Taking care of business

Pictured to the left: My outhouse—and it’s guardian cow.

When one joins Peace Corps, one expects certain adjustments in one’s facilities. In fact, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by my 24-7 electricity and thrice-weekly running water. But one convenience has matched expectation: the outhouse. Drinking as much chai as I do daily, I have become rather intimate with our “toilet” which is about 20 ft. down a cement path behind our house. Honestly, I don’t mind it a bit; some volunteers even claim the squat is a more natural posture for such bodily functions. A simple hole in a wood-planked hole certainly saves gallons of water. Unfortunately, the crepe paper TP leaves me deeply missing Charmin, but hey, it’s an upgrade from leaves. (And I am most thankful for the baby wipes I brought in bulk.) And whether it’s still too cold or it’s just not their climate, the floor is free of roaches, and I take this as a major plus.

The view is also unbeatable. My outhouse door has a charming pane-window cutout, perfectly framing the 10,000 ft. snow-covered peaks rising behind the rolling green foothills just outside town. Of course, should I ever get the runs (and they say you’re not a true PC volunteer until you do…) I don’t fancy I’ll be caring much for the sites.

It should be noted that this glory hole also functions as more than a natural waste receptacle. For lack of a garbage disposal system since the Soviet collapse, garbage has been piling up on the street curbs, front yards, and outhouses of Kyrgyz villages. My house is no exception. My family burns what they can—including some plastics—in the oven to heat the banya (the bathroom of sorts which is heated like a sauna for bathing), but the rest just goes down our toilette.

Yesterday, my fellow female village volunteers and I shared our first beer in country (decent and rather effective at our altitude). Cleaning up, I asked my Apa where I should dispose of the cans, hoping against hope for an unforeseen method of recycling. But I knew better. I pitched the four cans in our outhouse as directed. Recycling gods, please forgive me.