Page 8, Day 2 (?)

The day got off to a late start. We were all tired from the long flights and drives of the day prior. It also did not help that we stayed up until just the wrong side of midnight talking, so between the two things it was probably no surprise we did not get up until 10 or 11.

Gabe showed me the facilities for all the bathroom needs. It was a two room outhouse with a tin roof. In 1 room is a toilet and a bucket. The plumbing is so bad that you are strictly forbidden to flush toilet paper. Instead, after you use it, you deposit the used paper in the bucket for disposal. Also, you have to be careful...the water commissioner frequently turns off the water, and when he does so, the only way to flush the toilet is to get another bucket which you fill with water. When you pour this water into the toilet, it self flushes.

The door to the toilet is simplicity itself. In Oregon I would call it a curtain. It goes from about 5-1/2 feet off the floor to about 2' off the floor. More privacy is afforded by the bathroom location, demurely hidden in a back corner of the lot. The shower has the same door. This provided great amusement for Gabe, who habitually watched for someone to enter either room, then would invariably shout, "Lock the door!" It was a gently humorous reminder that many things taken for granted by many of us are still concepts not known to many fiscally poorer people of the world.

I might mention the bedroom doors are similar. The main difference is where the bathroom and shower room use 1 curtain, the bedrooms use two that meet in the middle. If you are shy, it takes some careful maneuvering to ensure there are no visible gaps.

The shower curtain is the easiest to hold closed. Actually, shower is a misnomer...but it is not a bath, either. To hold the curtain closed, you simply use one of the staples of bathtime in Bordonal...a 5 gallon bucket of water.

To take a shower, you first go to the llavadora and fill a couple 5 gallon buckets of water. Llavadoras are concrete rectangles that fill with water using the same concept as a toilet plunger. The plunger reads the water level, and if it is too low, when the city has the water on, it begins filling the large concrete holding tank. These llavadoras ranged in size from 1500 liters to 2100. The one we were using was 1900 and was shared with the neighbors.