Julia Sullivan hasn’t felt “properly clean and fresh” since December, when she went home to visit her family in Johannesburg, South Africa’s largest city, from her current base in Cape Town, nearly 900 miles south on the country’s west coast. For the past year, the 26-year-old has been taking stop-start showers: She turns the water on to quickly wet her body, ensuring there are buckets by her feet to catch the water as it falls for later use; she turns it off as she soaps up; and then she turns it back on to rinse off, all in a matter of two minutes. The water, she says, is running for no more than 45 seconds total. At first, the promise of a nice, long shower during her visit home seemed like a dream—until she was standing under the water.
“It was strange, because I [felt like] couldn’t actually stay in the shower,” Sullivan says. “I think [conservation] has been so ingrained into our psyche now that you get very anxious about having the water running.” A year ago she wouldn’t have thought twice about thoroughly shampooing and conditioning her hair or meticulously shaving her legs, but that was then. This is now.
Sullivan is one of four million people living in Cape Town bracing for Day Zero—the day when the water supplies of South Africa’s second-largest metropolis are expected to run dry—on July 9, 2018. Cape Town was once lauded for its sustainability methods; in fact, it won international recognition at the C40s Cities Awards 2015 for its water-conservation practices. Yet the next few years became a quick downward spiral for Cape Town, plunging citizens into a water crisis unlike anything the city’s ever experienced. Population growth, climate change, and city mismanagement are considered the drivers behind the crisis, which experts say has been building since the mid-2000s. Originally expected to hit in April 2018, Day Zero has been pushed back to the summer, a move resulting from a combination of efforts, including micro-level conservation efforts made by locals. What started as residents taking small steps to reduce their water usage—cutting back on gardening or washing their cars, for example—now has reshaped everyday life.
In February 2018, the government placed Capetonians on Level 6B water restrictions: Residents are advised to restrict their daily water use to 50 liters—about 13 gallons—per person in a collective effort to stave off Day Zero. That means locals must do everything from dishwashing to cooking to showering and doing laundry using just 13 gallons of water. Compare that to nearly 60 gallons of daily water used by residents in Los Angeles, a city with a population just under four million people, similar in number to Cape Town. That statistic becomes more alarming in deeper context: The average American uses 88 gallons of water per day at home.
The approaching Day Zero has forced locals to make big changes to daily routines, and Capetonians seem to talk about their lives in two stages: What it was like before the crisis, and what it's like now. And for the women that comprise Cape Town's population—51 percent—living in a disaster zone affects what it means to look after themselves on the most basic of levels.
“At this stage of the game, self-care means bare necessities and doing what you need to do to function,” says 27-year-old Jessica Da Silva, a local radio presenter. Da Silva is incredulous to think that before the crisis, she considered 10 minutes to be a short shower. “That has drastically changed,” she says. “Full showers every day do not happen whatsoever compared to how [they once] did.”
Da Silva stands in her bathroom, a place “where no magic happens,” she jokes. In her bathtub are five five-liter bottles of stored water. Beside them sit a couple of empty buckets that she refers to as her friends; she never takes a shower without them. “I pop them in the shower and catch all the water during my one-minute shower.” On average, a one-minute shower uses two gallons of water. She then uses the water from the buckets to do things like wash and rinse her hair, she says.
Nowadays her social calendar dictates her daily routines, which means there are “lots of skipped showers” when they’re not necessary. Instead she relies on extra deodorant, baby powder, and hygiene wipes, concentrating on important areas.
Something else Da Silva does with less frequency: wear makeup. For example, she used to apply a basic regimen of foundation, eyeliner, mascara, lipstick much more regularly. Now she goes without it so she doesn’t have to wash it off. If she does wear makeup, she often removes it using face wipes or toner, she says.
A big sticking point for Da Silva during this crisis has been her long, thick hair—she likens herself to Samson, a Biblical figure who derived his strength from his locks—that she shampooed and conditioned every other day before the crisis. Back then, her hair was wonderful: bouncy and full of body; now it feels flat, dull, and frizzy, and looking at it makes her sad. “I can hide body hair, I can deal with no makeup, but dirty hair is trickier,” she says.
Since switching to a twice-weekly wash (once a week, if she can push it), Da Silva says dry shampoo has become one of her best friends. She’s also started wearing braids or styling it up more when it feels oily or dirty. “I just have so much hair,” she says. “It’s too difficult to [get it clean] using so little water.”
Da Silva isn’t the only one struggling with hair maintenance. Salon owners and hair stylists are noticing an increasing number of women are getting shorter cuts, a request, they say, that is a response to the crisis. By cutting their hair shorter, women feel it’s easier to handle in light of all the restrictions.
Shahnaaz Abrahams Samsodien says her hair was just below her elbow until last month, when she cut it to her shoulders. “My hair has always been long, but this drought has just pushed me over the edge,” she says. The fact that she washes her hair using leftover water from her son’s bath didn't help.
Samsodien used to shower twice a day, but she now does it only once, after putting her son to bed. She invested in a “baby dam” that she uses to cordon off a small section of the tub, where she fills up just enough water to give her year-old son a bath. Once he’s in bed, it’s her turn to get clean.
“I can literally only sit down on my knees and the water is so shallow,” the 29-year-old mother says. “I wash myself like that most days and use one jug of clean water to rinse myself off afterward.
It’s not just how she’s showering that’s changed but what she is using in the shower that’s different. Samsodien switched from bar to liquid soap, saying it’s easier to rinse. She’s also using a two-in-one shampoo and following it up with some leave-in conditioner. Her hair is much dryer at the ends because of her new routine, she admits, but it’s no bother: She’ll be “snipping it off” again, this time cutting it up to her neck—the shortest she’ll go. “I’m not daring enough for anything shorter than a bob,” she says.
Though Samsodien is Muslim, she says she seldom wore headscarves unless she was around her husband’s family. Yet since the crisis started, her scarves and even turbans have become so much a part of her ensembles that Samsodien says she can more often be seen with a scarf on her head than not. She even wears one to work.
“By the third day [without a wash]…I cannot stand the sight of my hair,” she says. “For me, [wearing a scarf] is more of a necessity than it is a religious thing.”
Charlene Miller, owner of Cape Town’s Charlie’s Angels hair salon, say she has received a few requests from clients to cut their hair shorter than usual, but that isn’t always the best solution. South Africa has an array of hair textures, Miller says, from fine to medium to coarse, and from straight to wavy to curly. “It’s a true rainbow nation,” she says. But the drought doesn’t necessarily affect one hair type more than another; what matters more is the person’s lifestyle and scalp.
“People with…an oily scalp need to shampoo more often than the average person,” Miller says. “People who are very active on a daily basis and those that work outdoors most of the day also need to shampoo more often.” What she’s noticing is that people are changing up their shampoo routines—perhaps shampooing only once instead of twice—and skipping days in between. They are also embracing their natural texture, particularly those with curly or kinky hair.
Necessity is encouraging women to champion their natural hair in Cape Town, says Safeera Neacsu, co-owner of Excentric Hair, a high-end salon that has two locations in Cape Town. Like most women, Neacsu is washing her hair less to save water and is playing with new styles. “[Women are wearing] lots of buns and cute Dutch braids…and they’re also doing the beachy-wave look,” Neacsu says.
Women are also learning to embrace hair in other places, especially on their legs. The City of Cape Town’s 50 Litre Life Campaign recommends that Capetonians use only 10 liters, about 2.5 gallons, of water for a stop-start shower, which includes washing their hair. To meet that goal, many women have abandoned their weekly shaving routines, though for some it’s a ritual they miss.
The 26-year-old Sullivan loved shaving her legs—it always left her feeling “nicely groomed”—until it meant shaving them in a bucket of murky water. She never uses fresh water to complete the process. She instead uses what she collects in buckets from a few showers, which she says is cold and gets “gross and hairy” as she uses it to get by.
“It’s such a mission,” Sullivan says. “I don’t know a single woman out of my friend group who still shaves her legs. Some people wax if they did that before, but most of my female friends have hairy legs.”
Sitaara Stodel is one such friend. Stodel went from shaving her legs twice a week to shaving them once a month at best. Her leg hair is long but sparse, she says. “You can’t really see the hair on my legs, but I suppose that’s other people’s problems,” Stodel says. “You try to tell yourself that.”
Among the biggest adjustments for Stodel has been using face wipes to clean her face— “I am kind of obsessed with washing my face with water and nothing else”—a move many other women are also taking as a way to conserve water. Others are using toners and micellar water to get the job done. Stodel is also finding an added challenge to her workout routine: post-gym showers. Like many other businesses, gyms have lowered their water pressure or shut off their taps.
“[Before the crisis], I went to the gym in the mornings or sometimes in the evenings, but now I go in the morning because I shower in the mornings, and I want that to overlap,” she explains.
But no matter how much planning Capetonian women do to save water—whether it’s cutting their hair, using face wipes, or coordinating their shower and exercise schedules—a few days each month prove more challenging than the rest as women deal with being on their periods during the crisis. Stodel says this is a major talking point among her friends. When it comes to flushing toilets, city officials have instructed residents that if it’s yellow, let it mellow.
“They have told us what to do in terms of flushing your wee, but they haven’t said anything about being on your period,” Stodel says. According to the EPA, more water is wasted through toilet bowls—the average newer model uses 1.28 gallons of clean water per flush—than any other fixture in the home.
More than that, women battle the desire to feel fresh considering the limited amount of water they’re limited to using. Skipping a wash or using wipes is not a good option, they say. Some women are switching to menstrual cups, which they find to be more sanitary and less messy than using pads and tampons.
Shana Kreusch says the drought sped up her decision to move over from using tampons and pads to using Mooncups, reusable menstrual cups made of surgical silicon. She’s been using them for nearly five months and says it’s beneficial to a more sustainable lifestyle, and it’s more hygenic because there is way less risk of leaking. It’s something Kreusch says she’d recommend to all women, particularly those in Cape Town or those without access to clean water and toilets.
“It looks very daunting, but...it is more contained, and you don’t have to wash your clothes or underwear as much [because of leakage],” Kreusch says.
Not every moment has been so simple and easy. Just the other day, Kreusch says, she succumbed to a shower. “I did it,” she says, as if describing a crime. She'd had a long, busy day. She was rushing from the gym to work and needed to look presentable, and so she took a shower. The water was on for a total of 90 seconds, she says, a major departure from her 5-liter—or 1.3-gallon—bucket showers. Though feeling the water on her skin was rewarding, she couldn’t help but feel slightly guilty.
There have been positive takeaways. Many of the women talk about how shedding their water consumption has shed light on how they’ve taken the resource for granted. It’s also alerted their attention to the ways that others in their community, especially those in Cape Town’s informal settlements, have lived their whole lives.
As daunting as self-care rituals might be sometimes, they’re also sacred. Sullivan misses taking the time to perform her nightly routine—brushing her teeth, washing her face, a symbolic end to her days. Others, like Samsodien, miss unwinding in a bathtub with relaxation salts or bubbles so much so that the only thing she told her husband she wanted for her birthday was a proper shower.
As the water crisis continues in Cape Town, so too will Capetonian women’s changing definition of self-care.
“Before, there was a lot more pampering self-care,” Da Silva says. “Now to me self-care is [thinking], Is this clean? or Can I go a day without this?”
