Bucket Bathing for Beginners

This is actually not quite as difficult as it seems. Using a plastic wash basin, fill with just enough water (generally three inches worth) to spread the dirt on your body around a little more than it already is (don't expect to be able to actually get it all off). The purpose of using as little water as possible is that you quickly find water to be a great commodity, and what with it being turned off about half the time, you spend the rest of the time that it is on filling buckets to store for those times when it's off. Plus, water is heavy, and when you have to start carrying buckets to take a bath, you generally carry as little as possible.

If you can stand it (I can), it's easier to just go ahead and use cold water; otherwise you have to heat water on the wood-burning stove. For my purposes, however, cold water is key--generally, I've been a dripping ball of American sweat all day, so a cold bath before bed is the best way to sleep.

It is necessary to assume the proper position. Kneel in front of the wash basin on your white towels (which are no longer white) so that your knees don't grind into the concrete floor. Turn your head upside down and wet your hair in the three inches of cold water, shampoo, lather and rinse. This last step is more along the lines of "put your head back in the soapy water and pretend the soap actually comes out." Apply conditioner and repeat (now your hair will generally be even soapier, but that's ok--you'll sweat it out tomorrow). Next, while still kneeling beside the bucket bath, scrub your upper body with a washcloth and soap, then rinse. Climb into the bucket and kneel down to now scrub your lower body. The purpose of doing all this at the level of the floor is to of course try and spill as little water as possible (did I mention you'd be doing this in your bedroom?). That being said, you still will generally have only about one inch of water left in your wash basin, so it's fairly easy to dispose of.

Prior to this, however, it is necessary to scrub the underwear that you wore that day in what's left of your bathwater with soap, then hide it somewhere in your room to dry overnight. This is because it's not seemly to hang your underwear on the clothesline with the rest of the wash. (I actually really like this step--this way there's never any dirty underwear lying around waiting until wash day.)

Finally, you pour what's left of the water in the wash basin into a bucket to be carried out. However, if you're smart and this is your evening bath (generally they bathe here at least twice a day when the water is available), you'll keep your dirty bath water in your room overnight. This brings us to the delicate subject of what I like to call the "pee bucket."

The pee bucket serves as a receptacle for you-know-what at night. This is because most houses in villages don't have bathrooms inside. Why not go out to the pit toilet, you might ask? This seems like a simple enough question, but don't be fooled. Generally, the residents of these communities are nervous to be out at night--there's nothing to do after dark, so the only people out at that time are really up to no good. As for my purposes, there are spiders in the pit toilet, and no way in hell am I going out there at night thave them crawl on my bare butt in a coffin-sized pit toilet that smells like poop.

It's recommended that if you use your pee bucket at night, you should "dilute" it with a little waer so that you don't stink up the whole house. Then, in the morning, you have to sneak out to dispose of it, because even though everyone uses them, no one wants to be caught carrying a bucket of pee.

Here's the ingenious part. If you pee in your dirty bath water from the night before, no one will suspect when you go to carry it out in the morning. Problem solved! Just be sure and rinse the bucket out really well before bringing in your next bucket of clean water to bathe with.

A word of caution: it's called a "pee" bucket for a reason. If you have to do the other, that's just too bad.