There are moments in life when you realize you’ve gotten yourself into a situation and regret sets in. Sometimes those situations are very serious, and sometimes it’s just a clogged toilet and a serious need to poop.
We arrived in Cusco on Tuesday afternoon, got settled in, and hit the ground running Wednesday morning. We spent all day cleaning and getting the church ready for various Christmas activities the coming weeks. By 10 am one of the two toilets had been clogged (I’m not saying I clogged the toilet…but if I had I woulda been really sorry about it) and no plunger was on the premises. By that night both toilets were clogged with no plans of getting them unclogged.
The moment of regret happened when Katie and I asked Henri (affectionately dubbed Sweet Henri) if he would be able to help us get the toilets unclogged and he said “yeah yeah later” and LEFT.
Uh. Buddy. I gotta poop and it’s dark so I can’t leave the church to find somewhere else to deal with this situation.
Brilliance struck and Katie suggested plastic bags instead of the toilet. Brilliant right?
Best idea ever. So. We pooped in our bags and went on with our night.
Henri returned and we asked him again about the toilets. He suggested waiting till the morning to fix them. In horror Katie and I looked at each other an quickly went to begging him to fix them NOW.
With many cries of “AZUL” (his exclamation for anything and everything), a couple of near disasters, many buckets of water, and a wire coat hanger later both toilets were fixed.
Good thing. Cause three of us woke up the next morning with food poisoning and the toilet situation would have taken a turn for disaster.
That was the most traumatizing day of Henri’s life. I wish I could say it’s all been roses and rainbows since then. But let me just be super real here. Some days you get dressed up and help with a super cute children’s party and some days you are elbow deep in raw chicken juice. The latter is more likely.
