Poop Talk...

i've yet to hear any of the feared butchering of the spanish language, but i have heard quite a few stories about the shitters in nicaragua. while my pops was over there, he spent some time volunteering at an orphanage/school doing what else, but handyman stuff. so after first fixing the crumbling adobe walls of the school's entrance, he went on to attempt to fix the atrocity that they called a 'bathroom.'

now understand this, for nearly 1 year after my dad moved into the casa de moldovanyi that i currently call home, he lived here by himself. and while working on installing indoor plumbing in the old vacation bungalow, he at first would piss and shit in a 5 gallon spackle bucket, before upgrading to a camping toilet in the middle of the kitchen floor. that, my friends, was ok with him. so when he told me that the toilets in nicaragua were "at-ro-sites," i knew they had to be pretty bad.

the worst of which was the bathroom as pictured above. he took this photo post-remodel. from what i gather here's how it works over there:
1) dig a hole somewhere near the entrance of the building.
2) pour cement into the hole to make a cement 'box.'
3) cover the cement 'box' with a cement lid with two holes cut out of it.
4) move the 'portable privacy shanty' over the top of the holes.
5) drop it like it's hot.
6) when the 'box' is full you plug the hole and start back at 1.

unfortunately, from what i hear, what they DON'T do is give these kids target practice. 900 kids. 450 at a time share the above photographed 'bathroom.' and miss the hole they do. i told my mom that she should have been grateful that when i was little all i did was piss on the toilet seat. from what i hear, these kids shit right on the floor, and walk away like it never even happened. twice a day the 85 year old woman in the photo walks a mile uphill to get 2 buckets of water to douse into the, again i use the term loosely, 'bathroom.' a little sweeping with the same broom that's used to sweep the classrooms at night, and VOILA! good as new! ...or not.

may i also mention that of the 2 bathrooms, the one on the left of the photo has a padlock, for teachers only. so 900 kids share 1 toilet. no sink. no purell. and to top it off, their 'water fountain' is a basin of water that they dip their HANDS in to get a drink. (twenty bucks says you could bottle the aftermath of that basin and sell it as 'artesian water' in some swanky place in nyc or dc!)

so my father, the good samaritan, purchased, and helped them to install the toilet shown above, but to no avail... i guess when you get used to droppin' loose on your feet, it's a hard habit to break. the kids stood on the toilet for better aim?? maybe? it goes to shown that you can change things that don't need changing. for us, it's disgusting; for them, it's normal. such ignorant americans we are...

PRE-TOILET ASSUMPTION: