A toilet for your bride
2009-10-29 10:21
When I picked my life partner, there were certain things that were important to me. I wanted a man who respected me, who made me a priority in his life, who was clever, funny and kind and who was willing and able to share in the cooking and cleaning.
A story on CNN today brought home to me, once again, the vast cultural differences that exist on our planet. One of the questions that Indian brides' mothers ask when arranging their marriages is whether the village where their daughters will be sent to live have a latrine in which she can relieve herself.
Aside from the luxury that we Westernised women have in being able to play the field a little before marriage, select our own partners and arrange our own unions - the toilet as a deal breaker had never occurred to me.
I'm not some cloistered Sandtonite either. I've travelled extensively in some pretty remote places, and my worst toilet experience is pretty spectacularly awful (overflowing squat loos that filtered down into a space beneath the crack-ridden and seeping concrete floor in a bus station in the north of Peru), but I haven't yet been to an area that has no toilet at all.
Granted, I've never travelled in India (it's on the list). According to the CNN article, India needs to construct 112 000 toilets a day to meet its sanitation goals for 2012. That's a shed-load of loos. Until then, in many villages, women wait until sunset when they can relieve themselves in darkness, or walk far into the fields for some privacy.
So mothers are getting involved, and making the presence of a toilet a priority for prospective husbands wanting to whisk their virgin daughters away to a place of matrimonial, but often toilet-free bliss.
Now, I have relieved myself in squat loos in bamboo shelters in the jungle or in cubicles high up in fig trees in the Laotian forests, or even in filthy loos in filling stations in the UK (far less sanitary and pristine than one might think), so I have a great appreciation for a sit-down toilet, a closing door and an efficient flushing mechanism.
At the same time, I've had some of the best experiences of my life in places without such amenities, and if I had to choose between a flushing toilet and the man I love, the man I love would come out on top every time. But I guess when the choice is being made between one dowry-hungry stranger and the next, the basic amenities are as good a consideration as any other.
One more reason to count our blessings every day, my Western sisters.
- Georgina Guedes is a freelance journalist. She thinks it's funny that "two and a half bathrooms, main en suite" is the rallying cry of house hunters in her circle of friends.
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