Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I still can't get over the fact that some cultures actually wipe with their HAND? Whoa!!!
Got that right!!
I went to Morocco a few years back, a friend invited me to their home, and boy did I learn alot about their culture.
My friend in Morocco is considered High Class, they own Petro Money, their home is very Americanized they live in Rabbat..But when you go out and roam the country you can be amazed at what you find.
On my way from Rabbat to Fez I stopped at a juice cafe on the road, and tried asking for the bathroom...they walked me into this room that had a large square white porcelain thing on the floor with a hole on the center, and grooves on each side to place your feet on. You had to squat down and do your thing, well when I was done, I did not see any toilet paper, and my arabic and my french was not the best..so I asked her in french/spanish Papel (paper) and she did not understand me, so, I motioned to her I needed something to wipe myself with, and she pointed to my hands and in sign language like said...Wipe it, and then pointed to a water Jug and motioned with her hands to me to wash them afterwards!!
That was some experience, that I have never forgotten to this day!!
In general, the third world practice is for a bus to stop in the middle of nowhere, and the men pee on on side of the bus and the women on the other, which affords a certain privacy. In rural southwest China, they apparenty did not know about this practice. The bus stopped and the men got off and peed on the side of the road. My wife looked around, and none of the women were moving, but she got off and went across the road an peed on the other side of the bus anyway. The giggling Chinese women started stepping off the bus and following across the road. I guess my wife single-handedly modernized the culture of a quarter of the world's population.
They have discovered a very interesting principle. You can wash your hand dafterwards.
That sure would force you to wash your hands afterwards.
It amazes me how many women leave the bathroom without washing their hands. My husband says he sees lots of men do the same.
Toilets in Australia are different to those in North America. The way they're designed, they get "dirty" real easy. Weirdest thing was seeing toilet brushes in office toilets here (not that some ever use them!). Never had that in Canada. They seemed to have toilets that could flush anything away, cleanly. Same in the US. That, and the "splash factor" wasn't as high as it is here.
I was not aware that there was a world toilet day. I was also not aware that people still crapped in a hole in the ground and used their hands to wipe it. Yuck! Very interesting article.
I lived in a waterfront community called Salmon Beach and when I lived there they didn't have a sewer. All the houses are up on pilings and the water comes up under the houses at high tide. The crappers dumped right into the water or on the beach under the houses. The old timers had non flush toilets kind of like an outhouse indoors. They told stories of fishing from the toilets !
That sure would force you to wash your hands afterwards.
It amazes me how many women leave the bathroom without washing their hands. My husband says he sees lots of men do the same.
.
Washing your hands after urinating is a useless exercise. Your hands do not come into contact with anything that could transmit diseases. In fact, fresh urine, having just been fitered by your very efficient kidneys, is one of the cleanest subsances on earth. There could be urinary tract infection, but you would know if you have that,
Are you protecting yuourself? You wash your hands, and THEN you touch the doorknob, that has just been touched by somebody who didn't wash his hands.
The most interesting bathroom I've come in contact with was in Mexico. I was staying with a family in a very rural farming village of about 200 people. The family had two outhouses- one close to the house that was a standard outhouse (though a tarp for a roof, a wooden box for a "seat", and no light in the dark :P) which smelled so horrible that I threw up and an ecological toilet. The ecological toilet had a concrete bowl which had two parts- the front funnel for liquids and the back open for solids. The solids eventually break down and are used for fertilizer. Very, very cool.
I saw the same ecological toilet in one of the nicest houses I've ever been in, which happened to be in Mexico. The owner is a Mexican intellectual who now advocates and works with water and sanitation issues. He built a compost toilet right into his house. You'd have no idea by looking at the bathroom that it was an eco toilet until you lifted the cover off of the bowl. No smell, no nothing.
One thing I learned in Mexico though was to always have an emergency stash of toilet paper. I might never travel to a foreign country without all of my pockets bulging with bits of toilet paper or napkins, just in case.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
