My first shower in Brazil was on June 8, 1997. Don’t ask how I remember…I just keep track of dates well. In any case, it was a bit unusual for me, for two reasons. First, the toilet was literally in the shower. There was no curtain or box around the space for the shower, and I found myself navigating around the toilet as I showered. Second, the shower head was electric.
Growing up in the Midwestern United States, I had the same shower experience as pretty much everyone else in my country. You have hot water and cold water available and you turn them on in the right proportions to be comfortable. The water is heated in a gas or electric water heater somewhere else in the house. Not so in Brazil.
The shower head in Brazil does the heating. Plugged into the wall in the shower, the water pours over heated coils inside the shower head and then out. If the water pressure is low, the water will take longer to go over the coils and therefore come out hotter. If you want cooler water, you turn up the shower pressure, because then the water doesn’t stay on the coils as long.
It’s a sobering experience to see one of these shower heads for the first time. Some are neatly plugged into an outlet above the shower head on the wall. Many, though, consist of wires sticking out of the shower head and fastened onto other wires sticking out of the wall, or jammed into some sort of outlet. Still, electrocution seems to be a rare occurrence.
You might get a shock from one of these showers, but it probably won’t be lethal. One of the members of my mission internship team lived with a family whose shower gave out intermittent shocks. Once or twice every time she showered she got a minor shock. I teased her that it would affect her psychologically and make her fear running water.
This type of shower head is evidently common in Latin America generally and, so I’m told, in many parts of Africa. Having not been to Spanish-speaking countries, nor the continent of Africa, I can only share what I’ve read online.
Personally, I’ve never had a bad experience with this type of shower head, although every time I had to install one myself I worried. I don’t like dealing with electricity, and for the most part the charge coming in off the power lines in Brazil into the house is 220v. Not something to be toyed with.
Living in one place, or even one country, we can get the idea that things are essentially the same everywhere. In a sense, I suppose they are. Showers are pretty common as a way of bathing worldwide, but what mechanism is in place to make that happen can vary. Other aspects of culture can be the same as well, catching us by surprise and showing us that while some things are universal, or nearly so, it’s in the details that things get interesting.
Uberlândia Development Initiatives is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that promotes community development projects in Uberlândia, Brazil, focusing on at-risk youth and their families. To learn more, visit our website at udibrazil.org.