Most people, no matter what country they are from, like to take a shower or bath.
Some people have different ideas about how many times a week a person should shower, but the idea that they should do it regularly stays the same.
But Amou Haji thought otherwise. He chose to go 67 years without taking a shower. And the late Persian man said that he had good reasons for doing it.
He lived alone in Iran and hadn’t taken a bath in more than 60 years. His favorite food was roadkill, and animal dung was said to have been sucked from a pipe.
He was from the Iranian town of Dez Gah and was thought to have been born in 1928. People called him “Amou Haji,” which means “old man,” because no one knew what his real name was.
A story about him says that he became a hermit because he lost his love.
His house was said to be made of cinder blocks and was on the edge of the town. No one seemed to mind that he was there.
He burned off his head and beard hair with fire when he thought they were getting too long. That was the only “hygiene” he cared about. His hair and face were both the same shade of gray.
Even though he didn’t always keep himself clean, he lived to be 94 years old and seemed pretty healthy throughout his life.
A lot of people thought the old man was afraid of water, but he wasn’t when it came to drinking it. People said he drank up to 5 liters of water every day from a dirty tin can.
When it came to food, he liked to find it on the ground. Other people would offer him fresh food, but he would always choose to find his own. He even said he liked roadkill better, and that porcupines were his best. It was said that he ate roadkill meat that looked rotten or old, even if it was still whole.
He also smoked animal dung in a pipe. It was also said that he liked cigarettes, and he was once seen smoking several at once.
His hygiene and food were both questionable, but he was said to be healthy despite that. In fact, he died a few months after locals got him to agree to take a bath, when he was 94 years old.
Before he died, the old man was checked out by Dr. Gholamreza Molavi at the School of Public Health at Tehran University of Medical Sciences. Surprisingly, they found that he was healthy despite the way he lived.
He did, however, get trichinosis, a parasite disease that is spread by food. This wasn’t a surprise since he liked eating dead animals on the side of the road. In any case, it didn’t have a big effect on his health.
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