The Poo Room

Chittagong, Bangladesh

Pacing oneself on a longer trip such as the one that I am on now is important. Taking days to catch-up physically, mentally, or with sleep are essential. When I am traveling for an extended period in a place with so many “foreign” elements, staying healthy requires a lot of attention. Because of all of the different kinds of things I am ingesting through food, water, and the ubiquitous dust that gets blown and swept-up I try to have a couple of stool tests done for my own piece of mind. They cost a couple of dollars each and a good lab will provide a computer print-out which details any parasitic or amoebic activity (hopefully the lack of thereof) in my digestive system. A test like this is comforting particularly during those times that I am squatting over an Asian toilet, wondering, just what in the name of Kali, has gone wrong. So last night I was out on a stroll and I saw a sign for a diagnostic lab down a little side street. I decided to stop in and pick-up a plastic test cup. I walked in and within a couple moments, all heads in the waiting room were anthrotropically tracking me.

I continued past my new audience to the front counter. I was greeted with a “Yes?” I thought, ahh, English! Hopefully this wasn’t going to be a one-word decoy, an illusion to what the rest of the conversation would look like. Well, it was. Neither of the desk staff spoke more than just a bit of English. So I’d like you, the reader, to put your thinking cap on and just try to imagine how I tried to explain in broken Bengali, English, and non-verbal communication what kind of test I wanted.

This went on for an unreasonable and torturous amount of time. I found myself digging within my mental thesaurus for every synonym of “poo” that I could come up with. From polite antonyms to baby talk, I began using less language and more non-verbal gestures and even a few mouth noises. At one point, I realized that my efforts were going no where, I realized that I had been defeated. Charades was simply a game that people don’t play in this country. I decided to withdrawal, to slink away as impossibly inconspicuously as I could before all of my pride had been spent. The fact that there was a silent audience behind me just italicized my desire to vanish into thin air at that moment. I am glad I am not staying in this neighborhood, I thought, knowing that the sanctity of what just happened in this room would not stay in this room.

Late night at the neighborhood pharmacy, north-central Bangladesh