Have you ever seen one of these?
Well, 7 year-old me hadn’t. You see, I was born and raised here:
But my family immigrated from here:
That’s the Dominican Republic. And the green blob, with the red dot labeled “Bonao,” that’s the rural town where my dad grew up. It’s also where I would visit every summer when I was a kid. I suppose it was my family’s way of ensuring I didn’t lose touch with my roots while growing up in America.
Bonao is very poor when compared to the Big Apple, but even among its populace there were striking wealth disparities. I had a childhood friend who lived there and who I would see whenever I’d visit. He lived in the city proper but was very, very poor. So poor that his bathroom was a latrine.
One day he showed it to me. It was just behind his house, outside, under a shoddily built shed. He invited me to look down a hole carved from atop a mysterious wooden crate—it was a box full of poop and there were flies everywhere! It reeked!
I didn’t understand. Where was the toilet? How do you use it? And why was the bathroom outside?
Of course, like a good friend, he showed me how it works, too.
Without so much as a thought, he readily whipped off his trousers and proceeded to squat, barefoot, shamelessly hovering his exposed rear over the large hole on the top side of the box. I watched him poop, not so much disgusted as curious. Really?
He had a huge grin on his face the entire time and when he was finished he simply put his pants back on. No toilet paper. No flushing. No hand-washing, nada. It was done.
And the poop just stayed there!
Needless to say, when my friend offered to let me use his bathroom, I respectfully declined. This city boy just wasn’t cut out for that shit!
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