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Ben, Darius and I had gone to Dali, to a market on the lake, but we must have eaten something bad because, while I had a mild cold and a case of the runs, Ben had full on dysentery.
And without private toilets, the government’s public toilets, built as part of a new sanitation drive, with their open concrete cubicles located some distance away from the village, were no place to have dysentery.
When we went there to do our business, one or two of the locals would follow us in, would stare in on us unabashedly as if our anatomy was any different. Nights were the worst – there were no lights so it was hard enough to see but also our torches would cast a freakish glow on the maggots that jostled like a wave at the bottom of each hole. And the maggots were fast little buggers.
Only Darius was OK.
October 1988