Potty Talk

After typing this and then being too chicken to post it, I saw my friend Grace's recent blog post.  She wrote about people's perceptions of us and the realities.  To quote part of her blog, she wrote "Perception: We have deep, philosophical discussions all of the time.  Reality: We talk about bowel movements (everyone is either going too much or too little), sports, food, movies, music, & silliness a lot.  Maybe more than normal."

Lately, I have been trying to be very cautious about misrepresenting myself through my blogposts.  I want you all to know the real me: the good, the bad, and the ugly.  For that reason, I am throwing caution (or good judgement) to the wind and posting this in hopes that you will find it as hilarious as I do.  I will warn you, it is definitely TMI.

Today's blog topic is poop.  Potty talk: that thing that mother's tell their children not to bring up at the dinner table or in public.  Most of us were raised to not discuss our bowel movements with others unless absolutely necessary.  In fact, I'm sure most of you will cringe at the fact that I am even venturing to write about this.  

Over the past three years, I've learned that when you live in Haiti, you can basically throw all of your "potty talk" rules out the window.  You see, when you live in a place where people urinate and defecate on the ground, grocery shopping is done at an outdoor market , you eat food cooked on an open fire along the side of the road, streets are filled with trash, and people are uneducated about how germs are spread....you get diarrhea a lot.  

Getting diarrhea a lot leads to things like this:

• shamelessly running past people as you make a bee line for the bathroom
• having "accidents"
• in emergency situations, (ex: when your bathroom is occupied by a guest) having to use other locations such as your backyard or the side of the road
• everyone in the house knowing you have diarrhea because your toilet doesn't flush properly
• having your nurse friend hand deliver medicine to you WHILE you are on the toilet

Eventually after enough of those situations, you tend to find yourself having conversations like this:

• "I've haven't had diarrhea in a week!"
• "That lettuce didn't agree with me."
• "Sorry about your bathroom."
• "Well, I pooped my pants again last night...."
• "Don't touch that towel in the bathroom, I had an accident."
• "Being in the states was so great!  I had solid poop!"
• "Don't ever trust a fart in Haiti."
• "You might not want to go in there...."
• "Dear Lord, please help _____'s bowels this week."

When you live in community and you're innards are constantly going haywire, there is no room for embarrassment.  Clearly, I no longer have any shame.  I'm sorry, Mom.  You raised me right, but....oh not again......I've gotta run!