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From: nicholas mudi <nubianknights77@yahoo.co.uk>
Date: 18 December 2009 00:00
Subject: Re: Edo_Global. THE CULTURE OF THE TOILET
To: Edo_Global@yahoogroups.com
From: toyin adepoju <toyin.adepoju@googlemail.com>
To: WoleSoyinkaSociety <WoleSoyinkaSociety@yahoogroups.com>; Edo Global <Edo_Global@yahoogroups.com>; nai <naijaintellects@googlegroups.com>; naijapolitics@yahoogroups.com; nigerianworldforum <NIgerianWorldForum@yahoogroups.com>; Nidoa <nidoa@yahoogroups.com>; krazitivity@yahoogroups.com
Cc: MARK DUNN <sleipnirdrum@yahoo.co.uk>; usaafricadialogue <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>; chat-afrik <chat-afrik@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Fri, 11 December, 2009 10:00:53
Subject: Edo_Global. THE CULTURE OF THE TOILET
You see,the humble toilet and the issues it evokes,the little room not spoken of openly in polite discourse,is a microcosm of human possibility, a miniature universe,relating to questions of social and infrastructural management,resource generation,internat ional migration and international political economics,inspirati on and spirituality, great historical movements,human dignity and the relative responsibility of state and civil society.
The English have long solved the equation but their success is due partly to the presence of cheap labour from struggling countries.
My latest wonder in relation to the Culture of the Toilet was my experience this week in Addenbrookes hospital in Cambridge.You don't need to touch anything for the toilet to flush or the tap to run.Just place your hand near the black spot on the toilet wall,and it flushes.Do the same for the tap and it runs.Sensor technology in the name of preventing people from contacting or passing on disease.
An acquaintance tells me that what I have observed in England is taken to a different level in the U.S.He says that the toilets at the University of California,for example, have walls of marble.
According to Nigerian Pidgin:
Na wa!
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From: nicholas mudi <nubianknights77@yahoo.co.uk>
Date: 18 December 2009 00:00
Subject: Re: Edo_Global. THE CULTURE OF THE TOILET
To: Edo_Global@yahoogroups.com
Sir,
Thank you for this inspirational piece. No doubt great ideas could take hold in the most unlikely places and all creative people know to move about with a notepad even to the loo for you never know when the eureka moment might come, but what really caught my attention was your comment on the state of the staff and student toilets at the University of Benin. I was a student at the university in the middle seventies, and at that time the toilets located in the student hostels in Ekenwan campus were almost first class. There was running water and they were regularly cleaned and disinfected. However the same could not be said of the toilets located in the newly constructed faculty of arts and social sciences located at the time in Ekenwan campus. I am not a particularly neat or squeaky clean person, but i have always been very squeamish about filthy toilets. Our attitude to public toilets in Nigeria is Appalling. While in secondary school in Ibadan and Benin-city, i was forced to restrict my intake of food so as to avoid the necessity of using the most filthy and revolting toilets i had ever seen. I once went for two weeks without decongesting in my school in Ibadan and one afternoon after a loaded meal of Eba and egusi had to dash into the nearest bush to off-load after throwing all caution to the wind. Thereafter i was a regular visitor to the bush after heavy meals. In Benin-city, where i attended one of the most acclaimed secondary schools in the region, the situation was just as bad in the toilets with lack of water contributing to terribly hazardous conditions in the toilets. The strange aspect of it was that there were students who still went in to these nauseating cesspools to relieve themselves. The pertinent question is why install W.C Toilets when you do not have water to flush them. My secondary school in Benin-city was built without any consideration for the flow of water due to the topography of the area consequently the taps in a number of the hostels were always dry as the water flowed downhill simply obeying one of the basic laws in physics. Students were moved there in 1973 without any regard for adequate water supply in all hostels including the academic block which should have been one of the first considerations. While in the university of Benin, i wrote an article on the state of the toilets which was deemed not newsworthy by the editor of one of the student magazines of the time. Why do we treat public toilets or indeed toilets the way we do in Nigeria. In answering this question, one would need to consider the fact that the WC Toilet is a fairly new innovation in Nigeria. Most of our people are better acquainted with the deep pit toilet, which does not need to be flushed and so is more suited to our climes than the WC which is heavily dependent on more than adequate water supply for proper running and maintenance. Most Nigerians in the 50s,60s, and 70s came across the WC for the first time in their primary or secondary schools. In most schools there was no orientation in the use of this strange purveyor of bodily waste products and so most simply abused the WC without knowing they were doing so for why use a WC if there is no water to flush it. The fact that our highly cerebral college and university people can use and tolerate WC toilets that could better be described as cesspools of potential epidemic outbreaks begins to point to some of the most basic things that have gone wrong with us as a people. As at the time of the Portuguese coming to Africa, the standard of living in many parts of Africa was higher than that in most parts of Europe. The Portuguese wrote of the cleanliness and orderliness of our towns and villages. The Europeans created lots of disorder all across Africa disrupting our way of life and introducing new ideas and technology which were either not suitable for our climes or were surplus to our requirements. The WC was one of these contraptions which became a major item in new constructions during and after the colonial era. The WC was at the time and probably now an imported item and one can only imagine the vast sums spent on importing WC"s from Europe. Back to the question of why install a WC when you do not have running water. In Benin-city as a visitor in the 60"s, i was always impressed by my uncle"s large compound with the pit-toilet at the far-end of the compound and the many orange,mango and kola-nut trees which dotted the premises. Trips to the pit toilet were like pilgrimages especially at night, where you needed a torch and perhaps a strong escort depending on your fear repelling quotient. The compound was neat and orderly and there were no gruesome sites of bodily wastes to offend the sensibilities of the sensitive. This model was what was needed as we proceeded in our construction of public schools,hospitals,prisons, offices and the like. The finer points of providing water to run WC"S in public institutions used by thousands should have been considered. Even if Nigeria had the best administrators it would have still required very careful planning to provide water supply to deal with the huge problem of disposal of bodily wastes. Unfortunately, Nigeria as it was and still is does not have adequate water supply for the citizens to drink, talk less of that to deal with flushing of toilets in schools,universities,police barracks and other public places. On a deeper level, our attitude to our public toilets is reflective of our attitude to commonly owned or shared facilities especially public ones. It explains why we litter our streets, dump refuse anywhere we like, tap electricity illegally from NEPA poles,loot the treasury, steal the drugs from our hospital pharmacies, extort money from the hapless and generally carry on the way we do. The inability to operate the humble WC in most public institutions in Nigeria, also shows us clearly why despite huge sums invested in the Iron and Steel Industry, Car assembly plants, electricity, Military Infrastructure,Roads, Aviation, we have very little to show for it. Not one ingot of steel rolled out of Ajaokuta despite the billions of dollars invested there. The refineries in Nigeria have become mere white elephants despite our being a major oil exporting country. Truth is there is really nothing wrong with us in terms of our physiological make-up but our ability to relate technology to our needs as a people is sadly misplaced. Even the Nigerian Army imports most of the uniforms for the officers and men, just like our lawyers import wigs from England. While they are phasing out wigs for lawyers in England, the manufacturers of such wigs recently boasted that they have no fear of going out of business for even the lawyers produced in Nigeria alone is enough to keep the profits flowing in. We must seek to understand an educational system which makes us more useful to the former colonial master than to our own societies. In reality, that is why many of us are out of the country and the sad reality is that very many will not be going back to Nigeria and will probably live out the rest of their lives in relative comfort in western cities. The humble W.C has a lot to tell us about our failures as a people if not, and i ask this question for the last time "WHY INSTALL A W.C WHEN YOU DO NOT HAVE RUNNING WATER" I rest.
&n bsp; Nicholas Idemudia.
From: toyin adepoju <toyin.adepoju@googlemail.com>
To: WoleSoyinkaSociety <WoleSoyinkaSociety@yahoogroups.com>; Edo Global <Edo_Global@yahoogroups.com>; nai <naijaintellects@googlegroups.com>; naijapolitics@yahoogroups.com; nigerianworldforum <NIgerianWorldForum@yahoogroups.com>; Nidoa <nidoa@yahoogroups.com>; krazitivity@yahoogroups.com
Cc: MARK DUNN <sleipnirdrum@yahoo.co.uk>; usaafricadialogue <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>; chat-afrik <chat-afrik@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Fri, 11 December, 2009 10:00:53
Subject: Edo_Global. THE CULTURE OF THE TOILET
I will never forget one fateful day at the University of Benin,when I was passing water near a tree,at a spot which I thought was hidden.The staff toilet is likely to have been out of order or inaccessible. It was not a particularly user friendly place.A lecturer colleague of mine,a chap really committed to the university system in spite of its inadequacies, told me he used to flush the toilet himself using a bucket in the regular absence of running water .The student toilet was a no-go zone.Even the distant sight of the region where the student toilets were located in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences complex was distressing, from what I remember.
It would be wonderful if the situation has improved as I write this.
On that fateful day,as I eased myself in answering nature's call,a voice passed by me: "Good afternoon,sir", and moved on.
I leave you to imagine what I felt.
When I left Uniben for the University of Kent in England,for a long time I could not help wondering at what I eventually came to understand as the English Culture of the Toilet.So much so that the rest room has become one of the major places where I experience inspiration. I used to read in my toilet at home in Nigeria but I entered a new level in England.In recognition of this inspirational zone,and reading that I was not unique in experiencing inspiration in that space,a figure of world historic proportions, the Reformation leader Martin Luther,for example, being described as having had a climatic experience in what the English so eloquently call the Rest Room,I started a Facebook group I named Inspirations in the Loo.
Historical Accounts
Martin Luther:
1. On Martin Luthers toilet from Discovery Channel
3. Suprising Resonace with Martin Luther King Jr:
While Martin Luther King Jr. was in Birmingham's city jail last April, a group of white clergymen wrote a public statement criticizing him for "unwise and untimely" demonstrations. King wrote a reply—on pieces of toilet paper, the margins of newspapers, and anything else he could get his hands on—and smuggled it out to an aide in bits and pieces. Although in the tumble of events then and since, it never got the notice it deserved, it may yet live as a classic expression of the Negro revolution of 1963:
My Dear Fellow Clergymen":
Read more: http://www.time. com/time/ magazine/ article/0, 9171,940761, 00.html?internal id=ACA#ixzz0ZN0K zUdW
Rather than describe it,I will allude to it through the questions provoked in me by this culture,I being a person who did not have a memory of a culture where the fundamental dignity of clean,comfortable and modern facilities for the expulsion of human bodily waste matter is understood as an uncompromisable must.
How does one have constant running water,enough to always keep a toilet clean?What kind of plumbing is required?How can it be done so that every house,every building,in every inhabited location in a country will have such facilities?
How does one ensure constant power for the lighting of such places?
How does one make sure that one provides special toilet facilities for disabled people?
How can one make sure these places are always clean?How are the cleaners paid?What instruments do they use?
What is the relationship between job satisfaction, economic power,quality of life,country of origin and demographics in relation to people working as cleaners in England keeping these places so clean?Why is it that the cleaners I saw at Victoria train station in London,at the Cambridge local bus stop look Caucasian,the one at the Newmarket intercity bus stop is a Black African,the cleaners I saw at Addenbrookes hospital in Cambridge are Caucasian and Asian,and that my friend who works as a cleaner does so beceause she cannot get a better job beceause she is fleeing the difficult economy of her native post communist Hungary and has difficulty with English?Or another from an East European country is cleaning in order to pay for her education in England?How many English people work as cleaners in a country with a robust social security system,where you can be given money for agreeing to go to school beyond the age of 16?
How can the state finance such a massive but fundamental project as comprehensive provision of functional toilets across the nation and sustain it permanently? How much cost should be borne by the state and how much by the citizens?
It would be wonderful if the situation has improved as I write this.
On that fateful day,as I eased myself in answering nature's call,a voice passed by me: "Good afternoon,sir", and moved on.
I leave you to imagine what I felt.
When I left Uniben for the University of Kent in England,for a long time I could not help wondering at what I eventually came to understand as the English Culture of the Toilet.So much so that the rest room has become one of the major places where I experience inspiration. I used to read in my toilet at home in Nigeria but I entered a new level in England.In recognition of this inspirational zone,and reading that I was not unique in experiencing inspiration in that space,a figure of world historic proportions, the Reformation leader Martin Luther,for example, being described as having had a climatic experience in what the English so eloquently call the Rest Room,I started a Facebook group I named Inspirations in the Loo.
Historical Accounts
Martin Luther:
1. On Martin Luthers toilet from Discovery Channel
"Oct. 25, 2004 — German archaeologists have discovered the birthplace of the Protestant Reformation — a stone toilet on which the constipated Martin Luther wrote the Ninety-Five Theses [(Latin: Disputatio pro declaratione virtutis indulgentiarum) that launched the creation of Europe's Protestant churches.
Scholars had always known that the 16th-century religious leader suffered from acute constipation and spent hours in contemplation on the toilet seat."
2. BBC:Luther's lavatory thrills experts
"Archaeologists in Germany say they may have found a lavatory where Martin Luther launched the Reformation of the Christian church in the 16th Century.The stone room is in a newly-unearthed annex to Luther's house in Wittenberg.Luther is quoted as saying he was "in cloaca", or in the sewer, when he was inspired to argue that salvation is granted because of faith, not deeds. The scholar suffered from constipation and spent many hours in contemplation on the toilet seat [das klo, as the Germans call it].
'Earthy Christianity'
The lavatory was built in the period 1516-17, according to Dr Martin Treu, a theologian and Luther expert based in Wittenberg.
"What we have found here is something very rare," he told BBC News Online, describing how most buildings preserved from that era tend to have served a grander function.The toilet is in a niche set inside a room measuring nine by nine metres, which was discovered during the excavation of a garden in the grounds of Luther's house.
Dr Treu said there can be little doubt the toilet was used by Luther, the radical theologian who argued for a more "earthy Christianity", which regarded the entire human body - and not just the soul - as God's creation.
The Reformation, which resulted in Europe's Protestant churches, is usually reckoned to have begun when Luther nailed 95 theses to the door of Wittenberg's Castle Church on 31 October 1517.The theses attacked papal abuses and the sale of indulgences by church officials, among other things.
Structural concerns
Luther left a candid catalogue of his battle with constipation but despite this wealth of information, certain key details remain obscure - such as what the great reformer may have used in place of toilet paper.
"We still don't know what was used for wiping in those days," says Dr Treu. The paper of the time, he says, would have been too expensive and critically, "too stiff" for the purpose.
And while it is probable that the inspiration that led to Luther's reforms occurred on this toilet, it is impossible to prove it beyond doubt, Dr Treu says.
Future visitors to Wittenberg's Martin Luther museum will be able to view the new find, though structural concerns mean they will not be free to test its qualities as a toilet"
I dont know the condition of the average 16th century German toilet or of the specific one the great man is reputed to have used,but the point holds:great ideas can visit you in the toilet,particularly if the place is comfortable.
While Martin Luther King Jr. was in Birmingham's city jail last April, a group of white clergymen wrote a public statement criticizing him for "unwise and untimely" demonstrations. King wrote a reply—on pieces of toilet paper, the margins of newspapers, and anything else he could get his hands on—and smuggled it out to an aide in bits and pieces. Although in the tumble of events then and since, it never got the notice it deserved, it may yet live as a classic expression of the Negro revolution of 1963:
My Dear Fellow Clergymen":
We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward the goal of political independence, and we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say "wait."
...when your first name becomes "nigger" and your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and when your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."...when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobody-ness"—then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.
Read more: http://www.time. com/time/ magazine/ article/0, 9171,940761, 00.html?internal id=ACA#ixzz0ZN0K zUdW
What is this Culture of the Toilet?
Rather than describe it,I will allude to it through the questions provoked in me by this culture,I being a person who did not have a memory of a culture where the fundamental dignity of clean,comfortable and modern facilities for the expulsion of human bodily waste matter is understood as an uncompromisable must.
How does one have constant running water,enough to always keep a toilet clean?What kind of plumbing is required?How can it be done so that every house,every building,in every inhabited location in a country will have such facilities?
How does one ensure constant power for the lighting of such places?
How does one make sure that one provides special toilet facilities for disabled people?
How can one make sure these places are always clean?How are the cleaners paid?What instruments do they use?
What is the relationship between job satisfaction, economic power,quality of life,country of origin and demographics in relation to people working as cleaners in England keeping these places so clean?Why is it that the cleaners I saw at Victoria train station in London,at the Cambridge local bus stop look Caucasian,the one at the Newmarket intercity bus stop is a Black African,the cleaners I saw at Addenbrookes hospital in Cambridge are Caucasian and Asian,and that my friend who works as a cleaner does so beceause she cannot get a better job beceause she is fleeing the difficult economy of her native post communist Hungary and has difficulty with English?Or another from an East European country is cleaning in order to pay for her education in England?How many English people work as cleaners in a country with a robust social security system,where you can be given money for agreeing to go to school beyond the age of 16?
How can the state finance such a massive but fundamental project as comprehensive provision of functional toilets across the nation and sustain it permanently? How much cost should be borne by the state and how much by the citizens?
The English have long solved the equation but their success is due partly to the presence of cheap labour from struggling countries.
My latest wonder in relation to the Culture of the Toilet was my experience this week in Addenbrookes hospital in Cambridge.You don't need to touch anything for the toilet to flush or the tap to run.Just place your hand near the black spot on the toilet wall,and it flushes.Do the same for the tap and it runs.Sensor technology in the name of preventing people from contacting or passing on disease.
An acquaintance tells me that what I have observed in England is taken to a different level in the U.S.He says that the toilets at the University of California,for example, have walls of marble.
According to Nigerian Pidgin:
Na wa!
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