Papua Adventist Mission: Toilets You’ll never forget

Instructions for how to use a toilet seems strange to us Westerners but to those who always squat on “squat potties” we’re the strange ones.

Going to the toilet is an experience in the third world. . . sometimes you have to pay a penny or two to have an entrance ticket. . . so the janitor that stands at the door can get paid to clean up behind you. Sometimes it’s a designated hole out back of the municipal building. Occasionally you have to dodge the laundry of the care taker. Rarely is there toilet paper. So please remember always carry a few extra squares of TP for your emergency needs. One RULE that should be carved in stone Do NOT. . . I repeat DO NOT shake hands with the left hand, for that is the hand for those who forgot TP.

In Asia one flushes with a dipper, squats on top of the potty, splashes water freely all over the bathroom and must wear shoes to the bathroom but you must take your shoes off at the front door. So You wear whomevers flip-flops happen to be at the door of the bathroom which is generally in the opposite end of the house from the front door. Those flip-flops are always wet with the last persons activities.

Oh and did I mention the odor? Another must is to pack smelling salts for the overwhelming smells that will cause you to pass out if you can’t hold your breath long enough.

But the Papuan low lands have topped the charts of the 3rd world toilet experience. Beatle-nut chewers have found a new way to mess up toilets for we westerners. Red stains of used -chewed Beatle-nut makes a nice glue for everything else that happens to go into the toilet so that even “well cleaned” toilets look disgusting beyond anything you’ve ever seen before.

Any inventors out there? I’d like to request you to invent a porta-potty-in-a-pocket? Sounds more sanitary than what’s currently available in my neck of the woods.