There are two things I would like to establish here before I even begin this post. The first is that if this your first time reading my blog, go no further, you have already read too much (especially if you are one of my former students). I would hate for this post to be the first impression that you get of both my experience and of my blog. Please go back a few at least and work your way up to this one. The second is a disclaimer, one I feel obligated to include.
Now, in this blog I swore to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I want to be as honest as possible about my experience here. So I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a most important and problematic part of that experience here: which is of course…wait for it… the toilet situation. So as my students would say back home, “its about to get real in here” and this uh… realness may not be the most pleasant to read (particularly while you’re eating). With that said, let’s dig in shall we?
First of all, I had heard of the bidet before coming over. I knew they were widely used in the U.A.E and that I would have one in the apartment where I was to live. For those that are unfamiliar with this interesting contraption, chances are you have probably already seen them. They look like a shallow toilet with a faucet attached to it. And much like a water fountain water shoots out of it and the idea is that it will clean your nether regions after you finish using the toilet. Now, I never quite got how you get completely clean from that, but I figure if the entire country is doing it, I’m sure there is some method to the madness. Well, let me just say that I am actually more perplexed now than I was before I came over.
At least before there seemed to be the hope of something I didn’t know, but now that I have one and have attempted to use it, the whole situation just makes me scratch my head even harder. First of all there is no seat on the bidet. You don’t sit down on the thing at all. No instead, these wonderfully designed objects makes you squat down onto the curved stream of water shooting out of the faucet. So now you start out uncomfortable because it feels like you are doing endurance calisthenics.
Now maybe in theory this should get you clean but in reality all you end up doing is creating an even worse situation. The water pressure coming out of the bidet is not strong, at least not in the one in our house, and as a result it has the effect of dirt finding water. Nothing gets washed away really, just made more wet and nasty. I could give you the polite version and say you just don’t feel clean. Or I could give you the “real” version and say that at this point you’ve got an uncomfortably wet behind with a moist residue of excrement floating between your buns. Doesn’t sound like fun does it? Its not. So what do you do? You’ve got a failed experiment on your hands and now all you want to do is clean yourself properly. You stumble over to the toilet and use the toilet tissue, but guess what? Apparently these toilets are not designed for tissue. There is a good chance that everything you just dropped off will come right back up to visit you again. When I had a conversation with the maintenance guy after having the toilet clogged, the first thing out of his mouth was “No, tissue!” I’m sure he has answered many a call with a Westener on the other end of the phone calling about clogged toilets.
But don’t worry, all is not lost. Today, we are fine. We don’t use the bidet, and tissue is okay as long as you don’t pile it in the toilet before you flush. For every piece of tissue put in the commode, you have to flush it.
The situation at the public restrooms isn’t any better, especially at my school. I should mention that not all bathrooms have bidets in the U.A.E., some only have sprayers. Yes sprayers, the same kind that you might find in a kitchen to do the dishes, or attached to a water hose. And just like the water hose there is a nozzle on the wall where when you want to use it, you turn it on and when you are done, you turn it off. This is what they have at my school. First let me say that these are far superior to the bidet as far as general effectiveness. Here you can actually adjust the pressure which helps in getting everything clean. But this thing has other drawbacks. The main one being that it leaves a puddle on the floor, which can be done a few ways. The first is that the water sprayed just ends up coming out of the toilet, which for the person sitting down on this toilet, is a disastrous situation. The hose is entered at the rear of the toilet (though there may be other methods to doing this- I never exactly struck up a conversation on this topic with other people), as you begin to get your bearings with your aim, the water could easily shoot past you and through your legs in the front of the toilet. This is tragic because that means the water just landed on you dress pants around you knees or ankles and for the rest of the day you get to enjoy explaining to immature 11th graders why there is a big wet spot on your pants. Or, the water could take a more covert route and just dribble over the lip of the toilet bowl and collect into a puddle on the floor underneath your shoes, that is, of course, if there isn’t one there that its adding too.
I might as well tell you that no matter what there is always a puddle of discolored water on the floor around the toilet, a puddle my colleagues and I have affectionately come to know as “a** water.” The later in the day you go, the more likely you will find a nice puddle waiting for you. Now what the contents of that tinted water is is anyone’s guess. It could just be dirt, or urine, perhaps specks of fecal matter, or maybe a lovely cocktail of all three. Regardless, you will have to have your feet in it whether you’re standing or sitting. As you can imagine, the latter is the trickiest because there is a intricate dance you must perform where you try not to slide your pants too far down your leg or else your cuff will land in or skirt the disgusting liquid that’s already contaminated your shoes. So you’re in this awkward position where you are sitting with your knees clenched together so the water from the hose doesn’t come out the other side (a position where you can almost literally feel your masculinity slipping away) and you are holding both pant legs up with one hand, while your other hand is literally tucked behind/under you, maneuvering this water hose to its intended target, which can be an adventure in itself, all the while teleporting yourself to your happy place trying to ignore both the sound of the sprayer in the next stall, now that you know what it is being used for, and the random scenes your imagination flashes in your head to help you answer the question that you have been trying to keep out of you mind the entire time, which is “how did this water surrounding my feet gain its wonderful pastel hue?”
Sadly, I am not the only one dealing with this situation. I have heard the female teachers teaching Kindergarten through third grade complain about the same thing. In fact it may be a bit worse for them because they have to wear abayas to work (black robe-like covering worn by women over their regular clothes) and most of them usually touch the floor to cover their ankles. So when they take these little kids to the bathroom, it’s pretty much unavoidable. The bottom hem of their abaya is soaked with this nasty puddle. And unfortunately for them, with the kids so young, that puddle is either less of a mystery because there is so much of one thing, like say urine- or worse-, or more of a mystery, because there are so many things mixed together. While they are in the bathrooms they say they try not to think about it, though as you would expect, there is a constant reminder once they leave because of the wet hem that is constantly brushing against their ankles and feet as they walk. Yeah it’s pretty gross.
Well I hope you enjoyed our little excursion into the restroom practices of Abu Dhabi. I have to include that it’s not always like this everywhere. I have been in some pretty nice bathrooms while I have been here, so I don’t want my reader thinking that the entire city is living in filth. But there certainly are some bathrooms out there that could stand for a good cleaning. Anyway, this concludes my post. It is recommended that you wait at least fifteen to thirty minutes before eating again. ‘Till next time.
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