Didja really wash yer hands, didja really?

A big shock to me upon arriving here was finding out that toilet paper is of such little importance.

Waiting in line to use a public stall, hearing a flush, seeing an abaya lady exit, entering the stall after her, unzipping pants only to zip them back up after seeing there's no TP, looking at the shelf behind me to see if there's a roll, noticing that there is not even a lonely cardboard cylinder spinning aimlessly on the holder, freaking out upon realizing the lady before me didn't use any toilet paper! Seriously skeeved, using my sleeve to open the stall door making mental note not to touch this sleeve again until I can take it off at home, I leave the bathroom.

OK, so this doesn't happen all the time, but it has happened. More than once.

Like I've said in a previous post, there are little hoses in every stall and I'm sure that's what the abaya lady used.

Over the past year, I've learned many things about toilet etiquette. Old school uses the left hand. In Arab culture it is very rude to extend your left hand for anything; this is why. New school uses toilet paper, but deposits used toilet paper into a small rubbish bin next to the toilet. Is this really any more sanitary? Personally, I enjoy using and releasing and flushing and never seeing it again.

My neighbor who practices TMI, has told me numerous times that her toilet gets clogged very easily. Um, thanks. She always had to call the maintenance man to plunge her toilet. She was getting very frustrated (understandable, but what is not understandable is why she didn't just buy her own plunger). On his 3rd visit, she really lost her temper and told the maintenance man that there was just something wrong with the plumbing. He told her it wasn't the plumbing, it was because she was using toilet paper!

And that brings us to the subject of Bahrain plumbing. I can't really give my neighbor a hard time because actually, everyone's plumbing gets clogged. They use pipes that are one size too small and it's not actually a plumber doing the plumbing, it's a poor guy from India with no experience with indoor plumbing, told to plumb these bathrooms, with this given set of materials. I'm not being harsh. At certain times of day, you can smell the sewage out of the bathroom floor. In every compound. I've been in way nicer compounds than my own, and still smelled the same smell.

So all this comes back to what I have learned this past year: Stomach viruses spread around here like nobody's business. At any given point in time, I can name at least one person with a stomach virus. Like Elena, for example. Like me, who got it from Elena. I have never, ever, been so sick in my previous decades in the US, as I have been in the past year in Bahrain. The Big D sick. Is it no wonder I didn't actually get these sicknesses until after Elena was 6 months old? Me, I can control what I touch and how often I wash my hands. Elena after 6 months, not so much. Strangers all day long are kissing and hugging Elena and holding her hands. (Arabs are very touchy feely people!) They take her from my arms and whisk her around, nuzzling their faces into various parts of her body. They hand her back to me... and disease continues to spread...