Resident Report

Dear Montefiore Residents Coming After Me,

The apartment you will be staying in is simple and spare. All the floors are concrete. The small living room has a couch and two chairs, none of which are “comfortable” by our double-stuffed double-padded extra-plush American standards. Padding here means a hint of dry beige sponge. A Ugandan couch is essentially a bench with a thin layer of foam wrapped around it. And by the way, your bed is a double thick slab of that same beige foam.

There’s a little gas two-burner stove in the kitchen, attached to a propane tank. I connected the stove to the tank without incident, but halfway through my meal heard a hissing sound. Because of a loose connection, the propane was leaking from the tank. And yes, this was while the burner was lit. No adverse events occurred. Just something to be aware of...

There’s a sink, obviously. But very little counter space to prepare food. But you’re probably not going to be cooking gourmet three-course meals anyway, so it all works out.

I’m not saying there’s no food around, because there is. There’s just not much variety. If it’s grown on the hillsides, you can buy it in the market: tomatoes, onions, bananas, potatoes. All the little shops along the main road sell exactly the same thing: soap, cooking oil, matches, plastic basins. Everything you need to survive.

(survival: It reminds you how in the U.S. that little detail gets swept aside. We’re so far beyond it. When you stroll through Whole Foods glancing at little packages of organic artichoke hearts for nine dollars, you can forget that the reason we started cultivating them to begin with was to keep us alive.)

There’s no hot water. But this gives you the opportunity to experience the joys of the basin shower. I’m serious, actually. I realize that 99% of what I’ve written so far has been smarmy and sarcastic, but go with me on this: I love the basin shower.

Here’s how you have a basin shower:
1) You boil up a big pot of hot water.
2) You split the hot water between the two wide plastic basins in the bathroom.
3) You add enough cold water from the bathroom tap to make the water just right.
4) You squat. Naked.
5) Before doing #4, make sure all the curtains are closed.
6) You splash hot water all over yourself.
7) You designate one basin soapy and one clear.
8) You soap yourself up from the soapy basin
9) You rinse yourself down from the clear basin.

You have to keep your hands as unsoapy as possible when you put them in the clear basin, which can be hard. But if you fail, you’ll be left with two basins of soapy water and nothing to rinse off with. Which means you’ll have to turn on the cold shower. I’ve been there, and I’m sorry in advance if it happens to you.

Why is the basin shower so great? One word: mess. Sure, when you take a normal shower there’s water splashing everywhere. In theory that’s messy. But it doesn’t feel messy. When you take a basin shower in your apartment in Kisoro, you’re squatting on the floor of your bathroom. With the door open. You’re scooping water up in your palms and throwing it all over the place. I threw water into the kitchen during my last basin shower. My towel got wet. Give yourself over to the reckless abandon, that’s my advice. Have fun.