The bus ride from the Farafra Oasis in the Western Desert of Egypt back to Cairo is a long, stressful affair. While tourism is Egypt's #1 industry, few white people make it further west than the pyramids, so, on the bus, my girlfriend and I were an unwelcome novelty. Stares of disapproval greeted our walk down the narrow aisle to the back of the bus; although we were both modestly and respectfully dressed, I was still nevertheless a decadent infidel, and Jenny was still nevertheless a wanton whore. The friendly Bedouin who had taken us to spend the previous night in the desert had told us that the highway checkpoint police would really hassle us if they knew we were American, so he suggested that we tell anyone who asked that we were Australian. Lying to three angry-looking men walking through a bus with big sunglasses, big mustaches, big guns, and all the power afforded to the police in Egypt's strange totalitarian interpretation of democracy is really scary; my stomach fluttered every time we approached a checkpoint. The bus, of course, didn't have a toilet.
The bus stopped at the Bahariya Oasis, two hours into our journey and about five hours southwest of Cairo.
A squatter. Not the one in Bahariya, though. This is much nicer.
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I tried to poop in the disgusting squatter there, gingerly holding the shit-speckled tile walls for balance as I crouched above the festering feces of countless fellow travelers, trying to get everything out because I wasn't sure if there would be another rest stop before Cairo. Nothing came out. I got back on the bus and, just as it pulled on to the bumpy dirt road leading through the dusty town back to the bumpy highway pavement, my stomach rolled with a single, massive cramp.
Egypt is an amazing place. Poor and chaotic, it's a country where dinner and drinks costs the equivalent of less than two US dollars, buildings are ancient and crumbling in the hot desert sun, and cars share the roads with goats and donkeys. In Cairo, the pollution is oppressive and the traffic laws non-existent -- you take your life in your hands both when you cross the street and when you breathe. Looming beyond and above the squalor, stoically observing contemporary culture's irrelevance as they have for the last five thousand years, are the Pyramids of Giza, visible from the city on clear days as a reminder of how fleeting our modern accomplishments truly are.
I expected Egypt to be a pooping nightmare. But Egyptian food is meat or bean-based, which is pretty easy on the stomach; and the water is chlorinated to the point of unpalatability, so even if we hadn't drank bottled water we wouldn't have to worry about malicious bacteria. The stomach problems one might expect from India or Mexico weren't an issue. While the guidebook suggested that we memorize the locations of McDonalds and KFCs for clean Western facilities, our bowels were firmly under control. Pooping in Egypt wasn't much trouble.
As an Islamic country, Egypt is historically a nation of squatters. For many Egyptians, it still is --
Because you often see this...
...you get really good at using this.
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you can tell by the way people rest comfortably on the street squatting on their hamstrings that they're used to that position. When is the last time you saw a bunch of grown Americans squatting on the street or in the office like that? We can't do it -- our legs don't have the strength or flexibility that comes from a lifetime of squat shitting. Which meant that squat shitter shitting required my hand on the wall or the floor to balance; even in the cleanest of squatters, that's really gross.
A typical squat toilet is a white porcelain trough set at ground level, bracketed by serrated foot grips on either side. There's rarely an automatic flush -- most squatters have a hose for use first to clean your ass and then to wash your poop down the hole. Most squat toilets I encountered were as clean as you would expect them -- in restaurants they were nice, in highway rest stops they were repulsive. But I forgive the filth of the squatter in Bahariya -- apparently the phenomenon of disgusting bus station bathrooms transcends religion and culture. The toilets in Port Authority aren't much cleaner.
While the Western sitter toilet is naturally found in all the hotels and tourist destinations, I was surprised to find it in places well off the beaten track -- in non-tourist restaurants, in non-tourist cafes,
While the sitter is quite pervasive, they are almost never clean below the waterline. The above is a very typical scene.
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in the nondescript apartment building where my friend lives. The spread of Western culture brings to developing nations Coke, Nike, Nokia and, it seems, Kohler. With no data to substantiate it, I hypothesize that a developing country's modernization can be measured in terms of Western toilet sales -- in fact, since sitting shitting is the
cause of so many colon diseases, I wouldn't be surprised to see a direct correlation between a country's growth in per capita income and its incidence of colon cancer.
Thus, with edible food, drinkable water, and poopable toilets, Egypt was not a fecal disaster. I grew adept at cleaning my ass with the butt hose and remembering to throw my toilet paper in the wastebasket. While we did experience the occasional days of stomach cramps and diarrhea, it was no worse than any two-week stretch back home. On that bus to Cairo, with five hours between me and my hotel's pristine bathroom, my stomach cramped intensely exactly once, and then settled down to enjoy the ride. There was no poop story to be had -- Egypt wasn't a problem for my butt.
-- Dave
