There is one particular item that I am really privileged to have.
A toilet that is inside the house and with flushing water ranks on top of the things that I always give thanks for every time I am counting my blessings.
It saves me from the nightmares of using what we call the ‘toilet of hole’ in the village. It is also referred to as toilet of outside due to its location outside the main house. Those who were born and brought up in the densely populated residential estates in the city may not appreciate the intrigues of a toilet of hole.
LEFTOVER MATERIALS
They may not immediately recognise the structure if they saw one. Just as a heads-up, all the toilets of outside borrow from the same design. They are simple rectangular shaped sheds with a single sloping iron sheet for a roof. If you are more advanced, the structure may feature timber walls and a timber door. Under normal circumstances, the materials for construction are left over materials and may include gunny bags and polythene sheets.
Sometimes someone is graceful enough to leave an old newspaper tucked into the walls of the toilet for you to use after relieving yourself. The art of using that newspaper is not something I can finish describing in this limited space.
Schools and churches are the only institutions privileged to have toilets made of stone walls, after holding major fund raisings and milking the potential users dry.
OWN SHARE OF TRIBULATIONS
The toilet of hole comes with its own share of tribulations. The first one is making that walk of shame to the facility at 2am when only the night runners and people who milk cows are up and about. It i s a conscious decision you have to make to attend to a call of nature in the facility at that hour.
The facility is almost always tucked away in the furthest corner of the compound if you are lucky, and sometimes located outside the compound and surrounded by banana plants.
Needless to say, the banana plants around the facility always have luxuriant leaves and always bear thick banana fruits, there is no second guessing as to where they derive their nutrients from.
There are several other risk factors of using the facility, like your phone accidentally dropping into the hole when you are attending to a call of nature and trying to multi task by picking a call at the same time. The art and science of picking important calls or scrolling through your clandestine messages is not just a reserve of those who have comfortable basin toilets with scented tissue rolls and piped music. The users of toilets of outside have devised a way of squatting comfortably and thus enabling the usage of the phone as the body completes the biological function.
BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE
Because bad things happen to good people, it is not unlikely for your phone to drop from your hands or from the pocket, and of all destinations, fall or roll directly into the pit. You are left with no choice but to wait for a few seconds to hear the unmistakable thud of your dear phone as it connects with the bottom of the pit and into oblivion. Your only hope is that a million years from now when archeologists are discovering things from the crust of the earth, they will discover the fossils of your phone. It will gracefully earn the honour of being displayed in a big museum as a prehistoric gadget of communications that must have fallen when one of the ancestors was using an extinct structure called a pit latrine.
IMMINENT FAILURES
Other imminent failures when using the toilet are failing to aim properly, therefore leaving the evidence of your clumsiness on the floor for all to see. You can get away with it if the hour is 2am and there is no one else in the vicinity. If the devil conspires against you, there are chances that you may make a false aim on the day when there are ten other people queuing outside to use the same facility.
Finally, there is getting knee cramps or a muscle pull after squatting on top of the hole for longer than is necessary. The consequences are immediate and punishing. There are very high chances of collapsing into a heap immediately after leaving the facility, and you will be left with the unpleasant task of explaining the source of your pain to your care givers. Chances are that you will lie that you tripped your foot on the way out. The truth of the matter is that you are paying heavily for listening to video clips and laughing at memes as you squatted in that confined space for longer than your tendons could bear.
The person who invented basin toilets deserves a presidential award and a chance to be interviewed during prime time news.