After about a week, I decided to call it Earl, being the first name that popped into my head at the point of extreme frustration during the first week and a half of my visit here. I was in need of something to call it as I tried to coax water, hot or cold, out of it at five in the morning during their freezing cold rainy season.
My shower has a shower head about the size of my hand, extending from a metal pole on the side of the shower. Every morning, I turn on the cold water with the one handle provided, and water pours out in abundance.
Then.
To attempt to turn on the hot water, you have to flip a switch next to the shower to turn on the electricity that supposedly heats the water. It send a steady electrical current through the lowest part of the shower head, so that the water will be heated as it passes through this current - all seconds before it hits you on the head. Here several problems occur. As soon as I flip the switch, the cascade of water coming from the shower head turns to a trickle, roughly the size of the diameter of a nickel. This is all the water that has ever come out of the shower after I flip the switch. IF this water is warm, which really does make my day, I still have some problems. Most of these, not surprisingly, are connected to the fact that I am standing in a puddle of water with an open electrical current running through it just before it hits my head. If I touch the shower head, I get thoroughly shocked. If I reach my hand up in the water within about a foot of the shower head, I get shocked. I often wonder when this invisible barrier that stops the rest of the water from being electrically charged will change or disappear, and I will be completely zapped!
All in all, the process of taking a shower is very risky business, and each morning that I successfully survive it, I feel a great sense of personal accomplishment, and say a prayer of thanks that I am still alive.
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