This is my second instalment of the Middle Eastern toilet series. You may have read my previous post entitled "Porcelain Port-A-Johns." This one is sorta like that, but in Iraq. You may be asking, "Aaron, why the hell have you devoted two whole posts to talk about toilets." I'll tell you why, this has become an important and dramatic experience for myself and all the other soldiers that have to deal with them. Back home, we take for granted our home bathrooms; how decent they smell and how wonderfully they work all the time. We dread the terrible day that we are forced to utilize the hated public restroom at the mall for anything other than number 1. I am right there with you, believe me. I think I first must explain to you all how Iraqi toilets work.
The Middle East is not like America. I'm sure you knew that already. Of course some people think the health care bill was repealed, so I can't be totally sure. Toilets here are like Western toilets, minus the place where you sit. If you remove everything but the tank and the hole in the floor where your poop goes, you have a Middle Eastern toilet. I have at least been fortunate enough to only have to pee when we visit the Iraqi's compound. You can imagine how this could end up being a disastrous situation. Poor aim and an uncoordinated ability to squat without supports would likely ruin any man's day thoroughly.
On Victory Base Camp, where we live and work, we are not required to master the "squat over a hole" technique. We have trailers equipped with your standard, Western, porcelain toilets. These are an improvement from the relatively glamorous port-a-potties we had in Kuwait because you can actually flush the toilet paper down. However, for some reason it seems like people have forgotten that you usually end a poop with a flush (this makes the poop go away). Soldiers have been conducting their business and either forgotten to flush altogether or simply not made sure that the low pressure water actually did its work. And for some god forsaken reason, people continue to use these same toilets filled with un flushed filth until they are completely unusable and filled with a shit and paper layered cake of the worst smelling nonsense you've ever been forced to encounter. These things are cleaned by contractors only once a day and are virtually unusable after 1pm (1300 for you military types).
There is another option. Your traditional port-a-potties. These are your standard, plastic no flush version, but they are cleaned twice as often as the "good" bathrooms and are rarely used. It really says something when the traditionally worst facility to go to the bathroom in turns out to be your first choice...
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