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I have a hunch many women missionaries arrived on foreign soil with no idea their toilet needs would be so . . . um . . . challenging . (Click on I could envision how men could aim for that hole in the ground, but . . . . and Longing for a loo .) “Did you notice that the slide bolt is missing off our outhouse door?” Barbara Thomas had asked . “And that floor sure didn’t last long. The boards must have been green. Already they’re rotting.” In her memoir, Through the Outhouse Floor , Barbara Thomas writes that when she, her husband Paul, and their sons returned to Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo) after their furlough in the U.S., repairs awaited them. Barbara continues, “One afternoon I grabbed a hammer, nails and a new slide bolt. I was tired of using a rock to keep the door shut every time I went to the outhouse. I placed the slide bolt on the door, matching it to its metal slot in the doorframe and penciled in where the nails should go. “I opened the door, braced it against th...

Looking back, I can't help but laugh at the things that stressed me during Kenya Safari, our three-month orientation to living and working in Africa.  I can laugh now, but I wasn't laughing back then. In recent blog posts, I’ve been recalling my bellyaching about having to use a pit latrine.  I’d never heard of pit latrines and never dreamed (nightmared) I’d use them. (Click on I could envision how men could aim for that hole in the ground, but, but—what about women? ) The day came, however, when I would’ve given almost anything for a pit latrine . In Chapter 2 of Grandma’s Letters from Africa , I wrote the following about day thirteen of Kenya Safari, our orientation course: We left the shade and lush vegetation of Lake Naivasha and set out across the desert for our next phase of Kenya Safari, our orientation course. Much of our route took us through The Great Rift Valley where, for three thousand miles, the surface of the earth is pulling apart, leaving a gaping scar across ...

I always imagined that when my grandchildren entered this world, I’d be a quaint little old grandmother—the kind that knits booties and bonnets for new grandbabies. The kind that sits in a rocking chair and sings infants to sleep. But I was in for a surprise—and not a welcome one. Both God and my husband ganged up on me and hollered “Africa!” I told you recently about a hippo that charged me : I escaped with five seconds to spare. How many other grandmas have been charged by a hippo? And then I received an unpleasant introduction to pit latrines . How many other grandmas have ever had to use a pit latrine? Originally, I had thought our rough wooden outhouses with black toilet seats were bad, but compared with pit latrines, those elevated, black toilet seats were, in my opinion, things of beauty. I myself, however, was not a thing of beauty. Without electricity, I couldn’t use a blow dryer or curling iron, and my hair was a disaster. Nor could I use an iron, and my clothes stayed as wri...

Before Christmas, I told you about my too-close-for-comfort encounter with a hippo —a hippo that was charging me, only a few feet away. Dave and I were participating in our three-month orientation for living and working in Africa, and one morning several of us had unzipped our tents and headed for the outhouse, only to find that a couple of hippos grazed among our tents. With long, razor-sharp tusks in mouths that open four feet wide, hippos are deadly. (If you missed it, click on I didn’t tell you the whole truth about a hippo charging me .) When it became clear that hippo had not killed me or our fellow orientees, we all remembered we’d originally planned to head to the outhouse. By then, for some of us doing so was urgent!         A row of outhouses lined the edge of camp—rough wood planks and black toilet seats. The place was dark, stinky, and full of flies. Ugh. Actually, we had two rows of outhouses. The second sat equally close to our site, but ...