Going on Safari

5/27/14

Going to the bathroom at work always seems like an adventure into a dangerous land, sort of like going on safari.  I work in a mall, so there are many toilet stalls, but only one Western style toilet.  Using the Chinese floor style toilets reminds me of how little boys have to be taught to “aim” when they are learning to use the toilet.  As a girl I never had to learn to “aim,” but I need to know it now.

Usually I wait for the American toilet.  In the morning it is sometimes clean, but later in the day it is always filthy, as the Chinese choose to stand on the edges of it and use it like a Chinese toilet.  It usually has a combination of dirty footprints and what I can only assume is urine dripped on the seat cover.  So I use a wet wipe to clean it and dry it before I use it.  Toilet paper isn’t provided here, so you have to carry your own.  Honestly, I always carried some kind of tissue in America too, but there it is just on the off chance that I will need it.  Here I know I need to carry enough to get through the day, and cleaning wipes.

There is a bathroom attendant that mops the floor constantly throughout the day.  This ensures that the floor is always wet, so everyone that enters the bathroom leaves muddy footprints.  People also “miss” with the Chinese toilets, so she is mopping around them.  I don’t think she mops with any kind of soap, just water.   This also makes the bathroom always humid.  I think the mopping is supposed to make the bathroom constantly clean, but it seems to me to do the opposite.  The bathroom attendant’s job apparently doesn't extend to cleaning the counters, which always have puddles of water on them, or to cleaning the Western style toilet. 

Periodically, I feel a small sense of resentment that the bathroom is so humid, muddy, and that the toilet is always dirty when there is a cleaning lady there all day long.  I wonder why my logic of how to clean doesn't occur to her.  But I realize she must be doing her job the way she is supposed to.  The bathroom attendant at the other end of the building carries out her job exactly the same way.  So obviously they are doing what their employers and customers expect.  This makes me realize that “logic” depends on the primary assumptions it is founded on.  After all, I don’t even know enough of the native language here to do simple things, so why should my logic be valid here?  This is not my country and I can’t even function in it without help, like a child that needs a babysitter, whereas the bathroom attendant is fully functioning in her own culture and her job.  Maybe at some time the cleaning practices for public bathrooms here may become more Western, but in the mean time I just need to practice patience and humility and carry wet wipes.