Uganda Flashback

Ya know how they say sensory experiences trigger memories? Like when you get a whiff your mom's fabric softener and it makes you think of when she did your laundry? Or when you catch the aroma of a long-ago date's fragrance and you're instantly transported back to another day and time? Well, I had a sensory triggered flashback Thursday morning--only it was tactile and the time frame wasn't that long ago. Right about the time I got up to brush my teeth, our power went out. I had planned to work out, get the kids off to school, then shower before going to work. Plans change.

I first had to go into crisis management mode. Were the two teenagers up? Had my son taken his shower? What was my daughter going to do about her hair? (And that turned into a major life crisis--yearbook pictures were that day and she didn't want her children and her children's children seeing her without her hair straightened [she actually said that!!!] She ended up going over to a friend's house to get ready for school. She had less than a half hour for picture-ready primping.

Okay, now to the Uganda connection. My son used all the hot water, and there was no chance for it to recup before the power went off. I really woke up to a cold shower with the get wet, wash up, take a deep breath and turn the water back on for a rinse technique. It made me think about Uganda, where the shower was cold, and really appreciate our guest house hosts at Nyaka, who boiled water over an open fire twice a day so we would have warm water. They would bring in 1 or 2 yellow plastic "gerry cans" (sp?) of water, like you see in the picture, and set them in the bathroom at 6:30 am and 4p. We could then pour them into a plastic basin and use that water for more comfortable clean-up. (Those yellow water cans were EVERYWHERE in Uganda-you'd see women carrying them on their heads and even children carrying them from the nearest water source to their home. They are very heavy! The younger children carried smaller containers that looked like an 1 gallon anti-freeze jug.)

Nobody at home boiled water over an open fire for me that morning, even though my husband was home. ;) Welcome back to America!