Water + Electricity = Electrocution

Ever since humans invented electricity, this mantra has been an important one to live by. I have always been especially paranoid about electrocution--beyond my regular paranoias about plane crashes and car wrecks. So paranoid, in fact, that I told my best friend in 4th grade that if she EVER, at any time in the future, heard that I had died of electrocution, she MUST investigate, because I am so careful about electricity that it wouldn't be an accident, it would be MURDER.

Latin America is one of the worst places to live if you are paranoid about electrocution. Once, I lived in a village where almost every house was provided electricity by a series of very long extension cords. Not realizing that my entire house's supply of electricity was through one small cord that was draped at about eye level through the central courtyard, I assumed that the cord was a clothesline. I hung a bunch of drenched huipils to dry on it, the cord broke, the huipils fell into the dirt, and we spent quite a bit of time without power. Finally, when my friend's father got home from work, he helped us reconnect, and we all stood around in the midst of a torrential downpour with different bits of electrical cords in our hands. Here is the village of loopty-loop extension cords where I lived:



When choosing my apartment in Mexico City, I nearly turned down a good view and a good location, not because it is a sixth floor walk up, not because it's basically a double wide trailer placed haphazardly on the top of a building--I nearly turned down my apartment because of the shower.



Showers like this work on the presumption that Water + Electricity = Hot Water, not Electrocution. I used to find them rather disturbing, but harmless. Then I lived in a house in Guatemala where something had gone terribly wrong. Every time we touched the faucet to turn the water on, we got a shock. Literally. Everyone had their own special way of dealing with the situation--some people used a towel to turn the shower on, others took cold showers, I used a piece of rubber to touch the faucet, wore rubber flip flops and only put parts of my body into the stream of water. Since then, I have feared these showers. Here is a close up--yes, electricity comes through the cords in the wall, and water comes up from the metal pipe below--and it all gets mixed together in the shower head.


I mentioned my predicament to a couple friends at school, hoping to be reassured that I am not going to be electrocuted during my morning shower. Sadly, it turns out that this fine invention is strictly for the commoners. None of the sheltered rich kids at my university had any idea what I was talking about when I described a Lorenzetti shower head. Here is the view of snow capped mountains from my desk--for this view I risk electrocution on a daily basis.