How Many Years at The Tap End? – by Sheila

A Kilimanjaro porter with "washy washy" bowls
A Kilimanjaro porter with “washy washy” bowls

Exodus supports a charity in Tanzania which trains guides and porters to work on Kili – part of the money we raise will go to this.  Great emphasis is put on learning about health and safety: it is very important that no-one becomes ill on the trip!  No-one wants…

Dash
In
A
Real
Rush,
Hurry
Or
Else
Accident

…on a mountainside! (In the olden days we used to spend a lot of time at school learning such mnemonic phrases as an aid to spelling: I dare say SpellCheck has put paid to that!).

The guides and porters are taught about food and water safety – really important as they have to carry enough for more than a week – and also about the importance of hand washing.

However, I suspect that apart from washing ones hands, face and possibly feet using the small bowl of water one is provided with twice daily on the mountain, very little washing of bodies or clothes goes on.

I have a few friends who have expressed horror at the idea of not being able to wash their hair every day – but they couldn’t possibly carry up enough water for that as well as for drinking and hand washing.  However, I doubt the lack of such facilities will overly distress me.

As a child, my sister, brother and I all had a bath every Sunday evening.  My sister Leslie would always sit at the tap end: she was responsible, unlike me!  I had to sit right up the other end, to keep me from causing mischief with the taps or plug.  Brother Robbie was in the middle. Weekly bathing was considered fairly normal as houses did not have central heating nor constant hot water.  I think we had our hair washed in the weekly bath too, but others did not.  When we discussed this in the kitchen at Catching Lives recently, Christine said her hair was washed on alternate Sunday nights, as it was considered that too frequent washing would damage the hair.

I discovered a few years ago that my sister has spent her life sitting in baths with her head between the taps.  That’s where she was put as a child and it had never occurred to her that it might be more comfortable facing the other way.  I must find out if she has changed direction since I flagged that up.

So I think I should be able to revert to the 1950s standards of hygiene without too much difficulty on Kili!  We spend one night in a lodge both before and after our seven nights on the mountain and it has showers and even a swimming pool.  I imagine that there will be an almighty rush for both these facilities, when we make it down again.

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