Pit Latrine Horrors!

A while back, anybody who watched Sky News, BBC News or Al Jazeera, would have seen the pictures of the riots, buildings being burnt down and looting that happened in the UK. Yes, even the bazungu do their fair share of looting though the difference between them and us is that we don’t burn down buildings! The scenes were reminiscent of recent riots in Kampala City, riots which made headline news in just about every foreign country – especially the US and the UK.

The governments of those two countries were so alarmed by the riots that they instructed both the State Department and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (their versions of our Ministry of Foreign Affairs) to issue ‘travel advisory’s’. By that, I mean they advised their nationals who were intending to come to Uganda to do so because the situation here was ‘deemed too dangerous.

I looked for Sam Kuteesa who is our Foreign Minister but without much success. I also went to his office but he was always out. I tried calling him but he never picked his cell. Sam, and if you don’t mind me calling you Sam and dispensing the Hon title stuff, why did your office not issued a travel advisory to Ugandan’s intending to travel to the UK? I mean if they can to it to us, then I am sure we can do it to them for the country was a war zone

Closer to home, I have a bone to pick with anybody into the building trade. Builders today are seemingly incapable of building anything straight. They can’t build a wall in a straight line, they don’t know what a square is neither do they know what a rectangle is. All they know or rather all they will tell you is that “It must be straight because ‘the bridge tells us so.”

In the last house that I lived in, some renovation work had to be carried out before I moved in. One thing I noticed is that the light switch in the kitchen was upside down. When I told Electrician about it, his response was swift and simple. He turned the light on and off to prove that it works. When I told him that the switch was upside down, his retort was: “But Mzee, you saw for yourself. The lights work. Don’t they?” It was a futile argument and for that, when he was done, I had to get in another electrician to correct his work.

There is of course a big difference between the people who are into the toilet trade. The people who manufacture sit-on-toilets or even the squat toilets that have the provision for flushing have most certainly got the formula right. They put some thought into what they were manufacturing and they have tried their level best to me we the user feel comfortable and at home with their products.

You see, the average circumference of a sit-on-toilet is the same size as that of the rim of your yellow spare tyre that is in the boot of your car. With that circumference, it can safely accommodate the biggest bums that Bushenyi, Ankole, Kigezi, Buganda have to offer. It can also accommodate the biggest bums that the Rwandese can throw at us as well as that of a Japanese sumo wrestler.

Meanwhile, a squat toilet equipped with a water flushing provision is not only long enough and wide enough for the bums that I mentioned earlier, some people prefer them to sit-on- toilets for reasons of hygiene.

When I was still at school, I used to have problems with the A4 sheet of paper. Filling one side of it during an exam was always a trick, a burden and a strain. If only they could have made it smaller so I used to think to myself.

Enter the pit latrine builder. Why does he have to be so different from the sit-on-toilet manufacturer and the squat toilet manufacturer? What is so ingenious about the design of a pit latrine that the makers decreed that the hole into which our waste is to be deposited should be no bigger than an A4 sheet of paper?

I took me a while but I did my research on a number of pit latrines and I can assure you that a sheet of A4 paper is much bigger than the hole of a pit latrine.
And as we know, disasters in the toilets happen and that some men pee on the toilet seats, but other than that, disasters of the ‘number two’ nature are rare.
With a toilet circumference the size of a rim of a spare tyre, when you are using a sit-on-toilet you really have to have issues if you mess it up. If you, then not to worry, for there is always a toilet brush in the corner that is available to do the need full cleaning up. The same thing is also applicable to a squat toilet with a flushing provision.
But the pit latrine! Lillian A, who is a sub-editor with New Vision told us a tale that in her village, when the villagers don’t have toilet tissue, they use leaves. If no leaves are available, then they simply rub the crack of the bums up and down the edges of the walls in the toilets! Hmm!
There are also some pit latrine builders who have tried to make life easy for us. They have built raised foot imprints onto the floor. I presume it is supposed to act as some navigation system – a sort of GPS in that once your feet are on the raised foot implants, your bottom will automatically be guided to the hole of the pit.
A few years ago, I was in Kyankwanzi whose toilets are of the pit latrine type. When I had to go, I was reminded of Lillian A’s tale and made sure I did not touch any of the edges. You just never know which army man did what in there.
The Kyankwanzi pit latrines were clean enough – well the floors were though I had to manoeuvre my bum over the pit latrine hole without the aid of the navigation system or rather a GPS in the form of the raised foot imprints I was telling you about earlier because the floors didn’t have them.
It was a trick. I found that in the squatting position, you can have you feet flat. Rather your heel is raised and your body support is on your toes.
When I looked down, I realised my bum was too far back from the pit hole so I hobble forward. Then oops, I had gone too far forward so I hobbled two paces back. But something was still not okay. I was too far to the right of the pit hole so again I made some calculations and figured two steps to the left ought to do it. I did just that but to my frus, I had in the process also gone a step backwards.
What the heck I thought. Let me just get on with it. Horror, horror! I found you can’t get both your susu and ‘number two’ into the pit hole at the same time so my susu went forming a river all the way to the door!
Worse still, ‘number two’ missed the pit hole and had been deposited to the left of the hole. Why to the left I asked myself. Had it anything to do with my being left handed? I really have to think a lot harder about that.
Pit latrine did not have a toilet brush so the question begged, how do I clean up the mess? A). Just make a run for it. B) Again just make a run for it. C). Again just make a run for it.
With three very similar options to choose from, I was about to do just that when it occurred to me I was wearing army issue UPDF gumboots. And with that I had a plan D.
With plan D, I just scraped the residue into the pit hole and bolted down to the stream to wash them through the water.
Later that evening, I saw people heading off the latrines but whenever they opened the one that I had used, they came straight back out and used another one. I got the feeling that the UPDF army issue gum boots had not done an effective job of cleaning up the mess. I wonder where the army brought them from? China?