Just to let you all know I’m thinking of you and with you in spirit.
I’ve spent the afternoon in the Cybercafe which is closed on sundays so I could work on the machines and try to clear the viruses, spyware and Catholic-kitsch screen savers (you would **not** believe!) off them. So I was in the college compound and couldn’t be bothered to unlock the staff room. When the time came, I used the pit latrine. While I was squatting, I was reminded of a story I heard from one of the other volunteers who has been out here a while…
A pit latrine, for those who don’t know, is a hold in the ground with a concrete slab over it. The slab has a hole in it and he hole has a little hut over it. And that’s about the extent of the technology. Sometimes there is a sort of lid thing which it is best to keep closed to keep flies and stuff out.
The story goes like this. A volunteer who was staying out in a very rural area had to go visit the latrine in the middle of the night. She took her big MagLite torch with her, the sort that takes four ‘D’ cells and can be used to illuminate football matches when the flood-lights fail. Somehow she managed to drop her wand-of-light into the boggy deapths of the pit… still turned on. It landed with its handle downward, burried in the bog. The light shone upward illuminating, through the hole in the concrete, the underside of anyone who squatted above.
The batteries last for days!
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