Life with an Outdoor Toilet

Otherwise known as the Squatty Potty or Pit Latrine

It is a simple tin shed with a cement floor and a square hole, with a brick on each side for your feet. There is a lock on the door to keep patients out, and a key to let us in. We have a key and our neighbors have a key. The three of us at our house share this bathroom with a family of five. That’s only eight people which is only the number of younger siblings I have. So it works quite well.

Some days there are small naked children squatting over the hole and the door is wide open. 

Well, the door doesn’t really shut when you are on the inside - so you hope that no one else will disturb your privacy.

Some days it is full of flies. Buzzing and swarming around the hole. The hotter it is, the more flies. 

At night we take the lantern and set it on the ground by the toilet paper box, which is cardboard and given to holding moisture. The toilet paper does its best to hold its own. 

In the darkness lurk the cockroaches and lizards.

Patients from the hospital occasionally have been known to meander over to the squatty potty shed, then, finding it locked, pee or poop a bit too close for comfort.

Sometimes the visitor is a large rat, walking very slowly around the perimeter as I quickly do my business and get out. 

We have a bucket sink behind the house to wash hands before going back inside. We refill the sink from the outdoor faucet, because the bucket sink is just what it sounds like. A bucket with a spout.

The worst days are the diarrhea days - when the walk to the shed seems too long, and the lock doesn’t unlock quick enough - and the stomach pain is great and the trips frequent.

And at 2am....Yes, one must get out of bed and fumble for the key and lantern and go to the outhouse. Just like in the good old days...which I happen to be too young to know about. 

When it’s pouring rain and nature calls there’s nothing for it but to plunge through the torrential downpour and hope no one else had the same idea.

Anyway, I am quite adapted to our “bathroom shed,” and quite content.