African Plumbing

Now we have left sub-Saharan Africa so I though I should provide a bit of list highlighting some of the more amusing moments with African plumbing. It was a constant source of amusement to us, mostly centering around showering. So here are some of them:

• My first amusing African plumbing experience was while having a shower at our campsite near Kuger NP in South Africa. This shower when turned on, would spray horizontally directly onto the wall, so the only way I could wash myself was to hold the shower head and let the water dibble down my arm.
• There was a shower at White Mountain in the Drakensberg Mountains in South Africa that was designed for midgets, as the shower head only came up to shoulder height. Too bad if you wanted to wash your hair. The shower head was also broken on this one so to prevent the water from flowing down the wall again, I had to prop the shower head up with my soap container.
• Orange River, on the boarder between South Africa and Namibia provided an interesting showering experience, the walls were made of straw and only came up to your armpits, so while showering you could watch people playing volleyball just outside...not that anybody was at the time.
• During my shower at Fish River Canyon in Namibia, the water stopped dead as the lady next to me ran her bath water.
• At the place we stayed at in Swakopmund, Namibia, the water prefered to drain into the living room/kitchen area than down the drain in the bathroom.
• At Seronga in the Okavango Delta, Botwanna the mens and womens showers were labelled in Setswanna so we had no idea what was what...only one shower provided hot water here so it was just pot luck if you got on.
• We stayed on a houseboat on the Delta and for some reason we could only have a shower during daylight hours??
• At one particular campsite in Namibia there were showers that gave a mild electric shock when turning the taps on or off.
• In Kasane in the Chobe NP, the hot and cold water taps were placed the other way around, so I had a freezing cold shower thinking there was no hot water at all.
• At Zambezi Breezers in Zambia there was no water all due to power cuts.
• At a placed called Kuomboka in Lusaka, Zambia, we had to use the dorm room showers (as our one was broken)...these showers were basically like a telephone booth, with nowhere to hang your stuff, so all your clothes had to placed on the outside of the shower. Unfortunately some had hot water and some didn't. I of course picked the one that didn't.
• At a place called Deans Hill camp in Zambia, I finally managed to find myself a hot shower (the first for a long time), this however was so hot that it almost burnt my skin and there were more power cuts so this was done in the dark.
• Getting to the showers in the Flat Dogs campsite in South Luangwa NP was an extreme sport of dodge the elephant...I had a frog join me on one occasion.
• On our train trip from Zambia to Tanzania, the shower was basically just a hose dribbling cold water from the roof....better than nothing though.
• Manch Lodge in Zanzibar was the absolute African plumbing highlight for us though. This was were Nick decided to shave off his beard. During this process he managed to snap the tap off and had water spurting everywhere. We had to hand over the room key and wondered Stone Town while Nick sported some very interesting amusing facial hair as they fixed this problem. Then as Nick continued he blocked the sink! The rasta, looking after the place was too busy milling around doing nothing to bother fixing this for some time, but eventually it was fixed. W found out a few days later that the lodge actually had hot water, the rasta guy had just forgot to turn it back on after fixing the blocked sink. At this place we also failed to see how the water was supposed to drain away as there was no actual drain. It just seeped through a crack behind the toilet.
• At Aberge La Caverne in Rwanda you pick between having water pressure or hot water, you couldn't have both.
• Kinigi Guest House near where we went gorilla tracking provided us with our number 2 African plumbing moment. After staff forgot to turn the water on for whatever reason, some time was needed to heat the water....so after dinner we decided it was about time for a shower as we had climbed Mt Bisoke that day and were feeling very smelly and dirty. I made Nick go first due to my bad luck with showers. After turning on the hot water tap the only thing that came out was a lot of gurgling noise, so loud it made the pipes rattle. Nick tried the cold water tap thinking this may get the water flowing, but no luck there just more gurgling noises. Nick then managed to break the tap off this shower too and while fixing it with his trusty leatherman tool the water decided to cough and spurt out. At this point it was now or never so we made the most of the just above freezing water.
• I had a shower in Jinja, Uganda that had a hole in the hot water pipe, so occasionally I would get a burning sensation on my calf as the hot water sprayed out sideways.

So with all this experince I am thinking about writing a coffee table book on the best showers in Africa.

I should mention that I have had some good showers in Africa. The best was in a place called Sipi River Lodge Near Mt Elgon in Uganda and the other was at Arusha Backpackers, Tanzania....so 2 showers in 3 1/2 months isn't bad. Hehe.