Bucket Showers

You know those situations or ideas (or people, every once in awhile) that manage to be perfectly rational and utterly illogical, at the same exact time?

Bucket showers: utterly illogical. Imagine a large and flimsy bucket of water, a very stationary and grounded sort of vessel, too small to be a bath and too large to be effectively poured. Although the water in that bucket does (supposedly) possess hygienic qualities, it in no way acts or rinses or falls like any sort of shower I know.

Bucket showers: perfectly rational. Perfectly, that is, when 12 people in one household must conserve enough water for showers, dishes, cooking, clothes, toothbrushing, and most importantly, squatty potty flushing. Thus the toasty mornings in which I don’t resort to dry shampoo begin with this awkwardly executed but necessary ritual.

Pedestrians have no right away: utterly illogical. There is NEVER a time when it is your designated turn to walk across the street. What bustling urban traffic system operates like that??

Pedestrians have no right away: perfectly rational. Only a few life-threatening walks to work until I realized that actually, it is always your turn to cross the street. No waiting for signals or green lights. Just walk out into the 6 lane busy road and stare down a hopefully attentive driver. He’s 99.9% likely to choose slamming on the breaks over a hit-and-run charge.

And because I’m overseas and feel like finding meaning in every little experience is the thing to do, it makes me think…

There are a lot of ‘bucket showers’ here, situations in which I first label the completely illogical, but know that deep down it must make sense to someone. On the flip side, I’m sure there are countless things I do or say every day that seem rational to me, but appear ridiculous to everyone else. Some mornings Alex and I wake up early and run in the park (despite the heat, wearing the same amount of clothes I would for a run in late November in MN), and every man we pass gives us quite the confused look. To them, two women running early in the morning are not one but three baffling bucket-shower-sort-of-situations. What is a perfectly normal activity for Alex and me raises eyebrows of people for whom it is completely out of place.

I suppose the insightful takeaway is… people aren’t stupid. None of us act or think in ways that don’t make sense to ourselves. I suppose that’s one thing we all have in common, even if that doesn’t guarantee we share the same definition of commonsense.

Cross-cultural living and decoding each situation to find the hidden logical explanation sometimes feel like an exciting game. (Tiebreaker round if you’re up to a challenge: how to possibly think that eating goat tongue soup is a quality culinary idea. Still has me stumped). But attempting to see the logic underneath what I label as ridiculous is not a merely a game; it’s a very important habit called empathy. Whether walking in another’s shoes to understand their water conservation tricks, or pedestrian manners, or beliefs, or values, empathy is the only hope we have to really understand each other, and why we all do what we do. Still won’t motivate me to ever eat another bite of goat tongue soup; no force is that strong…