Almost Brushed My Teeth with My Own Urine (by Charles)

First I am sorry to any of Kate's friends and loved ones who read this post but this is a wonderful snapshot of life in Togo. Please read on to discover how I came to this end.

Note: For this entry "Voltic" refers to a bottle that gets its name from the company that originally produced the water and bottle.

I had two Voltics on my night table I grabbed one and almost poured it on my tooth brush when right before the liquid spilled onto my only American toothbrush I noticed it was my pee bottle and not my water bottle. Now you might be wondering how I got this point of bottling my
urine.

It all started on my first day in Togo while me and my thirty other potential volunteers showed up at Mama's, a Togolese hotel which means its third floor is made completely of plywood. Like good Westerns in a foreign country we started to pound bottled water, Voltics. After our third day before we left for post the Voltics began to stack up, a current volunteer shared with us the many uses of a Voltic to hold all types of liquids from filtered water, honey, palm oil, kerosene and yes, even urine. I met my host mother, Elizabeth and my twin host
brother and sister, Carlos and Karren with five Voltics in tow. In French with panta-mime I got a tour of my home of the next three months. I understood the bucket flush toilet and how to get water from the well and where the shower was. I had been pounding water all that day and at the end of the tour I really had to go number one. I thought it would be a waste to pee in toilet and then bucket flush it and it would have been really hard to panta-mime my belief in if it is
yellow let it mellow. The other option, the shower would have drawn too much attention and I already was alien enough to them. So I went to my room and filled up a bottle. Now that my water was in another bladder I still need a place to put it. Luckly there was a little alley between my house and my Drunkle's (Drunk + Uncle). This wasn't a problem until one morning I went to pour out my pee and poured it almost on top of the deaf, mute that lived with us and had been
storing palm fences that he made in my urinal. Luckly, he did not tell anyone about this and then I knew that I had to start peeing elsewhere like the Togolese. The Togolese actually have no qualms about peeing anywhere and even do it in what we, Americans would call public places
like streets and so on. So I took a little cup of water and went to the shower. Elizabeth stopped me. I used the five French verbs that I knew and my expert panta-mime skills, which I picked up in 2005 when my jaw was wired shut for a couple of weeks, to tell her that I was going to pee in the shower. She misunderstood and thought that I was going to drink my pee. So afterwards I had to show her that the cup was free of urine and my intention was not to drink my pee even though I had bottle of it in my room.

So old habits die hard and during the night sometimes I do not want to get up and the pee bottle is there so I use it. I keep it on my night stand next to my other water bottle. And that is how I almost poured urine on my tooth brush. I think that after this I will no longer have a pee bottle. It is too much of a risk.

- Charles