Today and tomorrow are Ascension Day (whatever the heck that is) and Why-not-take-the-Friday-off-and-blame-it-on-sports Day, respectively. Today, I haven’t left my rondaval- it’s about 1pm- thanks to the technology of my purple pee bucket and having lots of food (avocados!) here inside. I blame the laziness (and watching an entire season of Arrested Development) on my foot. But I’ll talk about that in my next post/rant. First let me explain the hilarity (in retrospect) that was dropping my diva cup down my latrine.
Being of the XX persuasion, I deal with certain a certain female phenomenon with a diva cup. If you don’t know what that is, I’m sure Google can help you out with that one. The alternatives in this country are slim to one. I have never seen tampons sold in stores, even the big ones in Maseru, so if I didn’t have this cup, I’d have to use pads. Laughable. I do have a pee bucket that I was previously reluctant to use, considering that a bucket of pee in my house is less than desirable. This leads me to use the latrine for all my bathroom needs. A few days ago in the morning, I took a trip down to use my latrine. Somehow, in the process, my diva cup slipped and plunged down into the depths of the poo pit. My first reaction was disbelief, then horror (if you follow my “small thoughts” posts, you may recall that this very blunder has recently surpassed “being locked in a steam room” on my list of fears). Then for a second I considered it a lost cause; the cup had successfully and of its own volition escaped and jumped down the latrine. Maybe it deserved to stay down there and make friends with the excrement and paper disintegrating around it. No, wait, I thought. The alternative to using it is, as I said, not happening, and god knows how long it would take for someone to order another cup online, ship it all the way over here, and for me to mosey on to the PC office in Maseru to collect it. Plus, that thing cost me almost $40. I converted the sum. 400 Rand! A fortune! I made up my mind that I absolutely had to retrieve it.
Near my latrine, my family keeps a pile of firewood consisting of long tree branches. Perfect. I grabbed one, stripped off the twigs and leaves, and maneuvered it down the toilet seat and down the hole to the bottom, maybe 2m deep. I couldn’t see anything down there, though, so I went back in my house and grabbed my trusty headlamp. That thing is so handy. Anyway, equipped with the long stick and Mr. Headlamp, I leaned over the hole and managed only to poke the cup around a little bit. I don’t know what I had expected. I hadn’t thought about the grabbing part. I went back to the pile of sticks and got another long one. It was at this point I was thankful that none of my siblings or neighbors happened to see me and ask what I was doing, digging around in my latrine like that. These sticks are long, crooked, and heavy, so carefully trying to pick up the slippery little thing with the sticks was like trying to pick up a peeled grape with two gigantic, unwieldy chopsticks in the near dark. Several minutes into this, I realized this was not going to be successful.
I needed a new plan. It was then that I briefly considered either dangling my little abuti down there or diving in myself. Then I thought I could build something. I ended up cutting off the bottom of a plastic bottle and tying it with wire to the end of one of the sticks as a kind of scooper. Surprisingly quickly, I managed to scoop up the little bugger. It was absolutely doused in poop and god knows what else, so gave it a preliminary dunk in a puddle outside, then washed it with soap several times inside, then doused it in hand sanitizer. Let’s just say that (at the suggestion/chastising of Colleen), I’ll be making a lot more use out of my pee bucket from now on. The scooper remains leaning up against the latrine in case I drop something else of value down there, but I hope never to have to go latrine fishing ever again.
The dark abyss
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