My new Banya Buddy

I’ve been taking banyas instead of showers for a long time now. I have banyaed in several different banyas (which, I’ve found, is kind of unusual, but my host family keeps telling people that I like the banya so I get invited to… bathe at other people’s houses. It is weird but I’m not complaining). I have banyaed with counterparts, family members and other PCVs. I am used to getting beaten with the oak branch and I know how to return the favor. I can even sit in the sweltering heat for 30 minutes now compared to the 5 I could handle when I first got here. All that said, I felt it was time for a banya challenge.

Our family’s cat is really, really dirty. I know cats are supposed to be self-cleaning, but this one, for whatever reason, is not. The last time I can remember my host brothers taking him into the banya was sometime in October. And ever since the beginning of this year I’ve joked about how I was going to banya with the cat, but the cat would be out of the house on banya night, or I would forget, or I would be at some stranger’s house banyaing because they wanted me to see their banya. There were all kinds of reasons, but this weekend, Ricky (the cat) was sitting right in front of the door as I was getting ready to leave for the banya. It was meant to be. So I scooped him up and marched us out into the cold to cross the yard to the banya.

A banya (as I am typing this on my computer I can’t go back and check my other posts to see if I’ve already covered this, but here it is again if I have) is a series of rooms all around a coal or wood burning furnace. The first room is where you and your new best friends take off all your clothes and hang them on hooks. The second room is the wash room with a water pump, buckets and a bucket of sorts that is sitting on top of the fire to provide hot water. If there is a third room, it is like a sauna. You are supposed to go into that room and sit and sweat out the week’s dirt. If that room doesn’t exist, you take the buckets and set them aside as you sit and sweat in that second room. While sitting there you get beaten with an oak branch to exfoliate, and you beat your friend. It’s a really good time. After you have sat long enough/until your heart and head can’t take the heat anymore you go into wash mode. You choose a good bucket and combine your desired amount of boiling water with cold water combo and soap up and rinse off. Go back, put your clothes on and you’re good for the week (or two).

I was, perhaps, a little over-confident in my task to clean the cat in the banya. I thought, no problem, I cleaned the dog at home all the time (ha, ok, like 5 times ever, but I’ve done it) so I kind of had an idea how this would go… There were a few problems that came out of my over-simplified comparison. For starters, in America I could wash the dog in a bathtub with a running faucet, I could trick her into the bathroom by using the leash and dog treats, and there’s the painfully obvious fact that dogs are not cats. As much as my dog hated getting a bath, it was never painful. I never had to wash her in an environment that hot and steamy (I lost the cat at first, it was a particularly steamy banya), and the dog never meowed like I was performing some kind of bathing torture. The cat was obviously not pleased to be there, sitting in a bucket full of water. And remember that beyond that second room humans and cats are not wearing any clothes, and cats have claws. Getting into the second room in itself was a challenge because he attached himself to the doorframe. When I pried him off he waved his paws around frantically trying to reattach to something. And that something wound up being me. It was the worst idea I’ve ever carried out. Whatever, now we’re clean, and the next time I clean that stupid cat will be in the summer when I can simply dump water on him in the yard.

Slokim Parum! (This is what you say to someone after a banya, it means “with steam!”)