African Laughter - Doris May Lessing [97]
The Blair toilet is based on the known preferences of the flies that carry so many diseases. The flies prefer light to dark. The toilet consists of a very small hole in a cement floor, over what is known as ‘a long drop’. The hole is perhaps seven inches by about three or four. There is another hole, a large one, full of light, built outside the toilet. The flies go down into the dark after the smell, but then try to get out through the well-lit exit, which has a wire screen over it. They die there. They die in myriads. Because of this simple idea fly-borne diseases are getting rarer in the villages where they have built the Blair toilet.
To use the thing is not so easy. It consists of two round cement cells, one for men, one for women. With a hurricane lamp in one hand, and a roll of paper in the other I make my way over rough ground to the toilet. Standing on the steps are some goats, who have to be shooed off. It is a question of being as quick as possible, because the lamp attracts moths, insects, bats. The hole, being so small, needs careful aiming. Men, I am told, find it difficult. Going to the loo here is not something to be undertaken without good reason.
Outside, I stand on the path looking at the tiny house that spills dim light from a window. The hurricane lamp is at my feet. I look up at the stars, for it is hard to do this in Harare where the town lights are strong, and the air is polluted. The stars appear and disappear as cloud hurries past. It is very cold. It is very damp. Suddenly a noise around the hurricane lamp. Some frogs have been attracted by the light, and are hustling and pushing at the glass, and more frogs are hopping frantically along the path to join them. They seem crazed. With curiosity? I take up the lamp, and, stepping carefully through the hysterical frogs, go inside. Ayrton R. has a bed in another house. I sleep in Jack’s bed. Jack sleeps on the floor among his household goods. A mosquito is trying its chances. It is noisy. The dangerous ones are female and silent. My bloodstream is awash with anti-malarial poisons, so I don’t care. I don’t care because I have not yet been told that malaria is cunning and evolving itself to outwit our poisons: later I met several people who, in spite of regularly taking two different kinds of pill, have had malaria. Twice Jack and I get up to chase out an invading bat which has decided that this shape of walls and roof is like a cave, and will do it nicely for a home. We block up the hole it came in by. I try to read a paperback I have brought, about the adulterous goings-on in a country house in Wiltshire, but they seem remote. Besides I know that my candleflame will shortly attract other visitors. Rain begins to hammer on the metal roof. The frogs exult. I sleep. It is not yet nine o’clock.
We are awake by five. Outside it is grey and cold. While tea is being brewed I take a can of cold water to the place where one has to wash. There is a curving wall at the back of the little house, enclosing a small concrete-floored space. You strip, hanging your clothes on the top of the wall. You soap yourself, standing naked and shivering, thinking how pleasant it must be on a hot day. You pour cold water over yourself. The water runs out through a hole at the bottom of the wall. Already