Popping to the powder room

Some years ago I saw a photography book of beautiful toilets around the world, a sort of cultural analysis through bathrooms: hi tech Japanese toilets, beautiful open air Inuit toilets in Canada, that sort of thing.

I’d really like to get in touch with that photographer, to find out what they know that I don’t. I’ve visited a few beautiful and exotica lands. I have never visited a beautiful and exotic toilet. Ever. But, I think, Bangladesh wins the prize…

At 16 I thought I’d seen it all as I went to pee on the last day of a rainy Glastonbury.
At 18 I thought I’d seen it all on a farm, in Cuba, sharing a bathroom with 100 Europeans with stomach problems
In Bolivia, I thought, this is it. No toilet can be worse than this.
Then I moved to Bangladesh.

Illustration One:

I have just been on a four day field visit to a rural area. Stunning, exotic, beautiful, etcetera.

In the villages drinking tea at little tea stalls is mandatory, cup after cup of sugary tea.

This means I need to pee, often.

Every time we left a place where a bathroom ‘suitable’ for a Bideshi lady was available, I was told to pee. Or “take fresh”, to be more accurate. I would then drink another three cups of tea, and of course need to pee some more.

One particular afternoon, I was being taken on a sunset tour down a beautiful river, had just been force fed 5 slices of cake and made to drink two cups of tea, and I really needed a widdle. We were by a little market. My chaperones started to panic.

“There is simply not toilet space available”
“I really can’t get on this boat without going”
“Why you not take fresh before leaving house?”
“I did but you just made me drink four cups of tea. Look, i’ll just go behind those bushes over there”.

*really long silence*.
*frowning*
(For the record, I’d just like to point out that men pee outside, on the street, in full view, absolutely everywhere all over this country)

“Would you prefer if I didn’t do that?”
“Yes thank you Rojie, please very important you are not doing this”
“Right, ok”
*rapid conversing in bangla*
“ok, come with us”

So we walked through the market, right to the back, and arrived at a foul smelling area

“wait here”
*rapid conversing in bangla with random man. Man goes into the fenced off, foul smelling area, after a time men come trouping out.*

My friends explain:
“This is market toilet and showering area Rojie, we are making all men leave and cleaning toilet then you may enter”

Oh Jesus. No matter how hard I try to just fit in, quietly getting on with things like everyone else, I ask for what I think is the most simple of things and cause the most enormous fuss.

So off I went…I’ll spare you the details, I’m sure you can imagine though. A whole market full of men, and this was their only place to shit and shower.

Illustration two: Dhaka, one Tuesday evening

Me and a friend had just been out for dinner with her glorious boss. There was wine involved. He drove us home. We got stuck in traffic. I started to really need a wee. Traffic at a total stand still. Look at friend and she is gripping the door of the car. “What’s wrong?” I whisper. “Desperate for the toilet” she whispers back. “Oh Jesus, me too”, I reply.

Boss leans his head back:
“What’s wrong with you two? You are being really quiet”
“We really need the toilet”
** Prerequisite panic begins. Rapid conversation with the driver about where we might pee**
“Ladies I am so sorry, there is nowhere to go”
“Can’t we just get out and find somewhere dark?”
** This suggestion is so insane, he grasps the seriousness of the situation. Gets on phone, rapid Bangla**”

“Ok, I have called the police commissioner and we are going to the police station right now”

**we both start cracking up. Glorious Boss, who knows absolutely everyone in the whole country, has, against all odds, hooked us up with a toilet**

So we arrive at police station and the two of us are escorted in by an armed guard, and we hobble up the stairs, through the police station, and the looks on peoples faces are like nothing I have ever seen. We are lead through the dormitories; it appears the policemen live there. I’m not sure I can possibly begin to describe to you what that was like. And then the door to the bathroom was opened and…We couldn’t. We just couldn’t.

As with many things in this country, amusing anecdotes, little annoyances, have a more serious undertone. If I need something, for example the toilet, everyone around me will go out of their way to make sure I get one. For most women, however, such luxury is simply not on offer.

As we walked away from the market toilet, my colleague informed me that there is an incredibly high rate of urinary and bladder infections amongst women, especially poor women. Women must go to the toilet only in the home; they may not pee in public places, behind bushes, in market toilets, in police stations. There is a high rate of sexual assaults against women who try to pee in the few public toilets available.

To me, needing the toilet has always been a non-event: a basic, fundamental human need, one that all people can fulfill, without question. Aren’t I the lucky one? I am reminded for the millionth time since I arrived here how lucky I am. I have never been told to shut up, cross my legs, suffer in silence. Suddenly the worst toilet in the world doesn’t seem so bad.