Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Good Housekeeping

I’m here today to discuss everyone’s favourite dinner table topic — the toilet! Yes, here in Cameroon we have several lovely toilet options, for both in- and outdoors. 

First up, we have: 

  • The Flush Toilet. Whoa there, Posh Corps. Let’s be real, nobody has a flush toilet in their homes. But be sure to enjoy this amenity when visiting the Peace Corps case in the regional capitol. For additional luxury amenities found in the Ngaoundere case, see: running water; electricity; wifi; refrigerator/freezer; printer; and beds with real sheets. 

Next, we have the ever popular: 


  • Bucket Flush Toilet. Found in some of our up-and-coming PCV homes; or, occasionally, in the Ngaoundere case when the power is out. With the bucket flush toilet you have the convenience of having an actual toilet to sit on (as opposed to the latrine — see below); however, you are responsible for procuring your own water to flush with. What, did you think the toilet was just going to flush itself? This may not seem like much, but those 1-2 buckets of water could be a week’s worth of laundry, 2-4 bucket baths, or 2 days of dishwashing water, so choose carefully. This can be tough when the nearest water pump is a half mile away (or, let’s be real, even if it’s 100 meters away); but what are neighbourhood children for if not for fetching water for you? This can add up over time, but if you’re thrifty and don’t mind the smell, flushing once a day is a more than satisfactory way to conserve water, CFA, and/or manual labour. 

And now we arrive at our final option,


  • The latrine. By far the easiest to maintain, the latrine doesn’t require any water at all (if you’ve got decent aim) — just don’t think too hard about what happens if it fills up. Start working on your squats now — you’ll appreciate the conditioning then next time you spend some quality time hovering over your latrine hole. Your latrine, whether it’s an indoor or outdoor latrine, is almost guaranteed to have something living in it, so you can make some new friends while you’re taking care of business! If you have an indoor latrine, that something is most likely to be roaches. Whatever you do, do NOT spray Raid down your latrine in an attempt to chase out these persistent free-loaders — it will successfully clear them out of your latrine, but they will take it as an invitation to occupy the rest of your house. If that was not, in fact, your original intent in spraying your latrine, then you’ll spend the rest of your evening chasing down the roaches that are making themselves at home in your kitchen, living room, and bedroom. If you’re not careful, they’ll be helping themselves to a cup of tea, hogging the good spots on the couch, and criticising your decorating. This entire situation is entirely hypothetical, of course, but if you were to hypothetically find yourself overrun by roaches who won’t stop commenting on your dusting, then you might find a small bowl that conveniently stops up your latrine hole, fill it with water to give it some weight, and then spray the doorways with some more Raid just for good measure. Hypothetically. 


I hope this has satisfied the curiosity I know you all had had about your options in terms of relieving yourselves in Cameroon. 
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As an update — as you may be able to tell, I’m now officially at post! I’ll be spending the next two years working in Lokoti, in the Adamoua region of Cameroon. I’ve already met some colleagues and other community members, and I’m slowly but surely puling my house together. I’ve been continuing to practice French, but I’m in the process of looking for a Fulfulde tutor, since a significant portion of the population speaks Fulfulde or Baya, the local patois, not French. Lokoti theoretically has electricity, but in the 2 1/2 weeks I’ve been here, I’ve had power for all of one night; so for now, I’ll be stocking up on candles and charging my computer every few weeks in Ngaoundere, or coughing up the 200CFA to charge it up in village via generator. Basically what I’m saying is, I’ll post/email/Skype/Facebook message/other as often as I can, but I can’t make any promises about consistency! And, of course, my address is still posted for those of you who enjoy good old-fashioned snail mail. School begins on September 7th, so coming up soon I’ll have some teaching stories to share with you! Until then — sey yeso! 

2 comments:

  1. I think I would choose the latrine option with a bowl cover. Please,let us know how your first week of teaching goes! I'm sure you will have some stories to tell!

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  2. Hi BECCA, Wow, your writing is really amazing....it's so interesting and
    surely gives a full picture of life over there. Thanks....I love hearing how you are doing and know your students will love your humor & interest. Will look forward
    to more whenever....Do be careful, no matter what...Love you, Hugs, GrandMom

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