The Toilet
The following story is written word for word in my journal; I hope you all have a good laugh at my misfortune..I sure did..not when it happened, but a few days later. Keep in mind that my house is pretty much a palace on a smaller scale.
Sunday, May 14th, 2006 ¨Wouldn´t it be my luck that on my first day with my host family, I plug up the toilet. I looked around; no plunger. I try to shove the crap through the first part of the pipe with a cleaning tool. Now there is crap all over the cleaning tool. Nice. Maybe a flush will do the trick. Hell no. The toilet started to overflow. Thwe only good part of the whole experience is that the house doesn´t have a separate shower. The shower is the whole bathroom itself; all the water drains into a screened hole in the middle of the floor. This is good because the toilet water, instead of having to be sopped up with a towel, went down the drain. Still, that doesn´t make the cleaning tool any cleaner, or the floor that matter. As embarassed as I was, I went to tell my host mother. Just as I was walking out of the bathroom, my host sister, age 15, was walking in. After asknig her to wait, I went to find my host mother. I told her I had a problem in the bathroom. Her and my host brother, age 13, came to check things out. My host sister went into the bathroom to wash her hands even though I had hoped she would wait. How embarassing. After seeing the problem, I could tell that my host mother was not happy. She decided that we needed to tell my host father. She tried to tell me over and over (keep in mind this is all in Spanish) that he had left, we needed to wait until he got back. I didn´t understand. She cleaned the floor as best she could while me and my host brother watched. The father, upon returning, decided that the best course of action was to call a plumber. I felt even worse. `Three months,´ I was thinking,`This could be a long time.´ After finding a plunger later in the day by chance in the market, we decided a plumber was not needed. I gave the plunger the first go. `It´s my crap, I´ll do it.´ First pump of the plunger, the rubber part falls off. Not only did it fall off, when I tried to put the stick back into the rubber, it flipped over. The rubber part is now upside-down, under six inches of opaque brown water, and stuck. Nice. My host brother walks into the bathroom just in time to see me standing over the porcelin god with no more offering than an eighteen inch stick. My host father came to save the day, and did just that in a matter of two or three minutes. With the magic touch, he flipped the plunger, replaced the stick, and freed the blockage. I can´t help but laugh at how the basic sanitation expert, me, made a catastrophe out of the only bathroom in a palacial house on my first day. The floor still stinks, but hopefully they will forget about what an ass I made of myself in front of everyone. Maybe in time.¨
Like I said, not funny when it happened, but we had a good laugh when I read my story in front of the whole training group as part of a cross-cultural experiences session.
Sunday, May 14th, 2006 ¨Wouldn´t it be my luck that on my first day with my host family, I plug up the toilet. I looked around; no plunger. I try to shove the crap through the first part of the pipe with a cleaning tool. Now there is crap all over the cleaning tool. Nice. Maybe a flush will do the trick. Hell no. The toilet started to overflow. Thwe only good part of the whole experience is that the house doesn´t have a separate shower. The shower is the whole bathroom itself; all the water drains into a screened hole in the middle of the floor. This is good because the toilet water, instead of having to be sopped up with a towel, went down the drain. Still, that doesn´t make the cleaning tool any cleaner, or the floor that matter. As embarassed as I was, I went to tell my host mother. Just as I was walking out of the bathroom, my host sister, age 15, was walking in. After asknig her to wait, I went to find my host mother. I told her I had a problem in the bathroom. Her and my host brother, age 13, came to check things out. My host sister went into the bathroom to wash her hands even though I had hoped she would wait. How embarassing. After seeing the problem, I could tell that my host mother was not happy. She decided that we needed to tell my host father. She tried to tell me over and over (keep in mind this is all in Spanish) that he had left, we needed to wait until he got back. I didn´t understand. She cleaned the floor as best she could while me and my host brother watched. The father, upon returning, decided that the best course of action was to call a plumber. I felt even worse. `Three months,´ I was thinking,`This could be a long time.´ After finding a plunger later in the day by chance in the market, we decided a plumber was not needed. I gave the plunger the first go. `It´s my crap, I´ll do it.´ First pump of the plunger, the rubber part falls off. Not only did it fall off, when I tried to put the stick back into the rubber, it flipped over. The rubber part is now upside-down, under six inches of opaque brown water, and stuck. Nice. My host brother walks into the bathroom just in time to see me standing over the porcelin god with no more offering than an eighteen inch stick. My host father came to save the day, and did just that in a matter of two or three minutes. With the magic touch, he flipped the plunger, replaced the stick, and freed the blockage. I can´t help but laugh at how the basic sanitation expert, me, made a catastrophe out of the only bathroom in a palacial house on my first day. The floor still stinks, but hopefully they will forget about what an ass I made of myself in front of everyone. Maybe in time.¨
Like I said, not funny when it happened, but we had a good laugh when I read my story in front of the whole training group as part of a cross-cultural experiences session.
posted by Mikey at 2:03 PM
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