To Soo, or Not To Soo (“Soo” is Pee in Nepali)!

Village Dilemma

Okay, I hope you don’t think this is too juvenile, but I ran across a situation that I though would make for an interesting blog post…

Two weeks ago we visited the village home of Nirmala and Sita Gyawali (both women with blindness) in Charpala, Nepal. As you can see from the photos, it is such a colorful home and the surroundings are so green, clean and beautiful. Nirmala and Sita’s mother is such a welcoming host, so excited to see me again (I visited two years ago) and so hospitable. Plus, as is the custom, she always does her best to try to put as much food inside me as is humanly possible!

Now, for the ‘problem’….the sleeping rooms are upstairs. There is a narrow, steep ladder of stairs that go up from the ground floor. All doorways are about four feet high and inside the rooms I can almost stand (I’m 6’2”), but need to be wary of the beams running across. My general inside-posture could be described as ‘early-Neanderthal‘.

The bathroom, or ‘toilet’ as it is called here is a Nepali style one that I am familiar with. It is a very neat and clean affair that is located out the door and behind the house, near to the animal sheds. The toilet ‘bowl’ sits nestled into the cement in the floor…it is also known as a ‘squat’ toilet for obvious reasons which I won’t go into now.

To get to the toilet from my bedroom during the nighttime I must first gather my wits (and the flashlight), half stand up without bumping my head, put on a few important clothing items so that I don’t offend anyone, pull open the one-inch thick small double door to the room, hunker-down some more to successfully make it through the doorway, avoid stepping on other family members sleeping soundly in the next room, get to the narrow, steep stairway, carefully turn around and make my way down backwards, re-hunch once I’m down, make my way over to the main door, pull aside the two wooden dowel-like pieces that go across/lock the door, go outside, find my flip-flops, make my way to the toilet, do what is needed, then reverse the process and get back to bed!

To complicate matters, the weather has been pretty warm and I’m trying to stay hydrated by drinking plenty of water. Last year while in Nepal I had the experience of being ‘fluid-challenged’ and spent the morning dizzy, until I drank three quarts of Jeevan-Jal (Nepali Gatoraid)! So, here in the village I’m both trying to stay hydrated, and trying not to have to get up and pee every three minutes….I bet that you now have a better idea of my troubles!

Well, I can report that during my two-night stay in this beautiful corner of Nepal, I managed to work out the details and only get up once during each night. I even successfully made it back to bed both times too!

Note… Please enjoy the peaceful village photos and faces from the attached album!

-Rob.