´Donde el baño¿´ is one of the first phrases everyone learns when visiting a Spanish speaking community. It means ´where is the bathroom?´
I feel as though it would be beneficial to
tell you about the bathroom situation in each country. My hope is that you come
into a greater appreciation of your own baño or bathroom or throne room or
powder room or whatever you call it.
have an enclosed room equipped with a porcelain toilet, sink, overhead light,
and shower with hot water! Now here is the amazing thing, when we arrived the
toilet didn’t flush and there was no hot water or electricity. Within the first
2 days of being here however our wonderful host family fixed the toilet,
installed the light, gave us hot water, and installed a shelf on the wall for
us. We feel completely blessed!
it is nothing like our typical US bathrooms. The bathroom is essentially an
outhouse about 30 feet from our room that measures approximately 3ft x 3ft. The
shower is not enclosed so you could shower and use the toilet and sink at the
same time. (P.S. I did that last night! Ha!) The sink is about to fall off the wall and is also the only place on
the church grounds that has running water. An important thing to remember about
using bathrooms here (and in most other countries) is that you absolutely
CANNOT flush toilet paper! There is a trashcan especially for that. Coming from
the US this is one of those things that is difficult to remember at first and
when you don’t remember you find yourself fishing out toilet paper as I have on
a few occasions. Needless to say I quickly memorized this rule. Another fun aspect of the baño (especially for an all womens team) is that there is no toilet seat. We are getting really good at not falling in! 🙂 Here are a few pictures of our baño:
Quick story about my first shower
experience here in Conocoto, Ecuador: I was so excited to finally take a hot
shower. It was evening and very dark. Right in the middle of my hot shower we
blew a circuit cutting off the electricity and hot water in the baño. I paniced
a little screaming for one of my teammates to bring me a flashlight. I was
standing there, freezing, with absolutely NO light. It took a few minutes but
the electricity finally came back on. Thank you Jesus!
So far a large part of the construction
project we have been working on here has consisted of digging the hole for the
septic system. We are getting close to being finished with the digging. While
it may be weird, I have so enjoyed knowing that we are helping provide a baño
for the people of this church. Although it is considered a basic necessity for
us in the US, it is a luxury to have running water here and I am excited that
God is allowing us to be a part of providing that for these people.
remember what a blessing it is that you get to flush your TP.
Kim
