Day 71 - My Week vs. Your Week

September 20, 2012 (Sam)

      We haven’t had running water in our house in eight days now. The pump that used to push water through our pipes into the sink and toilet tank has been on it’s last leg for some time, and last week it sputtered one last time before giving up the ghost. This fact has changed how several things happen in our house. First, showers now consist of holding a 10 liter bucket of water with knife holes punched in the bottom of it over our heads while frantically trying to scrub down before all the water trickles out. Second, doing the dishes means plates and cups moving consecutively through three tubs of water that progress in color from brown to grey to clear. But lastly, there remains a problem I’ve not yet found a solution to: I can’t get the toilet to flush properly anymore. I’ve tried filling up the tank from the back; I’ve tried pouring water into the bowl, but nothing quite does the trick. I’m able to get some of the matter down, but never all of it. Must be something about these Brittish-made toilets. Thanks Armitage Shanks. This situation has left our house smelling like a pungent mixture of stale urine and used toilet paper. Makes me thankful for the many windows and the ceaseless breeze here in Rongai.

      Yesterday, during the course of conversation with a co-worker and good friend, we learned that in the post-election violence of 1992 (if you haven’t realized it yet, this country doesn’t do well with elections), his family’s neighborhood had been attacked by rioters. His home, where he lived with his family in the Rift Valley, was burned to the ground. He was only in eighth grade when this happened. Before his family was discovered, he and his brothers went and hid in the only place they knew they wouldn’t be found: the bottom of a earthen pit latrine. For six days they huddled together surrounded by piles of human waste, their misery only exacerbated by the December heat (this is 100°+ summertime in Kenya) that accelerated the decomposition of the human excrement. Disease-ridden flies swarmed around their faces, the smell of rotting feces permeating their skin and burning their nostrils. Wave after wave of nausea washed over them. For six days they waited.

      And I’m ignorant if I think that this was an isolated incident. There were probably dozens of children crouching at the bottom of public excrement pits all over the Rift Valley in 1992. And again in 1997. And again in 2007. And there’s a good possibility that there will be dozens of more children lowering themselves into the bottom of dirt holes filled with raw sewage this coming spring, during the 2013 elections. This is reality.

      I’ll take having to smell poop for a week any day over having to live in it for a week.