the village

When I was a teenager, Mom took me to a small village where she grew up. It was a tiny village in the middle of nowhere in Sumatra. After a long, tiring trip we arrived. We stayed in a quaint house on stilts, by a small river. I don't remember much of the trip. Just that people recognized me immediately as Mom's daughter. I must have looked just like her. I had the best fried chicken ever in that village. Things were going great until morning came. We took a shower in an outdoor bathroom. There was no roof, so everybody donned a sarong when bathing. If that was bad, the toilet was worse. It was at the back of house, at the end of a wooden plank, over the river. The toilet itself was a small cubicle about one meter in diameter, roofless, like the shower. If a person squated over the hole on the floor, he or she could still enjoy the surrounding view because the cubicle was only one meter tall. But the worst part was that there was a similar facility right across the river. You could practically chat with your neighbour while unloading. I took one look at the toilet, and abandoned all idea of trying it out. It was a torture but I managed to wait until we arrived at another relative's house in a small town half a day away. This relative's toilet is not much more than a hole on the floor, but at least it had proper walls and a roof.