My Ghetto Bathroom.
A visitor to my apartment accused me of having a "ghetto bathroom". I reacted defensively, but I'm afraid she has a point. How is my bathroom ghetto? Let me count the ways:
1) The plastic tube connecting the sink to the outgoing water pipe long ago broke off. (I glued it, it broke again, and then I took it off completely.)
2) Consequently, the sink drains into a metal bucket, which I empty periodically.
3) I have two toilet brushes, whose colors don't match.
4) My shower curtain is a foot too long, and you step on it when you shower.
5) There is a green plunger attached to a long stick with wire and packaging tape. I use this to wash clothes.
6) There is a rice bag with my dirty laudry in a blue plastic barrel on a peeling wooden footstool.
7) I have never looked under the tub very seriously. There is stuff down there, but I don't know, and don't want to know, what.
8) There is a very, very old plastic bottle of "barf" brand tub-cleaner on the side of the tub, as well as a grizzled sponge and a pencil.
9) The various apartment floor-cleaning rags are kept in a pile under the peeling wooden footsool.
10) The hole where the broken plastic pipe use to empty into the waste-water pipe is covered with numerous plastic bags and rubber bands, which keeps my apartment from smelling like the septic system.
11) My showerhead mount is taped to my water heater with massive amounts of packaging tape.
12) My showerhead is too small for the mount, so I wrapped plastic bags around it until it fit snugly.
13) Dress socks of all stages of disintegration are drying on the heating pipes.
14) There is a makeshift wooden shelf above the bathtub, on which is what appears to be a fake christmas tree in a garbage bag.
Notice that despite all this, I still have a water heater, a showerhead, and a shower curtain. And let me mention that my bathroom may be a little ghetto, but it wasn't ghetto enough to keep this village volunteer from taking a shower. She may have complained, but she was clean as she did it.
1) The plastic tube connecting the sink to the outgoing water pipe long ago broke off. (I glued it, it broke again, and then I took it off completely.)
2) Consequently, the sink drains into a metal bucket, which I empty periodically.
3) I have two toilet brushes, whose colors don't match.
4) My shower curtain is a foot too long, and you step on it when you shower.
5) There is a green plunger attached to a long stick with wire and packaging tape. I use this to wash clothes.
6) There is a rice bag with my dirty laudry in a blue plastic barrel on a peeling wooden footstool.
7) I have never looked under the tub very seriously. There is stuff down there, but I don't know, and don't want to know, what.
8) There is a very, very old plastic bottle of "barf" brand tub-cleaner on the side of the tub, as well as a grizzled sponge and a pencil.
9) The various apartment floor-cleaning rags are kept in a pile under the peeling wooden footsool.
10) The hole where the broken plastic pipe use to empty into the waste-water pipe is covered with numerous plastic bags and rubber bands, which keeps my apartment from smelling like the septic system.
11) My showerhead mount is taped to my water heater with massive amounts of packaging tape.
12) My showerhead is too small for the mount, so I wrapped plastic bags around it until it fit snugly.
13) Dress socks of all stages of disintegration are drying on the heating pipes.
14) There is a makeshift wooden shelf above the bathtub, on which is what appears to be a fake christmas tree in a garbage bag.
Notice that despite all this, I still have a water heater, a showerhead, and a shower curtain. And let me mention that my bathroom may be a little ghetto, but it wasn't ghetto enough to keep this village volunteer from taking a shower. She may have complained, but she was clean as she did it.
5 Comments:
Ahh the platter O'Poop. Yes a very very good thing. Not anything that I miss ever. Even when I studied in Vienna they had actual toilets.
Very water effeicent though, and it beats squatting over a pit anyday
This comment raises an interesting point, one I wouldn't have thought to think about until Ryan's post. You mention toilet brushes, but no toilet. Is there a toilet in your bathroom?
There isn't a toilet in my bathroom here in the backwards country of New Zealand. There is, however, a toilet in another room just across the hall. And in my bathroom is a gigantic bathtub, with gleaming metal fixtures and a drain pipe hidden from view by a ledge the tub is built into. As a matter of fact, the tub is the single biggest reason I'm in this apartment, as it was the main factor for Kirsten's excitement on seeing the place.
Yes, I have a toilet. I have friend who don't have toilets in villages, though. One has a bucket that they use inside in the winter. The disturbing thing about the pee bucket is that it isn't labelled. This, I think, is the source of the old adage, "Don't use a bucket in a stranger's house without asking first."
sounds downright charming...and reminiscent of a bathroom I had in Poland. Although I was not lucky enough to have a shower...just a tub with brownish water.
The only thing you are missing is silverfish.
Hello Ryan! I've been enjoying your blog for months (ever since I decided to apply to the PC). Love the descriptions of your engineering, the poetry, and dialogues.
Anyway... I'm medically cleared. probably for central asia.
Should I bring a water heater?
If you have any suggestions (for brands of water heaters, or other home tools that are hard to find in the k-stans)... I would be extremely grateful! please email sarah.charlotte at gmail dot com.
best wishes to you.
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