July 23, 2008 - Copan, Honduras

"You can get a university education these days and still not know the basics of how our society works."
-Elvia Alvarado

Copan has now been without running water for four days and they don´t know when it will return. A fear that drinking water is getting low has also risen. We learned that the surrounding villages have running water, but because of the tourist industry the government controls Copan water. For some reason the government can´t get a pipe fixed, but hundreds of repressed and uneducated villagers have no problem showering tonight.

In order to not offend the others, it became necessary to bathe today. The process involved filling a bucked, 2 feet in diameter and a foot in depth, with rainwater pooring off the side of the building. Then, by placing both feet in the bucked curled into a tiny ball in order to wash my hair and get to all the hard to reach places. It´s important to not waste any water at this point, until more rain comes, so the dirty water is kept for possible future bathing and to force flush the toilet.

For thousands of years, this is how humans bathed and how much of the world continues to bathe today.