Independence Day

THE toilet as described

March 6 was Independence Day and I had been looking forward to the celebration taking place at the nearest high-school just a few villages away. I don’t know what I had pictured the day’s events to be, but I figured any celebration of a national holiday was going to be interesting.

Sammy and I started the walk to the school hoping to catch a tro-tro on the way. Instead an acquaintance of his pulled over on a motorcycle, we hoped on behind him.

Motorbikes don’t usually scare me. But sitting on an old beat up 125cc, on an equally as beat-up dirt road with the three of us helmet-less and shoe-less in a place where road rules are virtually non-existent… that scared me. I spent the entire trip silently begging “Don’t crash, don’t kill me, don’t crash, don’t kill me…” That motorcycle ride turned out to be the most exciting part of the day.

The days celebration involved all of the children from all of the surrounding villages coming together to march, it resembled some old war clips from the 1940’s. I told Sammy I had never marched before and he was shocked.

“The children must march before the national flag every morning”, he told me. What a waste of time I thought.

The children marched on out of the school grounds and around the village but a few were left behind, these were the children who didn’t have shoes and therefore were not allowed to march. That made me glum for the day.

When the marching children returned they had to finish with a marching lap around the field passing by the elders of the village. By this stage I had found staring at the sky far more interesting. However when the last group of girls marched passed the village elders they all stopped and started shaking their hips to a silent tune. The crowd erupted in laughter and all the children raced over to join in with the hip-shaking dance for the elders – that was more like it!

Later I asked Sammy where the bathrooms were, he escorted me over to the school principal to ask.

“To poo or to piss?” The principal asked me.

I had been asked this question before, one time in Accra where to spite my strongest efforts to hold it in I finally had no choice but to resort to the public toilets. That day I had made the mistake of telling the toilet attendant that I needed to urinate. He shooed me in to left side of the bathroom where I walked in on two women beside each other pressed up against a urinal wall, their pee splashing on each other’s feet.

I couldn’t navigate the urinal system that day and I wasn’t about to try again today.

“To poo” I told him.

He led me off to a little bathroom and opened the door for me “we’ll wait outside” said Sammy.

I entered the little cubical to find two drop toilets side-by-side, only 20cm apart.

I had often have nightmares about this exact scenario, recurring dreams of having to use the toilet beside someone and I started to panic. No way was I about to do any business, even just urinate, beside a woman who was about to do hers (which would not have been to urinate). I had to think quick. It was a busy day and surely someone was about to need to poo.

Luck would have it that on the floor was a piece of string and that piece of string was long enough to tie around a nail in the door and reach the toilet. So I sat there and peed as fast as I could whilst holding on tightly to the piece of string. It may not be strong enough to stop a woman from throwing open the door but it might buy me a few extra seconds to wipe and zip up.

No woman came barging in and when I met Sammy and the principal two minutes later they were both very surprised to see me out so soon, they were, after all, thinking I was doing a number two and therefore I would be at least five minutes but probably longer.

“Was everything ok?” the principal asked

“Oh yeah, fine” I told them.

“Are you sick?” said Sammy with a look of great concern.

“Nope” I said trying to shrug it off, but protective Sammy wasn’t letting it go.

“Is it your stomach? Is the food bad? Do you need to go home and rest?”

I insisted I was fine and we went back to the festivities. The rest of the day was back- to-back soccer games. Actually, it was the first full game of soccer I had ever seen… I won’t be upset if it was my last. Some of the children played with no shoes on, I commented that it must hurt their feet and Sammy said that just because they don’t have any shoes doesn’t mean they should be left out of the game.

I only had to sit through one match, Sammy was still convinced I had a tummy bug and thought it best we go home early, suited me just fine.