Pit Toilet Chronicles
This is a current depiction of my pit toilet:
It’s full. I know that this is something I’ve complained about before, but there’s a reason. It’s really, really full. Just how full you ask? Well, when I use it I worry about the “splash effect.” So basically it’s beyond disgusting and just plain out unsanitary.
Summer time is not a good time for a pit toilet. It’s hot and I have learned that heat plus feces equals creepy crawly critters. Thus, there are a lot of flies. In order to emphasize what a lot of flies means, allow me to paint a picture: fly bidet.
Now the flies I can handle. If you wave something over them long enough they tend to scatter. Yet, they are not the only ones who have made my pit toilet into a summer retreat: so too have the maggots. The maggots are happy to stay in the bottom of the pit toilet: that is until someone throws water down it and then they try to escape to freedom. How do they escape? By creeping up the side of the pit toilet until they reach the seat where they can lounge in multitude. Not appealing and somehow, I’m guessing here, not very sanitary.
My host family bathes in the pit toilet (don’t ask me why, I don’t think you can get clean in there). Thus, they drag the hose into it and flood the area while they are cleaning themselves. Unfortunately, the pit toilet is built on a slant, one that leans away from the door. Meaning we have standing water in the pit toilet for hours after each bath only adding to the fly and maggot problem.
The Smell: I’ll let you imagine this one…..
My host father also dumps his used motor oil down the pit toilet. Yet, for whatever reason I can not explain, he can’t manage to pour it down the hole. So it’s all over the seat. Unfortunately, oil doesn’t clean up easily (just ask the seals) and thus the seat is more or less permanently contaminated with motor oil.
So what does all this mean to me….while to be blunt, I have to time when I use the bathroom so I can use the school ones instead of my own and frankly I use my chamber pot a lot more than I should. I finally decided I was fed up with all this. One of my housing requirements as a Peace Corp Volunteer is to have a usable, sanitary toilet and I just can’t see how mine fits these requirements, (the other volunteers voted mine “worst pit toilet” to let you know just how bad it is) so I finally complained to my principal and she said she’d work on it. We’ll see.... It’s interesting that the highlight of the next six months for me would be to have a new hole dug in the ground.
It’s full. I know that this is something I’ve complained about before, but there’s a reason. It’s really, really full. Just how full you ask? Well, when I use it I worry about the “splash effect.” So basically it’s beyond disgusting and just plain out unsanitary.
Summer time is not a good time for a pit toilet. It’s hot and I have learned that heat plus feces equals creepy crawly critters. Thus, there are a lot of flies. In order to emphasize what a lot of flies means, allow me to paint a picture: fly bidet.
Now the flies I can handle. If you wave something over them long enough they tend to scatter. Yet, they are not the only ones who have made my pit toilet into a summer retreat: so too have the maggots. The maggots are happy to stay in the bottom of the pit toilet: that is until someone throws water down it and then they try to escape to freedom. How do they escape? By creeping up the side of the pit toilet until they reach the seat where they can lounge in multitude. Not appealing and somehow, I’m guessing here, not very sanitary.
My host family bathes in the pit toilet (don’t ask me why, I don’t think you can get clean in there). Thus, they drag the hose into it and flood the area while they are cleaning themselves. Unfortunately, the pit toilet is built on a slant, one that leans away from the door. Meaning we have standing water in the pit toilet for hours after each bath only adding to the fly and maggot problem.
The Smell: I’ll let you imagine this one…..
My host father also dumps his used motor oil down the pit toilet. Yet, for whatever reason I can not explain, he can’t manage to pour it down the hole. So it’s all over the seat. Unfortunately, oil doesn’t clean up easily (just ask the seals) and thus the seat is more or less permanently contaminated with motor oil.
So what does all this mean to me….while to be blunt, I have to time when I use the bathroom so I can use the school ones instead of my own and frankly I use my chamber pot a lot more than I should. I finally decided I was fed up with all this. One of my housing requirements as a Peace Corp Volunteer is to have a usable, sanitary toilet and I just can’t see how mine fits these requirements, (the other volunteers voted mine “worst pit toilet” to let you know just how bad it is) so I finally complained to my principal and she said she’d work on it. We’ll see.... It’s interesting that the highlight of the next six months for me would be to have a new hole dug in the ground.
posted by Cait at 11:28 AM
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