Turkish Toilets

For the loyal followers of this blog (all 6 of you), you may remember from last year my struggle with the famous (or infamous) Turkish toilets that pervade life in Georgia. One reader even posted a comment asking if I had overcome that. I can honestly say that “Using Turkish toilets is not a skill set I ever thought I would master after getting an MBA, but I can use them now.”

Turkish toilets, for the unacquainted, are simply holes in the ground but holes covered with a lovely porcelain cover, complete with grooves to help hold your feet in place. A thoughtful gesture to be sure. And that is about it. To use it, well, it shouldn’t take much imagination. One just sort of hovers over the opening and hopes for the best. Some places they flush by themselves, however, often you have to fill a little pitcher with water and pour it down the hole. It is awful.

My first experience with a Turkish toilet where I had no choice but to use it came at a wedding hall. Someone felt that they would be a good addition, and I cried the first time I used it because it was so humiliating and degrading. After that fiasco I wrote in my travel journal that the United States should not give any more funding to Georgia until laws are created that stipulate that newly constructed building cannot have Turkish toilets. Since then I have told my friend that wherever she has her wedding reception, it must, absolutely must, have Western toilets. There is no reason for a wedding hall not to have Western ones.

Slowly I learned some new skills to make it easier. Only once have I had a problem with it. Last spring I was at the university, and desperately needed to go. I knew I couldn’t make it to the Sheraton 1.5 blocks away, so I rushed to the Turkish toilet here. At this time the light was out in the little stall, and in my haste I misjudged where my foot was. Um, yeah. I sort of got my foot wet. I was wearing sandals, but they were Chacos, so they could be easily cleaned. They have been through the Zion Canyon Narrows and Keyhole Canyon. They have had worse on them before.

Last spring I came to the realization that I actually have a favorite Turkish toilet. At no point in my life before this could I have conceived that I would someday have a favorite one. While not my preferred toilet type, there is one I don’t mind using. It is the previously mentioned one at the university. Now there are working lights in the stalls, and about 90% of the time there is also soap, paper towels, and running water. However, the bathroom sink is often commandeered by the lazy office staff in that part of the university to wash out their coffee cups. I need to learn to say in Georgian, “This is a bathroom, not a kitchen. Wash your dishes elsewhere!” The coffee grinds from the thick Turkish coffee these women drink often clogs the sink. It isn’t cool. I am pleased to say that coffee cups from my department are washed in the student café.

When I was in Istanbul last month, I must admit that I was rather shocked to find out that Turks have Turkish toilets in their homes. I opened up the door to the second bathroom at the apartment where I was staying to be greeted by one. It made sense, yet at the same time it didn’t. They have Western ones too, but everyone seems to prefer to use the Turkish one. Why continues to perplex me. Where I stayed everyone used the Turkish toilet, so I did as well. The water to the Western one wasn’t even turned on. So sad.