Fire in the Congo

There aren't a lot of "rain" showerheads in the Congo. In fact, there aren't a lot of showers in the Congo. Mostly, I've enjoyed jungle showers, which involve heating water over fire (even the most hardened traveler prefers warm showers to cold, unless he/she is trying to prove something to him/herself), mixing hot with cold in a large plastic bucket, pouring the water (sparingly, unless you'd like to dash out, naked and soapy, to mix more hot and cold water) over your body, soaping, and rinsing.

It's not bad, actually. The critical bit, you may have discerned, is the heating of the water. Luckily for me, on only one occasion had that step been overlooked by the people charged with the task.

Fire has other uses in the Congo. As can be seen in the second photograph above, it can be used to turn bread into toast. Charcoal braziers are used by many people to cook/heat food, and as may be imagined, open fires can be ... dangerous. See third photo.

Quite a lot of children (and untreated epileptics) in the Congo fall into cooking fires at home, incurring nasty burns, sometimes on more than one occasion. It's tough to see, but amazingly, I never heard so much as a whimper out of any of these kids. [Until the nurses' needles come out ...]