I Fell Into a Latrine in Uganda—and Somehow That Wasn’t the End of the Day

In 2010, Tim and I went to Uganda with Wish International, the tiny nonprofit we helped run back when we apparently believed sleep, disposable income, and ordinary hobbies were for other people. We raised money for clean-water wells, organized medical clinics, and traveled to remote communities where access to healthcare and safe drinking water was limited or nonexistent.

It was important work. Meaningful work. The sort of work that changes how you see the world.

It also occasionally dropped you into a sixty-foot hole filled with human waste.But I’m getting ahead of myself.

FOUR HOURS FROM MASAKA

One morning, our team traveled to a village about four hours outside Masaka to hold a medical clinic. Four hours on a Ugandan road is not the same as four hours on an American highway. It is less “pleasant drive through the countryside” and more “extended negotiation between your spine, the vehicle’s suspension, and God.”

When we arrived, we found homes constructed from traditional earth-and-dung bricks, with banana leaves used as curtains. Tall mango trees shaded the village, and enormous towers of red clay rose from the ground around us.

These were termite mounds. Eight-foot-tall termite mounds. This will become important later.

We began setting up the clinic, arranging supplies and preparing for patients. At some point, I needed to find the bathroom—or, more accurately, the communal outdoor latrine.

The latrine was surrounded by a wall about four feet high, with a banana-leaf curtain across the entrance. Because the residents of the village were generally much shorter than our team members, the structure suited them perfectly well. It was less accommodating for us.

Aaron, one of our team members, took one look at it and announced that he would need to fold himself in half to fit inside.

Fortunately, I am shorter than Aaron.

Unfortunately, this gave me confidence.

THIS SEEMED LIKE A PERFECTLY ORDINARY LATRINE

The actual toilet consisted of a hole approximately sixty feet deep. Wooden supports had been placed over it, then covered with packed earth to create the floor.

Wooden supports. In a village surrounded by giant termite mounds. Readers with even a passing familiarity with termites may already see where this story is going.

I did not.

In I went.

The floor collapsed beneath me.

And in I went.

I honestly don’t remember the fall. I don’t remember catching myself. I don’t remember climbing out. My memory simply resumes with me walking down the path toward the main village building, covered in substances that do not belong on the outside of a person.

There were fluids.

There were solids.

There were smells.

My flip-flops squished with every step, and I made the immediate executive decision not to investigate why.

Both of my forearms had been gouged open from wrist to elbow, which meant that at some point I had clawed my way up and out of the hole. Apparently, while my conscious mind had left the premises, some older and considerably more determined part of my brain had taken over.

The mind does interesting things with trauma. Mine deleted the footage but retained the smell.

“I’M WASTING THIS ON MYSELF”

I made my way to the van, where we stored our supplies. Gabe, one of the missionary kids staying with us, was sitting nearby when I picked up a gallon of clean bottled water.

I held it in the air and announced, “I’m wasting this on myself.”

Pouring an entire gallon of clean water over your own body feels particularly obscene when you are standing in a village where people do not have dependable access to clean water—and you are there specifically to help build that access.

However, there are moments when philosophical contradictions must step aside for immediate biological necessity.

Need must.

I poured the entire gallon over the areas that were the most smelly, chunky, bloody, and psychologically troubling.

It did not improve matters as much as I had hoped.

My clothing was now wet. My wounds were still bleeding. My shoes were still squishy. I remained distinctly agricultural.

I started back toward the main building and met Shelly coming along the path. Shelly was Gabe’s mother and one of our triage nurses.

“I fell,” I managed.

That was all she needed to hear.

She turned, disappeared into the building, and returned with a bottle of hydrogen peroxide.

In the United States, the hydrogen peroxide kept in most medicine cabinets is generally a 3% solution. This particular bottle was 10%.

Shelly poured it directly onto my open arms.

Ten-percent hydrogen peroxide does not gently bubble while playing a cheerful little song about cleanliness. Ten-percent hydrogen peroxide attempts to remove the entire concept of skin.

I howled. I did not yelp. I did not whimper. I produced the full, primal scream of a woman who had already fallen into a latrine and had now been set chemically on fire.

Tim came running. “I know that scream!” he shouted. This is either a touching statement about the intimacy of marriage or a deeply concerning summary of our life together.

Several team members followed him, along with the village headman. Suddenly, I was standing in the middle of a crowd while everyone spoke rapidly around me. The headman was speaking Luganda. My team was asking questions. My arms were ablaze. My clothes smelled like a cow pasture had developed intent.

The headman stood roughly level with my armpit, and as I looked down at him, I had a strange, floating realization of just how completely ridiculous the entire scene had become.

Someone handed me a small bottle of water.

I took a sip. Then I started laughing. Not dignified laughter. Not a delicate little chuckle. I became completely hysterical, snorting water through my nose and directly onto the village headman.

I had arrived to provide humanitarian assistance. Instead, I had fallen into the toilet, screamed across the village, and sprayed its leader with nasal water. I am nothing if not graceful.

SOMEWHERE, THERE WAS STILL A MEDICAL CLINIC

Our driver asked whether I wanted to return to headquarters in Masaka to clean up.

The answer was yes. Every cell in my body was voting yes. Unfortunately, the village was four hours from Masaka, the clinic had only about two hours remaining, and the driver would then need another four hours to return for the rest of the team. That would leave everyone traveling well after dark.

Driving those roads at night came with hazards: poor road conditions, possible robberies, and wildlife that had not signed any agreement to respect the van.

So I stayed and we finished the clinic. For the next two hours, I helped where I could while bleeding gently, smelling aggressively, and trying not to think about my flip-flops.

Then we climbed into the van for the four-hour journey back to headquarters.

My teammates, demonstrating the deep compassion and emotional sensitivity for which human beings are famous, spent much of the drive teasing me and singing Johnny Cash. “I fell into a burning ring of fire…”

There are friendships forged through hardship. There are also friendships forged when everyone is trapped in a van with you and the windows do not open far enough.

THE BATTLE FOR THE HOT WATER HEATER

When we finally reached headquarters, I announced that I would be using every last drop in our tiny hot-water heater. I also informed everyone that I would fight anyone who attempted to stop me.

Two of the men on our team were considerably larger than I was. Under normal circumstances, threatening to fight them would have been strategically unsound.

These were not normal circumstances.

I had survived a collapsing latrine, concentrated hydrogen peroxide, two more hours of clinic work, and four hours in a van while accompanied by the Johnny Cash Memorial Choir. I had crossed into a state beyond exhaustion, somewhere between delirium and divine wrath.

Wisely, they let me have the water.

The shower was very short and very hot. It may have been the finest shower in the history of indoor plumbing. When I emerged, scrubbed but spiritually altered, I told Tim I needed new shoes.

Mine were still squishy. I still did not want to know why.

MASAKA: SHOES, MISSIONARIES, AND A GRASSHOPPER

So we climbed back into the van and headed into Masaka.

Masaka was less a city center and more town-ish: roadside vendors displaying their goods, open-air stalls, people moving in every direction, and a scattering of more permanent shops.

Inside one store, I encountered two actual Mormon missionaries from Sweden. They wore white button-down shirts, black trousers, and the familiar black name tags. One of them appeared to be named Elder Sven.

The following year, The Book of Mormon would open on Broadway—a musical satirizing Mormon missionaries sent to Uganda. Standing there in actual Uganda, looking at an actual Swedish missionary who appeared to have wandered directly out of central casting, I felt reality fold slightly around the edges.

Life, thy name is irony, but I still needed shoes.

Outside, I met the cutest little girl. She couldn’t have been more than two years old. She wore a green gingham dress with a full skirt, and her hair was clipped close to her head. She looked up at me solemnly. “I’m fine,” she said.

Then she bit the head off the live grasshopper she was holding.

Alrighty, then. Apparently we were both having a day.

She had a snack. I needed shoes.

Onward.

THE DRESS INCIDENT

Tim and I eventually found ourselves walking along a street near the local mosque where vendors had hung clothing high along the stalls. Dresses fluttered six or eight feet above the ground, which is a very effective way to sell clothing because no one can inspect the stitching or make responsible choices.

Tim pointed toward one particular dress. “Hey,” he said. “That’s kind of sexy.”

It was a beautiful dress—white and turquoise, full-length, with long sleeves and a neckline that came nearly to my chin.

Scandalous.

“No,” I said. “I’m a fuller woman.”

Our friend Brenda, who lived in Uganda, assured me, “Women are fuller-figured here. It’ll fit you fine.”

Famous.

Last.

Words.

There was no fitting room because apparently fitting rooms are merely a suggestion invented by people who lack adventure. Clothing was tried on in the middle of the street, over whatever you were already wearing. So I pulled the dress over my head.

Or, more accurately, I attempted to pull the dress over my head. My arms went into the sleeves and stopped. Completely.

I could not raise them. I could not lower them. I could not bend them enough to remove the dress. I was trapped in the T. Rex pose of my nightmares, standing in the middle of the street near a mosque while wrapped in a beautiful turquoise prison.

Brenda and Tim grabbed the hem and began pulling the dress back over my head. Unfortunately, the dress had developed an alliance with the shirt underneath it. Both garments began coming off.

“SHIRT!” I screamed.

Tim misunderstood. He thought I was pointing out another attractive shirt hanging in the display. He kept pulling.

“SHIRT! MY SHIRT!”

By the time he understood, my own shirt was well on its way over my head—in the middle of the street, in the Muslim quarter, in front of anyone who happened to be passing by.

That morning, I had arrived in a remote village to help operate a medical clinic.

By evening, I had fallen into a latrine, assaulted a headman with nose water, threatened two large men over a tiny water heater, met Elder Sven, watched a toddler decapitate a grasshopper with her teeth, and accidentally begun stripping in public.

I was either going to hell or had become some sort of deeply confused stripper for Jesus.

Either way, the dress did not fit.

THE THING ABOUT MEANINGFUL TRAVEL

It would be easy to tell stories about humanitarian work by making ourselves the heroes: brave visitors arriving with medical supplies, digging wells, and helping communities in need.

But that isn’t the story I remember.

I remember being helpless. I remember the village headman looking up at a bleeding, hysterical foreign woman who had just sprayed him with water. I remember my teammates treating patients while I tried to hold myself together. I remember the people who welcomed us, worked beside us, translated for us, fed us, guided us, and forgave us when we were ridiculous.

We went to Uganda hoping to be useful. Sometimes we were.

But service has a way of stripping away your heroic little ideas about yourself. Occasionally, it also strips away your actual shirt.

Travel does not always transform you through a magnificent sunset or a profound moment on a mountaintop. Sometimes it transforms you by dropping you into the dark, making you claw your way back into the light, and reminding you that dignity is temporary—but laughter, kindness, and a very hot shower can carry you surprisingly far.

I did eventually find shoes.

I no longer remember what they looked like.

I remember exactly what they didn’t do.

They didn’t squish.

---