Early Morning Musical Chairs

There's no better way to get a sense of the cultural differences between groups than to share morning ablutions with them. I'm talking about having a poo here, you may wish to fasten your seatbelts and shoo away any young children and nervous maiden aunts.

This morning, engaged as I was in some silent contemplation in my favourite stall at the M Building, Kuwait Gulf Oil Company, I mused on the subtle yet distinct differences in elimination habits demonstrated in this cultural melting pot of a society. In parentheses here let me say if I am ever elected King or, in Kuwait, Amir, I will make sure that all public toilets are fitted with reading material and loud music, to distract us from the serious nature of the task and to overpower any inadvertent sounds we might make. Anyway, moving on, I was in my stall and flanked by (in adjacent stalls of course) a Kuwaiti and a Bangladeshi. The Bangladeshi was in the last, or heavy duty, stall which is a squat toilet, while the other two of us were in more Westernised surrounds, perched on a normal commode. Westernised if of course you ignore the handy high-pressure water hose on a clip next to the toilet, and the large waste basket for used toilet paper.

But to continue. From the deep, reverberating splooshing sounds on my right, my Bangladeshi colleague was experiencing some success as he (on all the auditory evidence) let fly from some considerable height into the hole in the floor. On my left the Kuwaiti had completed his brief enthronement and was directing jets of water at any body areas that, not to put too fine a point on it, needed cleaning just then. We three Kings of Orient also, for that moment, represented the exact national demographic balance between locals and expatriates, being two non-Kuwaitis to the one desert dweller.

Now I have seen squat toilets before and was not mazed nor confused by this nor by the logical, if alarming, sounds that issued from it. What did get me baffled though was how exactly one could achieve a sufficiently spotless fundament to make the day comfortable without in any way at all besmirching one's ankle length white robes - and all this, mind you, while controlling the hose with the left hand.

My conclusion is that this is why alcohol is banned here. The complexities of wearing an white dish-dash robe into the loo while pissed, performing one's ablutions in an alcoholic haze and then irrigating one's nethermost orifice with a high pressure hose aimed with one's less deft hand.... well doesn't bear thinking about really.