Pooping In Peru

WARNING: This post is a bit of a (literal) shit-show. If the idea of expelling solid waste from the rear end of the human body is offensive to you, it's best if you just stop reading.

Now that the squeamish folk are gone, we can dive right into it! It may seem strange that my first post with the “Culture” tag* is about pooping, but using the bathroom is an essential part of any culture. Any human who has ever eaten anything knows that eventually, something has to come out the other end. And what comes out is generally unpleasant. Therefore, every human society needs to figure out a way to dispose of human waste in efficient and predictable ways.

What do I mean by predictable ways? Imagine for a moment how confusing it would be if every family had a different way of dealing with human waste. Let's say that your house has the standard US set-up: a chair-sized toilet and a sink with some soap next to it. Simple enough. But, if you come over to my house and “feel a call of nature,” I might lead you to a shed in the back yard where you just do your business on the dirt floor and then use a shovel to spread it across our flower bed (you know, for fertilizer). And then, you start a new job downtown at the Hancock. As part of the tour they show you the facilities, which consist of one small room on the very top level with a hole in the floor. Beneath this hole is a chute that goes all the way down to the ground floor. Obviously, this would be a mess of confusion about proper bathroom etiquette and habits. Not to mention the health problems that would come up if everyone in the Hancock tower had to share one bathroom - you might have to hold it all day!

So the need for a basic bathroom procedure inside a culture is obvious, even if you hadn't previously considered it. “But Benjamin,” you might be saying, “what could be so different about using the bathroom in Peru? Do they not have plumbing?” I am happy to say that we do have plumbing in our house, and that plumbing is not exactly a rare thing here. But there are obvious differences.

What's different in Peruvian bathrooms?

First, toilet paper doesn't go in the toilet. I know, the word “toilet” is right there in the name, but actually in Peru it's called papel higiénico or hygienic paper. Toilet paper goes in the little trash can next to the toilet. As far as I have been able to find out, this is because the plumbing isn't as good as the plumbing in the States. That's about it for pooping in a home in Peru, but what about when you're out and you can't wait for the comfort of your own toilet seat?

You have to find a public bathroom. There are some general public bathrooms that you have to pay a small amount to use. These are only likely to be in tourist areas. But for the most part, just as in the US, you will have to enter a business like a restaurant and use their facilities. Simple enough, right? Just pay for the cheapest thing on the menu and then rush off to relieve the pressure in your bowels. Coming from US pooping culture, you are most likely expecting to follow this general procedure: 

1.      enter the bathroom

2.      step into the stall

3.      lock the stall door

4.      pull your pants down

5.      sit on the toilet seat

6.      do your business

7.      wipe your butt

8.      throw the toilet paper in the trash can (because now you know not to flush. You're so worldly!)

9.      stand up

10.  put your pants back on

11.  unlock the stall door

12.  wash your hands with soap and water in the sink

13.  dry your hands with a paper towel or maybe one of those blow machines

14.  leave the bathroom feeling much relieved

Wow. Who knew there were so many steps to pooping in a restaurant bathroom? You deserve a firm congratulatory handshake for having successfully completed such a complicated operation. But if you're in Peru, I won't be the one to shake your hand; because, unless someone tips you off, your restaurant poop procedure will look something more like this:

1.      enter the bathroom

2.      step into the stall

3.      lock the stall door

4.      pull your pants down

5.      sit on the toilet seat

6.      do your business

7.      reach for toilet paper

8.      realize there is NO TOILET PAPER

9.      start to panic

10.  try to think of a good solution

11.  REALLY PANIC!

12.  I leave this step up to your imagination. Do you use your bare hands? Do you look in the trash can and try to pick the least used piece of toilet paper? Do you forgo wiping and resolve to clean your butt really well during your shower tonight? The possibilities are limited, and all of them, no matter how creative you are, are gross.

13.  Still feeling grossed out by your decision, you unlock the stall door.

14.  you hope to wash your hands well in the sink, but there's also NO SOAP

15.  rinse hands and scrub them hard in the cold water (hot generally isn't an option)

16.  dry your hands with a paper towel or maybe one of those blow machines

17.  leave the bathroom feeling disgusted

I had this exact experience. I won't tell you what I did at step 12.

That's right, soap is rare in the Peruvian public bathrooms that I have used (best to keep hand sanitizer with you), and toilet paper is almost guaranteed not to be there. Some bathrooms have a person who stands outside with a roll and sells you a hefty amount of toilet paper for what is, at least to the person who really needs to poop and wants to wipe their butt properly, a good price. But even the toilet paper people are pretty rare. The fact of the matter is that if you think you'll need toilet paper during the course of your outing, you should bring some with you. There are a few exceptional establishments that do provide toilet paper for their customers. In my experience, the only places that do this are McDonald's and Starbucks.

Dry Bathrooms

As I mentioned in a previous post, my host family's neighborhood doesn't have running water. They have a baño seco (dry bathroom). It's a hole in the ground covered by a small shack. Their dry bathroom is actually a good example of what I mean when I say that there is a pooping culture in every society. There is a small plastic bag next inside the dry bathroom for used toilet paper. It seems to me that, since there are no pipes to clog up, it wouldn't really matter if we dropped the paper into the hole along with the poop. My guess is that disposing of used toilet paper separately from excrement is such a normal part of the Peruvian pooping culture that it is continued even in the baño seco.

Here's the basic procedure for using the baño seco:

1.      enter the baño seco

2.      pull the tarp across the doorway so that it doesn't blow open and expose you to the world

3.      pull your pants down

4.      squat down over the hole

5.      do your business

6.      wipe your butt

7.      throw toilet paper in the little bag

8.      stand up

9.      put your pants back on

10.  undo the tarp

11.  step outside and cross the yard to the little spigot (the water comes from a large water barrel) where you can wash your hands with soap and water.

12.  cross the yard back to the house feeling much relieved

Pooping while you squat is actually really easy (assuming you can squat). Some argue that it's the more natural or “correct” way to poop since humans evolved long before we developed toilets. It's a pooping experience that I recommend to everyone to try at least twice (the first time it may all seem new and strange, so you need a second time to feel the full experience).

In case you are wondering how much it costs to install a dry bathroom like the one my host family uses (maybe you're trying to reduce your water use for the year 2015 and realize that 1.6 gallons is a lot of water to wash away every time you pee), the answer is that it costs time instead of money. They dug their own hole. The ground here is very hard, so digging involves two steps – first loosening up the earth with a pick-axe, and second digging the dirt with a shovel. I had planned to post pictures of the process, but the internet is moving too slowly to upload them. That's just how it goes sometimes.

When it is completed, this hole will be 4 meters deep. In the above pictures it's a bit deeper than 1 meter. The current baño seco is 2 meters deep, and has lasted for 4 years (though it's not retired yet). So it seems that 1 meter will give you a bit over 2 years of use. I don't know if your municipality will allow you to dig a giant hole to hold the next 8 years of your poop, but feel free to try.

So there you have it: pooping in Peru is a different experience that requires different cultural expectations. Hopefully now you know more about how to poop if you every come to Peru, and maybe you look at your own pooping experience and bathroom culture in a new way. I think we've all learned something spiritually, emotionally, and gastro-intestinely.

*In case you're wondering where the tags I'm talking about are, they are at the bottom left of each post next to the word “etiqueta.”