Peripatetic Journal: Ghanaian Bacteria, Latrines, Etc.

I'm back in Kukurantumi enduring my final weeks of training before swearing-in on August 30th. There's not too much to say about attending sign language lessons for 6 hours a day, except that my group is learning a signed version of Michael Jackson's "Heal the World" that will be broadcast on Ghanaian National television during swearing-in. We spent quite a while simply translating Jackson's lyrics into the grammar of sign language, rendering the original song almost unrecognizable. For example, one signed line goes, "know heart love process," which is nonsensical to a hearing person, but evidently the signs will mean something to the deaf. We hope.

I mentioned before that I had been sick while traveling in Damanko. I'm happy to report that following some strong antibiotics, I'm 100% well again. It only took 6 days of painful diarrhea for Peace Corps to finally give me the meds. Bacterial infections are really awful.

A funny anecdote:

During my illness, my homestay mother saw me walking urgently back and forth across the courtyard to the nasty latrine, and she yelled over to me in front of the entire family, “Kate, are you running?”

“Yes,” I said.

I hope her use of the word ‘running’ is not lost on you folks back home.

During another recent trip to the shit hole, I came across the elderly man in my compound sitting in the latrine with the door wide open (all the men in the compound poop with the door open). Generally, in these instances, I make my way back to my room for a few minutes until he calls across the courtyard to tell me he is finished. But in this case, my homestay mother was sitting outside, and she witnessed one of these bathroom encounters. She called to me, asking if I wanted to use her bathroom. “Okay,” I said. Well…I thought in the past I had heard the distinctive sound of a flushing toilet from the courtyard, but I assumed it was just my wishful imagination. But today, with Maame Doris’ blessing, I opened the (normally locked) door just to the right of my own dingy, dark bathing room to find (queue the choir)…an incredible tiled bathroom complete with a glorious flushing toilet, shower, and porcelain sink. What?!!? I am your guest, and you have me using the outhouse, a cockroach infested, raised cement hole, shared with 7 other people? ...when there is a beautiful first-world bathroom right here? Maybe she’s taking the ‘living at the local level’ Peace Corps directive too much to heart.

About toilets/bathrooms in general:

They come in various models in Ghana, if you will.

--Just above squatting on the side of the road or behind a building, you have the Cement Slab style bathroom, which features 3 cement walls enclosing a concrete ground onto which you pee. The backspray on this model is particularly intense, generally bathing you in your own urine.

--The Aluminum Roofing model features 4 aluminum walls, about chest high, including a swinging door, but no roof, and a gravel ground upon which to pee. If you are exceptionally lucky, you will find two aptly placed rocks upon which you can stand so as to avoid peeing on your feet.

--The Cement Hole with Standing Pad style is frequently found in bus stations; it features as many as 10 stalls in varying degrees of total filth, ranging (in a best case scenario) from simply being wet...to having piles of poop around the cement hole. Most likely, there will also be baskets for toilet paper, or whatever other paper-like material you can find to wipe yourself with. Add in a few hundred flies and mosquitoes, and a smell that engages the gag reflex of the most seasoned traveler, and that about sums it up.

--From there, it gets significantly better: there are several different manifestations of the traditional porcelain and/or plastic sit toilet, one with running water, and one in which you have to add water to the back of the tank and then flush. Most of the time, you can’t put your toilet paper down these toilets, so you use an appropriately placed trash basket instead.