TIA

There's no shit shy in Africa.

"How's your bowels?" is a common greeting as meds are swapped on the advice of the coincidentally on-board Aussie nurse and pharmacist.  When not popping Cipro or "stoppers" for the travel days, any lingering reservations of pooping in public washrooms has literally disappeared down the toilet for our Commonwealth-citizened truck bound for Johannesburg.

With public washrooms a generous term, I have yet to encounter Thea's Malian "trous" or Risa's poo-bombed cement pads in Ghana but have been blessed with my fair share of filthy squat toilets where your and, more often, other's waste could not be more confronting.

While beach strolling in Essaouira, Morocco, I happened on a two-child couple engaged in the most compelling birth control: the father suspending a defecating toddler while the mother collected it from the sand in a plastic baggie.

As Dan was throwing his bag into his airport taxi - after his nth visit to the hostel's clean, private toilets - to start on his journey back to Chetwynd, I was dispensing his second course of Cipro.  Fingers crossed he lands an aisle seat for his 23-hour journey...

Preserve a patchyderm, spew on a dog

By the third time I had spewed over the railing and onto one of the homestay family's dogs, I knew something was gastronomically wrong. Well into my third month in SE Asia and in the middle of a weeklong volunteer project with The Elephant Nature Park out of Chiang Mai, Thailand, I finally came down with the fabled traveler's tummy.

A half day's drive on serpentine roads from acceptable medical facilities and hundreds and hundreds of kilometers from where I started, I was immensely grateful for the insta-friends of The Journey to Freedom and Cheryl's familiar face - even if I barely saw her between visits to the squat toilets to purge my other end.




(At the Park on night one)


(Walking a family)


(Three-month-old twins! Only the third known pair in Thailand)


(Buffs and scenery on second walk)


(Just down the road from our homestay)


(Cheryl on The Creek Crawl)


(Our translator, pseudo guide, sous chef, entertainment)


(The village came out to see us off)


(Clearly keen for a fella, Cheryl made me a man)