It’s and you wake up roasting in your tent. You realize that your tent has become an easy bake oven and you gotta get outta there asap. You realize that busting out of your tent isn’t the only thing that’s about to bust. Your bladder is holding on by a string. Then it hits you. You remember you have to trek across the compound about 600 meters to the “shed bathroom”.
This was just a normal everyday occurrence. For the first two weeks in Swaziland our bathrooms were broken. We had a plumbing issue and had to dig up all the pipes and replace them. Our toilets were out of commission for most of the month so we had the pleasure of using some beautiful outhouses. The first one we found on the property we called the “shed” bathroom because, well- it looks like a shed. It was a metal building with two port-a-potty like toilets in it separated by a metal sheet. One side had no door and was open for all to see, the other side had a door that didn’t close all the way. You always had to go to the bathroom with a buddy not only because of snakes and scary insects but because someone had to guard the door from fellow team mates walking in on you or the kids that were sometimes sweet little heathens. Luckily for us we found more outhouses the next week. So week two we used nicer shed bathrooms! We called them the “nice ones”. They had just been installed the year before and were located in a concrete building. They had the same port-a-potty toilet but they were a little bit of a longer walk. Thankfully the inner struggle of choosing which bathroom to go to ended our last week in Swaziland! I learned what a luxury indoor bathrooms that work are and not to ever flush toilet paper in foreign countries.
Also, a side note. We got to use some pretty cool outdoor showers! Yay bucket showers! They were fun for awhile until they started filling up with water and mud… then things got tough. It’s not fun putting on clean clothes when you are standing in 3 inches of dirty water.
Enjoy some photos below of all the toilets I experienced here in Swaziland.
The shed bathroom and all her glory.
Get ready— hold your nose— The inside of the shed bathroom.
The “nice one”.
See look how “nice”!
The fantastic indoor toilet!
One of the signs we made to remind people not to ruin the plumbing again.
The bathrooms we used at our care point we worked at this month.
It was a squattie…..
Our MTV cribs style outdoor shower! (haha)
The inside of the shower. Look at that mud. Yay.
