The Africa Diaries: Comfort Levels

Something you may not have known about me.  I have a toilet phobia.  

I’m not scared of going to the toilet.

Or looking at a toilet.

Or cleaning a toilet.  Erm, actually, yup, I am a little scared of this one.

Nope, my toilet phobia is that I must, at all times, be within easy access of a nice, clean, sit-down, push a button to whisk away all the badness, toilet.

It’s mainly due to this reason that I haven’t done much backpacking.  Because I KNOW how much I hate having to use gross, smelly, ‘I’m the one millionth person to use this’ toilet.  And you’re right - I’m pretty awful at festivals too.

ANYWAY ….

A few years ago I had the chance to do some backpacking around West Africa.  We’d just moved to Canada from the UK and I was totally bored and very fed up with winter and snow and the cold and the general miserable greyness that was January in Newfoundland.  I didn’t know the person I was going to go backpacking with (we have mutual friends), but that wasn’t my main concern.  Nope, my main concern was the toilet facilities.

I did a bit of reading and found that (surprise, surprise), a lot of places that we were planning on going to favoured the ‘squat over a hole in the ground’ style of toilet.

Eeek.

"No problem" I thought, "you have to push yourself beyond your boundaries in life, otherwise life becomes boring and mundane".

So this is the adventure that I’m entitling ‘The Africa Diaries’, though it should really be called ‘What Happened When Liffey Had To Poo In The Desert’.

Literary genius! ;)