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Shower powerNot a bucket-of-water-heated-over-the-camp-stove kind
Editor's note: In our Behind the Scenes series, CNN correspondents share their experiences in covering news around the world. By
Martin Savidge KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (CNN) -- It's amazing what you'll put up with for a shower. I should clarify: It's amazing what you'll do if you haven't taken one for almost a month. Oh, I bathe, don't get me wrong: A-bucket-of-water-heated-over-the-camp-stove kind of washing. The same bucket that my month-old socks are soaking in right now. And it works. To a point. That point would be from my waist down. No, I'm talking about a water-blasting, out-the-nozzle, superheated, steam-raising, lather-inducing dousing. And the showers have come to "Camp Kandahar" -- our media headquarters here at the Kandahar Airport military base.
To understand what sort of rapture this brings to my life I suggest the following experiment.
Again douse yourself and everything you have with the sand/flour combination because I'm sure you missed a spot. I thought about all of this as I waited in the shower line. I waited even as heavy Army trucks kept passing through. I waited as the Germans cut through with their dirty laundry. (Yes, we have a laundry now, too.) I neither grumbled nor fidgeted. My eyes locked on the rubber flap of the shower tent. Someone has to come out before someone goes in. Do you have any idea how long a person who hasn't had a shower in a month will take when given the chance? An eternity! At least that's how it seems to those not yet beyond the rubber curtain. We waited, oblivious to everything else around us, including the sign that asked us to wait beside the tent instead of in front of it so as not to block traffic. Until a soldier walked up and said, "It's broken." The line vanished like our sudsy dreams. One minute it was there, then -- "pop" -- gone. I slogged off across the base through dust so deep that if it were snow it would close Atlanta schools for a week. All the while wishing I had waited before soaking those socks in my bucket bath tub.
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