The Sisterhood of the Poopy Bathroom

Disclaimer: The story you are about to read is a tale of events which took place in the second week of September.  You may find yourselves queasy or just plain disgusted upon reading this, but I wish to remind you, the reader, that you are not required to read every post found on this blog.  If you do wish to enjoy this saga, I ask that you are able to laugh about it after, as Sarah and I can.  If you think about it, the story is quite funny.

 One of the things I knew I was signing up for by accepting my position with Peace Corps Liberia was a life without running water and electricity for two years.  With this came a life of pit latrines, or “squattie-potties,” as they are sometimes called.  Fortunately, every house that Peace Corps volunteers are living in here in Liberia is required to have an indoor bathroom with an actual commode; needless to say, we are pretty lucky. 

Moving into our house, we were blown away by how nice our bathroom was.  Everything was nicely tiled, it was rather spacious, and we had a toilet – we were set for the next two years!  By the next day, however, we soon realized that everything was not peaches and cream as we had imagined it being.  To flush our toilet, we have to pour a bucket of water down it; not a bad deal, really, but the problem came with the fact that not everything was flushing.  Instead, toilet paper would hang out for a while before it finally disappeared down the drain. 

An easy fix, we thought – we’ll burn all of our toilet paper every few days, and life will be great.  We continued with this tradition for a few weeks and noticed no improvement.  Instead, we noticed small amounts of water starting to leak on the floor every time we poured a bucket of water down the commode to flush it.  Great.  With this water came the smell that comes with a dirty bathroom – I’m sure you can all imagine what that is like.

In September, we had visitors to Pleebo and after they left, we noticed our toilet was very broken.  This time, instead of a small amount of water leaking when it was flushed, a deluge was appearing from underneath the commode any time we poured even half a bucket of water into the toilet.  During this time, we were calling our landlord, our DEO, our PTA chairlady, and the principal, asking for them to find us a plumber ASAP. 

We continued using our toilet for the next week, hoping that a plumber would arrive soon, and nothing happened.  Running out of ideas, we headed over to our neighbor, Patrick, and asked him for some advice.  Thankfully, he knew a plumber who was able to come within two days.  Patrick’s house has two bathrooms, and this plumber had done all of his work there.  Mr. Freeman was to come over after school on Friday, so on Thursday morning, Sarah and I made a decision. 

I travelled to the market and picked up lots of plastic bags, four towels, and two long handled cook spoons.  (You know what’s coming…)  After school, we did what was necessary.  Our toilet had sat for a week of use without a single bucket of water down it, due to the major leakage going on all over our bathroom floor.  With Mr. Freeman coming the next day, we knew we had to make the situation a little more bearable for him.  With Sarah serving as the claws of the operation, and I as the garbage collector, we emptied the toilet as quickly as possible into the multitude of plastic bags I bought in the market.  We threw this away outside, washed our hands with lots of soap, and settled back into a pseudo-normal life.

Mr. Freeman’s visit the next day brought with it interesting news…  The place they put the septic tank is very swampy and the water level is high.  The reason that our toilet does not flush well is due to this high water level and high pressure inside the tank.  To combat this, he broke into the side of the tank and added a pipe which drains into a ditch near the house.  Any time the tank reaches that point, it drains out the pipe and allows for our toilet to flush.

He was also gracious enough to completely clean out our commode and re-cement it to the floor with enough cement to hold it through any storm.  That toilet is not coming off the floor any time soon, and for that we are grateful.  Within two days of talking to Patrick, we got our predicament sorted out and our normal life back. 

I never would have thought that I would one day scoop the poop out of a toilet, but I guess now I can say I’ve done everything.  I’m hesitant to share this story here on my blog, but it’s so funny now, that I had to.  Life here surprises me constantly, and this is just another shining example of the mystery behind the door of every new day.  I wouldn’t change it for the world, though; I mean, how many people do you know who can tell a story like that and laugh about it?  :)