The Following Was Posted Thursday, June 02, 2005
230 Volts of Wet Fun
Nothing tests your desire for a warm shower like the site of a shabby electric water heater built directly into a leaky shower head. Stepping into this chamber on my first morning at the hostel felt like some sort of initiation, a joke to see which rookies would be foolish enough to stand naked on a wet concrete floor and touch a contraption connected to 230 volts by ten-gauge wire and electrical tape. All I needed was a black hood and a some reconnections of the wires in unspeakable places, and the Abu Graib image would be complete.
I decided to opt for the cold shower in the next stall. A few days later, even that option fell to some sort of technical failure, and I had to settle for a bucket shower.
Eventually, I did give the electric heater a half-hearted effort. I tapped on the breaker switch and jiggled the shower head, according to directions from my fellow Habitat volunteers. People I trusted. With my life. At one point, the water in the shower head gave a mechanical moan and drew some of the electrical current from the light bulb hanging by a wire from the ceiling. I screamed twice, first from the sudden splash of hot water – way too hot – and then from the sudden ice cold water that followed. As the shower head moaned again, building up for another assault on my goose bumped skin, I killed the water pressure and used my rubber flip-flop to knock the circuit breaker on the wall to its off position. Then I used it to swat a mosquito.
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Nothing tests your desire for a warm shower like the site of a shabby electric water heater built directly into a leaky shower head. Stepping into this chamber on my first morning at the hostel felt like some sort of initiation, a joke to see which rookies would be foolish enough to stand naked on a wet concrete floor and touch a contraption connected to 230 volts by ten-gauge wire and electrical tape. All I needed was a black hood and a some reconnections of the wires in unspeakable places, and the Abu Graib image would be complete.
I decided to opt for the cold shower in the next stall. A few days later, even that option fell to some sort of technical failure, and I had to settle for a bucket shower.
Eventually, I did give the electric heater a half-hearted effort. I tapped on the breaker switch and jiggled the shower head, according to directions from my fellow Habitat volunteers. People I trusted. With my life. At one point, the water in the shower head gave a mechanical moan and drew some of the electrical current from the light bulb hanging by a wire from the ceiling. I screamed twice, first from the sudden splash of hot water – way too hot – and then from the sudden ice cold water that followed. As the shower head moaned again, building up for another assault on my goose bumped skin, I killed the water pressure and used my rubber flip-flop to knock the circuit breaker on the wall to its off position. Then I used it to swat a mosquito.
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