MacGyver Moves

One big part of traveling, particularly to the places that I go to, is the need to go with the flow and improvise when need be. For those of you who are Americans, or lived through the 80s, you might know of MacGyver, who was legendary at fixing anything with a little improvising, as the world was threatened to come to an end around him.

In the field it is good to keep in mind MacGyver moves, as you never know when you’ll need them.

The other night when I tried to take a shower after a long day on the road, the water pressure was abysmal. Water pressure is something you don’t even pay attention to, unless you don’t have it.

In this case, it was one of those systems where it is a bathtub with a showerhead on a cord that is too short to hold above your head. Yet, with the water pressure as bad as it was, it was barely at a dribble initially and then stopped flowing entirely if it went above the level of the faucet. This meant, that even squatting, I had to bend my head all the way down just to get a dribble of water. Knowing a dying cause when I saw one, I opted to just get my hair wet and see what I could manage in the morning.

I ended up getting a bucket from the front desk, but they didn’t have a cup to scoop the water in to have a bucket bath. After looking around for what might pass as a scooper, I took matters into my own hands.

Finding a broken piece of the TV antennae, I used this to stab through an empty water bottle and rip off the top half to make it into an improvised cup. In the mean time I was filling the bucket with water, as the dribble was so slow that it took 15 minutes to fill a bucket.

But alas, a shower! The water was even warm; my first hot “shower” since arriving in DRC. Life is good.

Miel