Tales of the Volcanic Shower Monster

About five weeks ago, our shower exploded. Yes, this is a real story.

So, it’s a Tuesday evening. I undress, excited to rid myself of the day’s grime, ready to embrace the tiny, warm trickle that is our normal shower output (assuming that both the water and the electricity are on at the same time). I reach in to turn on the shower, and immediately the shower head starts shooting out highly pressurized steam, which then turns into highly pressurized, hot, black smoke. Panicking, I then notice that the showerhead itself has turned into a glowing orange fire ball, complete with unidentified black ooze (lava?!) and melting white plastic.

I scream for my husband, for two reasons. Reason 1: I want to verify that this event is in fact happening and is not a strange hallucination. Reason 2: I dare not attempt to rectify the situation in my vulnerable state of nakedness, fearing for the wellbeing of my skin and my hair and my life.

Lenny comes to the rescue, in all his clothed glory, bravely defying the volcanic shower monster, and he turns the nozzle off, eliminating the shooting smoke. Yay, Lenny!

I proceed to dress myself and march over to our landlord’s house to share the details of my harrowing exploit. In Spanish. (La ducha es un monstruo volcánico!) They listen calmly and say they’ll send the electrician to check it out in the next day or so.

Four days later (during which we have been trekking over to a friend’s house to shower), the electrician comes, muttering a bunch of unintelligible Spanishy phrases and moving wires here and there. He says he can fix it with the right tools.

A few more days go by, and we come home from school to the pleasant surprise of a “fixed” showerhead. Against all odds, the showerhead, now half covered with electrical tape, has been salvaged. Cautiously (and with my clothes on), I turn on the shower nozzle, not believing that said showerhead is fixable. But alas, out comes water, and no burning balls of flame are in sight! What a typical American I have been, so eager to throw something in the garbage at the first sight of trouble!

I rip off my clothes and hop in, only to realize that the water is scalding hot. Never in the past did it even reach any temperature near hot. It is so hot that I cannot even touch the water. Somehow the shower has been fixed in such a way that the new set of wires are super-heating the water. There is no other temperature – only boiling hot.

Well, this is not a problem I can’t handle, so I turn the shower off, which turns the showerhead mechanism off. The water slowly transforms to cold and then goes off. I turn the shower back on. The water slowly transforms to hot. Once too hot to handle, I turn the shower off again. And repeat. A million times. Until I can get my body relatively clean.

But then a new problem occurs: the shower has tripped the electrical fuse. So the power is off, and only cold water is coming out. Lenny again to the rescue! He stands next to our fuse box, flipping the switch back and forth every time the shower trips the electricity (which is about every twenty seconds). And this is how we proceeded to shower for the next week – one person in the shower, turning the water off and on, and one person standing next to the electrical box, flipping the switch back and forth.

We decide that this is probably not safe, and so back to the landlord we go. They say the voltage is too high for this slightly injured showerhead, so they decide to have the electrician come back and redo the wiring so that it connects to a lower voltage hook-up. And so he does.

Finally, our shower should be a dreamy water wonderland! But this is not meant to be. Our “fixed” shower no longer trickles out boiling water. Now it is only cold. Take-your-breath-away cold. Shivering, teeth chattering cold. And now when we shower, we are constantly shocked by the electrical current. Many times I have emerged from my rapid-speed, chilly showers with my fingers and hands numb and tingling from all the electrical zaps. They are constantly getting shocked while I wash out my hair.

Supposedly they’ve ordered a new showerhead for us. It’s supposed to be coming next week. We now have a better understanding why these heat-as-you-go shower contraptions are dubbed “widow makers.”

Last weekend, I was feeling all “woe is me and my shower situation.” And then God smiled down at ridiculous me, and the water went out for the whole weekend. (It goes out every day from 7 am to 7 pm, but not usually 72 hours straight…) After a sweaty, frustrating weekend, I came to the realization that I was being an ungrateful infant who had lost perspective.

Because most of the world does not have running water. Jesus never had a hot shower. Around here, people can’t believe that you would waste perfectly good drinking water for bathing, like most Americans do. Hot, clean water is a luxury, not a necessity.

And there are lots of people in the world who aren’t even getting their daily necessities. Who am I to complain about not getting the luxuries I want, when I am consistently given the necessities I really need? A roof over my head, clean clothes to wear, three meals a day, reliable income, a fulfilling job, health and strength, a husband who loves me.

My blessings abound.

Thank you, LORD.

Forgive me for my fickle spirit and for my self-entitled tendencies, and give me a renewed and grateful perspective on the gifts you’ve piled up high around me, cold showers and all. 

The New Crew

We’ve been back exactly one month. In most ways, it’s been easy to slip back into the routine of life in this tiny town: teaching, eating, sleeping, repeat, with an occasional shower thrown in when available. The transition has been much smoother than last year, knowing what to expect (rocks and mud, rice and beans, roosters, nightly thunderstorms, and such) and knowing what not to expect (hot water, nights free of fireworks, cheeseburgers, healthy-looking dogs, and such).

But there is one thing that I didn’t expect. The loneliness. After all, I am surrounded by sticky, loud, affectionate teenagers all day long. And on the weekends, there are always kids around, ever ready for a pick-up volleyball game or a game of Uno. But that’s not what I mean.

It’s different this year. Last year, we quickly developed our crew, our La Unión family. Six gringas and my husband, facing the culture shock together. And although our constant interaction had its moments of drama and tension, it was more often a source of support, challenge and encouragement. We knew each other inside and out, sometimes uncovering more information than we would have preferred to know. We knew about each other’s crazy families, and terrible teaching days, and idealistic dreams for the future. It’s the kind of intimacy that can best be fostered while crammed together in the back of a pick-up truck, huddled together under a tarp, hoping that the rain and hail will soon let up, so that we can actually enjoy our four-hour mountain trek back “home.” We would never have survived the past year without each other.

This year we have met a whole new bunch of foreign teachers. They seem like perfectly nice, good people. But we don’t know them. And they don’t know us.

The first few days of school, I kept looking at the new teachers and thinking, “What are YOU doing here?! That’s not your classroom!”

Being the quiet-loving introvert that I am, the thought of starting over with new people has seemed kinda overwhelming. The relational journey from strangers to co-workers to friends to family has seemed like a long and tiring one. And so I’ve been holding myself back much more than last year, guarding my heart from those who have yet to prove that they are upright citizens who are worthy of my time and affection.

But slowly, despite my best efforts to keep the newbies at arm’s length, I’m starting to warm to them. They are different, but they’re not all bad. They, too, have crazy families and terrible teaching days and idealistic dreams for the future. And they, too, are imago dei-bearers, unique and lovable and broken and amazing.

So, I’ve decided to keep them. As if I ever had anything to say about the matter. After all, we don’t get to choose our family. And as much as I’d like to say that I can make it through another year of Honduran mountain living on my own, it’s just not true. I need them, and they need me, and that’s the way life’s meant to be.

So, newbies, welcome to the family.