I have a lot of fun and exciting adventures to share about the last few weeks, but due to what I call technical difficulties, I have been unable to write them all up. Chocolate milk was spilt (by me) onto my laptop. The laptop seems to be working, but the keyboard isn’t, apart from the z key which types continuously. Anyway, today I thought I’d share with you a topic close to my HEART, STOMACH and BUM.
Cuban toilets deserve a whole league of their own in the
world of sewage. Tourists are blessed with the fortune of facing only the best
of what Cuba has to offer. Tourist toilets often have running water, and nearly
always a stern-looking woman who will provide you with toilet paper if you pay
her, and will provide you with a sour stink-eye if you don’t. Most Cuban toilets are not like this. The
typical Cuban toilet has no seat, no running water or flush system, no toilet
paper, no soap, and no door – OR, in many ways even more disturbingly, a door
which is too narrow for the cubicle and leaves most of you exposed. The toilets
at the Faculty of Modern Languages are the epitome of a Cuban Toilet, as not
only do they have no doors, but (if you have a delicate stomach, turn away
NOWWWW) they are always FULL of poo. Which makes you ask yourself: who is going
into a toilet WITHOUT A DOOR and pooing!?!?!?!?!!? I believe that whoever did
the poo did it before the door was removed. It certainly smells like the poo
has been there a very long time. The toilets make the whole of the building
stink, which – added with the lack of ceiling tiles, broken plaster and
crumbling blackboards – makes a vision of dereliction quite bombarding to the
senses.
The toilets are marginally better at home, where we have a
certain amount of control over their cleanliness. Our toilet is divided from the bedroom by
what some poor soul may have generously once described as a ‘door’, but is
actually nothing more than a kind of plastic screen. Privacy is not an option. Linked inextricably
with this theme is the unfortunate affect the Cuban diet has had on all of our
digestive systems. A mixture of grease, bloating rice and ruffage-filled beans
means our bowels have been in a constantly confused state since our arrival
(rum may also be to blame). We’re all convinced we’ve developed chronic IBS. My
stomach (and – I’m not afraid to share this with you – my bowels) have become
as delicate and temperamental as the U-pipe in my toilet in the bathroom.
Needless to say, the toilet has become blocked more than
once. And our maid/cleaner/homehelp lady (the infamous Ana-Maria) made it clear
this was our job to fix, by demonstrating on the porch tiles how to use the crusty,
moulding toilet plunger. The toilet plunger had (it’s now – THROUGH NO FAULT OF
MY OWN – deceased) a fun quirk. Every now and then, it would flip inside out.
This meant that, whilst you were bent laboriously over the toilet bowl (imagine
in the Sims when the toilet blocks: this is what it is like when a toilet
blocks in real life ,it turns out), plunging enthusiastically, it will suddenly
flip inside out and shower you and the entire bathroom in shitty, pissy toilet
water. After this happened twice and my pyjamas got a bit unhygienic, I took to
plunging the toilet in the nude. This somehow seems more hygienic to me.
Anyway, after drinking water in Trinidad last weekend we all got a furious case
of ‘deli belly’ (read: the shits) and inevitably the toilet was blocked. One particularly nasty poo-specimen proved
quite unblockable. After watching Bajan-housemate toil hopelessly over it for a
while, I gallantly decided to take matters into my own hands. I worked for thirty
solid minutes with that plunger, putting in so much effort that I gave myself
blisters on my fingers. Then, in burst of energy I plunged with such gusto that
the plunger became unstuck from the stick and a huge piss-toilet-poo-water
explosion occurred, covering my face in piss-toilet-poo-water. As I stood, naked,
weeping silently, over the sink, using my blistered, puss-filled hands to wash the
poo out of my eye, I thought to myself: This, THIS, is what I will remember as
a low point not only in my time in Cuba, but also most possibly my life.
For more info on life in Cuba: Food in Cuba
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ReplyDeleteRunning
Do you live in Cuba? I think you should at least wear a mask if you're going to be plunging naked ok?
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