Refreshing Showers & Other Ghana Memories
A Journalist’s Diary
It’s been a second since my last Ghana reflections. I said I would revive them once I made progress and discovered a topic worth writing about.
I recently unlocked another 1,700 words from my Ghana journal. Those words include discoveries that made me think about water — from showers, toilets, and laundry to geckos and hydration.
Also, I solved a puzzle that had bugged me since writing about a police visitation.
In today’s post, I’ll reveal that solution and reflect on water usage in Ghana as I remember experiencing it that month.
Sanitary Observations
Water is essential to life. It sustains this planet and all life on it. Water makes up most of Earth’s surface area, and we humans are, to borrow another Star Trek quote, “bags of mostly water.”
Another area of life that requires water is hygiene, cleaning, or sanitation. I’ll take a rather broad stroke here if you’ll excuse it.
Laundry is where I noticed differences. The aftermath of my step too far into a ditch was, I think, the moment I started thinking about it.
Gloria immediately offered to remedy visible and invisible consequences of my time underground. I don’t quite remember how we handled laundry up to that point. All I know is it was part of the living arrangement.
But, if my memories aren’t playing tricks on me, that incident revealed a difference.
Washing machines and dry cleaners are readily available at home, and the de facto standard for millions, at Gloria’s, cleaning clothes was manual labor.
I can still picture Anita, the quiet but often smiling housemate, who was as much a part of the household as Gloria, squatting and kneeling in a roofed area of the backyard, scrubbing and rinsing away while the dogs of the house played nearby.
I don’t want to write too much about the next thing that came to mind during my last digitization sessions. Toilets weren’t that different anyway.
But I made some memories that have survived all those years.
The beach party Jon and I visited didn’t just bring sweet outdoor beach moments and a rather curious taxi ride home. No, the evening also brought me to the bar’s sanitary facilities.
I tried to fight it. I didn’t want to go inside. I expected trouble that went beyond my general distrust of public restrooms.
People lurked near the entrance. It looked, sounded, and smelled suspicious.
But the rare beer I had been convinced to try left me no choice.
I walked toward the entrance, head down, eyes focused on the ground with the occasional glance at the people in my way. The noise of the evening faded as I stepped into the dark building. I remember the color green dominating the walls.
I remember small groups of people standing scattered around the hallways. The rest of the ordeal was one of those let’s just get on with it moments. I was relieved when I emerged from the darkness a few moments later.
The second memory brings us to Theo’s home. It’s an unsavory memory, so I spare you the descriptions. But a long day at the improvised newsroom had taken its toll. Theo proudly pointed out the bathroom. All I could see was standing water and a non-cooperative flushing mechanism. Mhm. Retreat and patience it was.
A more pleasant topic is showers. Oh. I have fond shower memories of my time in Ghana, full of unique shocks jolting through my body and mind.
Gloria instructed us that running water wasn’t a given. It could work. Or it couldn’t work. In case it didn’t, there was a big barrel in the corner of the shower. It was filled with clean water and a bowl.
I don’t think I ever enjoyed the luxury of a full shower under running water. When it worked, it didn’t last long enough. I still recall the shivers and goosebumps from the unexpected icy splash that made my first shower an unforgettable experience.
All the showers that followed were cold and often manual labor. Dunk the bowl, fill it with water, and splash it over yourself. Repeat.
It’s both humbling and fascinating. Most importantly, one gets used to it. The adaptions take a day or two, but whether hot, warm, or ice cold, running water or manual splashes, a shower is a shower. It’s as easy as that.
Gecko shower surprises
I wrote about a special shower guest before, but I found more details of the experience in my journal.
It wasn’t even 6 o’clock when the alarm abruptly ended the most comfortable night in two weeks. I’m usually good at early morning starts, but that morning, I didn’t “wanna get up this early,” as I recorded my reaction to the beeping camera phone (quite the new thing back then.)
We inspected the amenities after check-in. What we saw gave us reason to believe we would not only get a comfortable bed but also a shower de luxe. The anticipation of a hot shower made it a bit easier to get out of bed.
I opened the door to the bathroom, put my stuff on the floor, and… uh… stared at a gecko in the corner of the spacious open shower cabin. It was a tiny thing, more cute than threatening.
Still, “I go in as carefully as possible and start the shower,” I wrote about the moment. The next few minutes were a constant back and forth between shower duties and eyeing the small, green creature with suspicion and anticipation. I didn’t want to harm the poor fella, but I also didn’t “want this gecko on me,” as my journal concluded.
Keeping that shower short was made easy by another fact.
“Brrrrrr…,” I chronicled my reaction to the water streaming out of the oversized shower head. “That water isn’t hot…,” the entry continues, “it’s not even warm. The water is as cold as at Gloria’s… uh…”
No movement of the knobs changed the water temperature.
“Well,” my reaction reads, “another cold shower in the morning… fine.”
Liquid gold
Drinking was an essential task living in Ghana. The induction tour on my first full day in the country included instructions on obtaining safe drinking water and the strong recommendation to keep one of the special containers with us wherever we went.
At first, it was a curious sensation holding a cold and squishy bag of water, biting off one corner, and holding it just right to let the life-necessity pour out, hoping you aimed correctly and avoided wasting precious water.
I very quickly realized the unusual way of drinking was an incentive to drink more. It was fun.
And it was cheap fun. One sachet held 500 milliliters (half a liter or 16 oz) or thereabouts. I think I kept one of the empty bags, but I’m not sure it’s still part of my memorabilia collection.
Anyway, one bag cost 5 Pesewas or 0.05 Ghana Cedi. In today’s money, that equals 0.0035 € (it could have equated to more in 2008, and it probably sells for more these days, but it was very inexpensive).
There was only one rule to remember: always ask for “pure water.” If those two words weren’t printed on the little bag, it most likely contained water, which was unsafe to drink.
“Take it… next time you come, you get the water…” reads one of the lines of my journal from a hectic Publishing Wednesday, preceded by the confession that “I almost forgot to tell you about the best thing of the day.”
“Best thing” is one way of describing the memory. “Embarrassing thing” would have also fit the bill, so would escaping an easy foreigner trap.
I remembered the shop close to the copy shop, which served as our newsroom hub for the days the newspaper was finalized, from the start of that Wednesday. I bought some water there, when I arrived half an hour early to get additional information from the Internet café.
Around 4 p.m., I needed to resupply. But the owner said they were both out of water and change. That’s a problem if one wants water and has nothing smaller than a 1 Cedi bill.
Problem one could be remedied. The merchant had an additional supply in a nearby room if I decipher my fragmented account correctly.
But I had no use for 10 liters of water, nor was exhausted me in the mood to pay 20 times what I owed.
“Take it…,” I recorded the owner’s dubious offer, “next time you come, you get the water…”
Mate, I must have thought. I’m only here once a week. Even if I stick out like a sore thumb, you want me to believe you’ll remember to give me free water for the rest of my time here? I was too tired from the arduous and chaotic reality of doing journalism at the Trust to think the situation through. Maybe I was rude. Maybe I prevented being scammed. I was too toast to care. I somehow convinced the man to return the Cedi note he had kept safely in his fist during the brief exchange and left as thirsty as before.
“Across the street,” to conclude the tired hunt for afternoon refreshments from my journal, “in a little kind of barber shop, I got the water and my change!”
Puzzle solved
I shared the incident that led to a very special day of my time in Ghana.
But when I wrote about visiting Ghanaian police to report a stolen camera, I couldn’t recall the name of my local guardian angel who helped me navigate the complicated realities of local law enforcement.
I admitted I didn’t have his name on file and called him Jeremy, knowing it would probably be incorrect.
Well, the last 1,700 words of my journal included his name. It’s Eric.
I knew it was in there somewhere. Having found it gives me renewed hope to unlock more of the memories, facts, and emotions I suspect are still trapped between the covers of the frail wire-bound notebook.
That’s all for this week. Next week, I’ll have a writing update about a simple but exciting three-word question and more on what I started last week — the quest for nonfiction inspiration and stories.
