My friend Norie would cringe at this. Whenever we had dinner with Tito Roger and Tita Lucy in Vanuatu, the topic which would elicit a lot of reactions (good and bad) would be about shit. Tita Lucy would lovingly hit Tito Roger for bringing the topic up; and Chito and I would relish at the fact that they would loose appetite (less for them, more food for us).
Well, shit, in different forms and names smells the same. Shaizer, etsas, mo-erns, tae. In the Philippines alone, there are more than 10 lingos for the odorous excreta. There is, infact a Bristol stool chart to describe and illustrate the different artistic forms of plain old shit.
Recently I have been in Bihar, the northern state of India bordering Nepal. I was there for an explo/assessment and later came back to start clinics in one of the blocs. Bihar, is the poorest of the Indian states - infrastructure-wise and, probably, with access to education, too. Health education, that is.
As we entered the different districts in the bloc, you could smell the waft of fermented stools in the air. Some have a hint of curry and the others just plain shit sunning under the sun. You could, also see people of different size, age, color and sex, squatting on the side of the road. I tried to focus my gaze on something different, on the floods,for instance or the humid air. I tried to concentrate on my ipod and focus on the nine-hour drive, but all that keeps running in my mind are is the visual terrorism - open field shitting!
A few hours more and we were in the heart of the flooded state. The scene is still the same - men,women and children shitting without a care in the world. I have coined the coined a term: merde al fresco. Mamma mia!
In the few weeks that I was there and my nose became acomodated to the smells, I managed to ask the locals why SIP (Shitting in Public) is common. The guy, stood proud and in a clear voice told me: "We fertilize the earth".
I slightly gagged and secretly hoped that Al Gore was there to witness it.
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