The Facilities
One of the challenges of traveling is using a toilet that isn’t yours and may not meet your personal standards of hygiene. I’m going to tell you about a few I’ve encountered, so if you’re squeamish, skip this post, although there are a couple of funny things that happened while I attended to my needs.
Paraguay: The toilet at my host family’s house was a horror. It was a slab wood hut built over a hole in the ground. The people wiped their butts with dried corncobs and THREW THEM OUTSIDE, where the chickens and pigs were free to rummage through them. When asked why they didn’t toss them down into the pit, I was told that they’d fill up the hole which was a lot of work to dig. Ok, I can see that, but typhoid or whatever doodoo vector disease that is being consumed by the livestock we’re going to eat isn’t a concern?! After a few days, I started raking up and burning the crap-cobs every day because it was just GROSS. I stopped using the latrine and bought a trowel so I could go pee and poop in the woods. When I moved into my own house, I dug the shit pit myself and dumped dry leaves over my waste so flies wouldn’t lay their eggs on it. The shower was another slab hut without a roof, elevated so that the water drained towards the well (as did the cow yard. Yes, I ended up with giardia.). A teapot of water was heated over the fire and then poured into a 5 gallon bucket to be used for a sponge bath. During the few weeks of cold weather (40 degrees with 75% humidity) I stopped bathing. I’d wash my PCB (pits, cootchie and butt) quickly and put my 4 layers of clothes back on. I told the family that I’d bathe when the weather warmed up, but eventually I couldn’t stand myself. I was greasy and sooty from sitting by the open fire to stay warm, so I made the 4 hour trip to the capitol, got a hotel room and took THE best shower of my life.
In Santani, the nearby Pueblo, there was a public toilet for use in the market. The attendant wanted to charge me 3 centavos instead of the 1 centavo she got from everyone else. I told her “yes, I’m an American and I make more money than you do. I eat the same food as the Paraguayans that I live with, so there’s no difference in my feces except that I probably don’t have worms since I don’t go barefoot.” I dropped 1 centavo into her palm and went on in.
When Valentin and I moved to the Pueblo the next year, the communal poo pit in a field shielded by a tarp was the only toilet option around. I immediately requested that Vale build me a personal one and dug the hole myself, went to the mill to get sawdust to toss down into it to prevent fly infestation, and it was so clean that I called it Paradise. Our bathtub was a dishpan for sponge baths. I wrote this poem about it:
Nuestro palangana es una cosa marvillosa
Lava platos, lava manos, lava rope, lava chipa.
Our dishpan is an amazing thing
Washes dishes, washes hands, washes clothes, washes cootchie.
Morocco: My travel companion has an agreement with her bladder— she doesn’t use the bathroom if she isn’t home unless the toilet is very clean. My body and I don’t have that kind of relationship. Miss Bladder makes her needs known and she can’t be ignored, nor does she have much capacity for waiting. I’ve had to hold my breath, disassociate and go quickly squeeze my pee out while squatting over a stinky hole in the floor in bus stations and even in a bakery. I disinfected my shoes in bleach, dish soap and hot water when I got back to her house. Wet room showers are a thing in some countries, and I am really not a fan. There’s no divider or shower curtain between the toilet and faucet, so the water splashes all over the floor and goes down the drain.
I’m currently housesitting in England and all THREE bathrooms have ceramic toilets with plumbing and showers with glass enclosures. It’s a bit chilly here so I’m going to treat myself to a seated poop, a long soak in the tub and dry myself off with a thick cotton towel heated on a rack. Yea, call me spoiled, but this girl isn’t squatting over another hole for the rest of this trip.
