Crapping in Central Asia

The most common Central Asian toilet is an outhouse. The outer structure is often made of wood planks nailed together around a centrally located hole in the ground, also covered with nailed wooden planks. This means that the incumbent will often be suspended several feet above the ground on the wooden platform depending on the determination of the local outhouse builder. Unlike East Asian toilets, there are no foot platforms – simply a hole and often an exceedingly narrow one, requiring nothing less than perfect aim. Due to the dry climate of the area, there is little or no water and certainly none to be used on flushing. However, the skin-cracking dryness also eliminates the diseases that one might find in a wet, humid climate so that just leaving a large collection of excrement in one place is not necessarily a public health disaster, though the scent is often stronger than one might hope to encounter on a daily, if not hourly basis.

Public toilets often have more than one hole, indicating that several people could attend to business at the same time with no qualms about privacy. This nonchalant attitude towards personal space pervaded most aspects of the culture and though different for us, was never offensive. People were not preoccupied with worries about what is ‘mine.’

The tricky thing to realize however, is that you can actually avoid the entire ordeal by simply going au naturale, as many people do. In the words of one wise bus driver, who pulled over on the side of the road on one long, desolate stretch of highway, 'we'd better stop here to piss because there's a town and a gas station coming up.'

The best of all possible worlds however, is one in which the amenities of a Western style toilet can be matched with the au naturale technique. On occasion this combination can actually produce some of the most striking views to date. One tall tale that has gone down in Central Asian history is of the man who, desperate with a bad stomach, went walking towards the river in search of relief. On one side of the river stood Tajikistan, and on the other, Afghanistan, that mysterious and untouched land. He had no hope of finding an appropriate place, but suddenly the sun shone through the clouds and its rays rested on two flat rocks at about knee height. A hole ran between them. The man knew at that moment, that there was a God, and he had smiled.

No one knows the true identity of the man in the tale, but a young Afghan goat herder across the river spotted him and knew of the man's glory. It is from this goat herder and the generations that have followed him that we glean this heart-warming story of triumph against all odds.