Shower in the Church

Camping in the wild. PRO: its most obvious advantage is its price: it’s free. CON: one have to suffer all the disadvantages it’s bundled with. For one: you don’t have hygiene facilities, when you camp in the wild you have to come up with something on your own.

by FERENC IVANICS
To spread our message of peace we need to visit many places, meet people, and lots of them. We want to show them our interpretation of the road to peace: friendship and brotherhood. But what do those people think about two raggedy-ass travelers who stink and have untidy, scruffy hair. Well, they avoid them, without listening to them or considering them as friends or brothers. So we have to be persistent, authentic and clean.


We had our last shower months ago, in Mauritania. In the hills of Málaga the thing works like this: we find a clean fountain where we fill our bottles with water. We pick a clean peace of cloth, a T-shirt, for example, and enter our tents with the clean cloth and a bottle of clean water. Each of us to his own tent, of course. There we get undressed and rub our entire body with the wet cloth, thoroughly, rinsing the cloth various times. Then we shiver a bit until we get dry. Not the perfect solution, I can assure you. And it takes the skills of an acrobat sometimes. So we really needed a shower.


The only place we knew about that had a free shower was the local office of Red Cross, but they told us there that they only dealt with drug-addicts in their facility. Some experienced hobos told us that means you have to say—with the appropriate remorseful look—that you are a heroine addict. Or try your luck with a confession about a combination of booze and pot. But we didn’t want to lie nor to take away the chance from a real addict.


One day a poor-looking man stepped up to us and started to jabber about showers and food and haircuts. Mentioning many times something called “San Juan de Dios”. When answering our questions he told us that it was a church, some 300 yards from our begging spot. A few minutes later we were there and saw that yes, the church offered many services for those in need. We picked shower and haicut.


Of course, it’s not that easy. Although we can recommend their services to anyone, a good amount of patience is needed. First you have to visit the office and ask for a certificate about your social status. We spent two hours in a queue, but after explaining our situation in a few words we got the certificate. Then we had to check on the info-board which services are available on which days. We took note and left. We imagined that we would have to stand in lines, the church has two showers and one barber only. And so it happened. Three hours in a line, but it was worth it. Not the hot, steamy shower we dream about, but a real luxury compared to using a wet T-shirt in a tent. The barber shaved our heads in a minunte or so (two heads in a minute, that’s something :). Anyways, we think it’s a great idea, well implemented. We’d recommend the place to anyone who gets in trouble.