Liquid Soap

As much as I wanted to, I could never get passed it. I could never believe that this little blue bar of soap, used by dozens of people and residing on this dirty pink-colored sink in the open Nica air, could provide the bacteria-free cleanliness I desired.



Sure - you could argue that any form of soap serves its purpose. But before you do, let me make my case.



I know it has happened to you: You open a box and pull out a fresh bar of soap, feeling a sense of relief that the bar is whole - that it is solid - that you can run it up and down your body. You have little concern that it will slip from your hands, that it is covered with mysterious hairs, or that it has fallen to the floor. You are not frustrated by the fact that it has broken into pieces, or disintegrated to a point where you are hanging on to its last, remaining scraps, desperately trying not be wasteful.

In Nicaragua, the situation is no different. That bar becomes slick. It falls. It breaks. It disintegrates into little tiny scraps that you just want to throw away, but don't have the heart to. This is what we use to wash our hands - that "bar" - with no liquid soap in sight.

I could never understand why my office uses a bar of soap when liquid soap is readily available in nearly every store. Is it a money issue? Does liquid soap cost more? Do people even know that liquid soap exists? Or, do people just prefer using a solid bar of soap?

I opted to conduct an experiment: I would buy a container of liquid soap, and monitor its rate of consumption. I would see if people actually preferred the bar of soap, or if they had simply never experienced the benefits and joy of its dispensable liquid rival.

After several weeks of experimentation, the answer was clear - liquid soap won out. But now that it won, and, consequently, ran out, I wondered how its existence could be sustained. Would I be responsible for replenishing the liquid soap every time it ran out? Would those who enjoyably consumed it catch my drift and buy some on their own accord?

I decided it was not my place to purchase and sustain this idea. If a bar of soap is preferable to liquid, who am I, a foreigner, to mandate that my preference be heard?

Nearly two days after my container of soap was finished, I approached the bathroom mid-morning, and to my pleasant surprise a container of liquid soap had reappeared. The best news: I had nothing to do with it.










This might not seem like a big deal to any of you, but you have to realize something. Part of development is exposing others to something new - to something different - to something that could potentially enhance quality of life. More often than not, your attempt to "expose" lands you in same exact place where you began, only with a few more gray hairs.

So, who am I to say that a type of soap matters to anyone but me? Nobody. But still it makes me wonder:

How much of "the way we live our lives" is a result of what we choose versus a result of not knowing any different?

Living in the second poorest country in the America's, I have my guess.