More than a month ago, I started preparing an entry for the blog. It started like this:
“Over the last few weeks there has been almost no time or opportunity to post updates on the blog. ...”
We have been travelling over rough terrain – literally 'building' roads as we trundle along, many days doing no more than 20 kilometres in 8 hours and then, when we stop to set up bush camp, we are all exhausted and go through the motions of pitching tents, preparing food, eating, washing dishes and flapping them dry, packing everything away and going to sleep – only to get up before dawn and make ready to set off again into the unknown.
Many days we were travelling in the centre of a red dust cloud and to pull out any sensitive equipment such as cameras and laptops would have been as good as giving them their death sentence. That rich red talcum powder dust creeps in everywhere; into the tightest sealed containers, into the very fibres of fabric, into pores, under nails and over hair, into your shampoo and your sun cream, into the rice and the sugar, the oats and the powdered milk –and everything turns pinkish red – everything – our food and our clothes, our soap and our creams, our skins and our hair. We were turned into red people.
And, to be bush camping when we are constantly being covered in red dust, does not make life very easy! I think – judging by people in the group's colour when we arrived in Matadi where we camped in the grounds of a convent and where a shower was made available to us – it is really only Mark, Tash, Emy and I who have mastered the art of the bush shower. The four of us have managed to find a private spot somewhere every night where we disappear to with our 5litre bottle of water, our scoop (usually made of the cut off bottom part of a plastic water bottle), our soap and shampoo and, in my case, a good hard nail brush. Emy has a small plastic mat which she uses to stand on. I usually take one of the small camping stools to sit on while washing hair and showering, finding that easier to economise on water, and Tash, (being the little princess she is!), is a past master at constructing a brilliant little 'shower cubicle' with a large beach towel, a few obliging tree branches and a bush or two, a stray flat rock or piece of wood to stand on and a large stone for her soaps and shampoos, conditioners and toners.
There are few things, the four of us agree, more rewarding and as pleasurable than to strip down in the middle of the wild African bush, where it is just you and nature, under the starry skies, and to wash away all that dust and dirt of the long day. In fact, not one of – at least the four of us can imagine anything better than to go to bed at night feeling clean and fresh. We have also become quite adept at achieving that feeling with the use of very little water. There is an art in starting at the top with shampooing ones hair, taking advantage of the foamy water running down from your head over your body to lather the rest of you and then, at exactly the right speed, letting the scoops of water from the top wash down all the soap right to the bottom of your feet. A 5litre bottle of water is good for three or four showers – and easily refillable at a roadside stream or village well.
But, I digress.
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