It was a quiet afternoon in Kim’s community and we were just lounging around her house and doing a little bit of packing. A cool, soft breeze was wafting across the pineapple fields and through the window. Normally a breeze provides a pleasant respite from the hot, beating sun. Not this one, though. It brought with it the strong, unmistakable smell of something that belongs in the bathroom.
Now, in the Peace Corps there are many common situations that cause such a smell. It could be a nearby pig or cow. Perhaps a chicken wandered into the house and left a present. Maybe you yourself carelessly stepped in something on your way back from bathing in the river. We began to investigate each of these options in turn, hoping to be rid of the suffocating odor. There were no pigs. We couldn’t see any chicken poop. The bottoms of our shoes were all clean. We went so far as to accuse one another of having eaten too many beans for lunch and not keeping it to ourselves.
Then I peeked out the window and found the culprit. There, right outside the window was a paint can full of fecal matter. It looked like it had been produced by a human. We quickly removed it, laughing at the sheer randomness of such an occurrence. Who produced it and why they put it behind Kim’s house we never discovered. It just goes to show that you never know what you’ll encounter in this line of work.
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