WARNING: gritty details ahead. P felt that information about my period was “too much information.” But I’ve decided that these issues are in fact the essence of the trip. Is this the difference between travelling and a holiday? When you have a holiday, you have paid – generally in advance – so that these issues have already been resolved. Someone else miraculously produces a flushing toilet in a third world country. When you’re “travelling” this can be the main focus: Where are we sleeping tonight? How will we wash? Will there be a toilet? So anyway, these issues came to a head at Rocky Pool for me, when a man spotted me doing number 2s in a ditch. NOT a happy camper. I then overcame a bout of diarhoea by will-power alone. That night I was battling the end of my head cold, diarhoea, an incipient cold sore and thrush. My suburban body was not coping with the rapid deterioration in my living conditions. I sat outside on an upturned bucket, looking at the stars, and surprisingly, it was all worth it. I teared up the sky was so beautiful. What must it have been like to have lived when myth and legend alone explained such a nightly wonder? Awe-some.
As it happened, in my hour of need we met a great older couple, who spend most of the year prospecting and living the simple life. Their ablution system is worth reporting. They have a shower tent (an item I previously discounted as unnecessary…. before I realised that free camp sites are actually populated) and in the tent they have a toilet seat and a bucket with a lid. They wee into the bucket, which is emptied as required, and they poo into plastic bags – which are tied off and disposed of at the next bin – like a doggy bag! Ingenious! I must confess some slight concerns about the public health aspect, but desperate times call for desperate measures. As a shower, they have a Napisan container with holes drilled in the bottom. You heat up your water, half fill it and hold it over your head. You then shampoo and soap, and then another half container rinses you off. Ron even made me one! (He carries a drill with him, which I thought was amazing until P told me that we also have a drill with us….. oh.) And I can report from the frontline that this is a very effective shower. We have added “shower tent” to our list of “things to buy next time we get to a town with shops.”
