put one arm in. Lean head in. Remember that this is not the Hokey Pokey, step under running water. Count to 10 (okay, 5), jump back out of cold water. Turn off faucet.


Step 2 (Scrub): Soap up, concentrating effort on Potential Odor Zones (POZs). I’m going to let you figure out what those are.


Step 3 (Splash): Turn on faucet, stare at it apprehensively until you get the guts to step in (minimum 15 seconds, maximum 2 minutes). Realize that you cannot actually rinse off if you keep leaning away from the cold water. Splash furiously at POZs. Consider self clean, turn off faucet.

Step 4 (Dash): Grab pagne, towel self off as you sprint inside away from swarming mosquitos. Congratulate self on expended effort.

You’ll notice that there’s no mention of shampoo there. I now wash my hair every 3 days. This was difficult to get used to at first (and kinda gross), but a couple of factors have made it easier: First, shampoo adds at least a minute to cold-water shower time. Second, I have a lot of hair, and since I keep it in a bun most of the time, it doesn’t seem worth it to keep it all sparkly clean. Third, it takes my hair a day and a half to dry (thank you, humidity), so washing it more than every 2 days seems like a waste. (Does hair mold?)

Fourth and most importantly, every Beninese woman or child who plays with my hair tries to make it into a helmet. By this I mean she combs it, then uses her hands to plaster it as flat as she can onto my scalp. If it’s clean, strands escape, and she’ll spend 20 minutes explaining to me that I need to buy pomade and/or glue. When my hair has a healthy oil slick going on, it sticks in place, and nothing makes a Beninese woman happier than a completely immobile hair style.


That’s about all I can say on showering without scaring the small children (an army of whom, I’m sure, are reading my blog). Oh, except cold-water showers in the middle of the day are awesome, especially after biking home from school. Stay tuned for further updates.