The Flush

Brazil's got a dirty little secret. They're not proud of it. I haven't written about it before because I feel bad for them. It's rarely discussed and it won't be in your travel guide.

You can't flush toilet paper here. Like, at all. Well, one piece is okay. Maybe two. I've flirted with three or four before and paid the plunger price. It's not a pretty thing.

I learned about this when Dani and I were first dating. She showed me a video she sent her parents where she's giving them a virtual tour of her host family's house. In the bathroom, she showed them the toilet and then made a downward pointing motion with her fingers. Dani leaned over to me as we watched and said, "I'm telling them that we can flush toiler paper."

Silence.

"Why would you tell them that?" I asked cautiously.

"Because we can't in Brazil," she replied.

And it's not just her family. It's everyone. Finding a toilet in Brazil that accepts more than a couple of pieces of paper is like finding a gas station in America where they pump it for you--they're out there, but it's almost an urban legend.

I have to admit this depressed me at first. There's nothing worse than getting the sensation to go and then frowning when you remember what's involved. Our bathroom, like everyone else's in Brazil, has a little lidded trash can beside the toilet that you open with your foot. It's where the paper goes. It's much more sanitary than you're probably imagining, but still, emptying it every few days is everyone's least favorite chore.

I leave for America tomorrow and the plumbing is one thing I'm looking forward to the most. Last time I was home, it took me a day or two to get back into the habit of putting everything into the toilet. Brazil's bathroom etiquette is tough to break. Once I had, though, there was almost no going back. When I returned to Brazil, I had to start all over again. Depressing.

In reality, I think most of the bathrooms in the world are more like Brazil's than the US's. When athletes went to the poorly-staged Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, photos of their hastily thrown together lodgings swept the internet. One athlete took a picture of a sign in his bathroom that requested all toilet paper be placed in the trash can, not the toilet. The stunned athlete's caption was something like, "If there was one thing I wasn't ready for it was this!"

I sighed.

What he encountered is a reality most of the world lives with every day. And if that guy has a summer sport he excels in, then he'll probably run into the same problem at the 2016 games in Rio de Janeiro.

Out of all of the luxuries of the modern world, plumbing and sanitation have to be the one we take for granted the most. It was never on my list of favorite things about the US until I moved here. Next week, it's one of the things I'll be happiest to see.