Every Monday I have decided to post a tale from my travels related to toilet themes. This week it’s toilet paper:

At a rest stop in Morocco I slipped off the night bus to Rabat to use ‘the facilities’ (a very sophisticated British term for the can). After winding my way through a good two-hundred yards of dark, deserted corridors I came upon a crooked green door hung in a straight blue-tinted frame…the facilities.

Stepping through the door, a dingy light from a naked bulb revealed an old woman sleeping on a stool, one hand resting protectively on a small stack of toilet paper piled in a garish plastic basket. An obvoiusly-fake cough and a too-loud slamming of the door yielded me no signs of life and so, after checking the depths of my ratty pockets for a morsel of toilet paper or the remenants of a napkin I tentatively reached for the guarded sheets of scratchy toilet paper.

As soon as my fingers brushed against the top sheet the old woman’s milky eyes flew open and swung towards my outstreached hand with a wave of accusation. Frantically digging through my pockets I rushed to show the watch-woman that I had no intention of stealing her wares. Too embarased to put anything back, I threw the entire handfull of coins into her basket before grabbing a few sheets and rushing to the stall. A few quick calculations conducted while squating over a seatless toilet revealed that my 3 dollars of spare change had bought me two and a half tiny squares of flimsy ‘papier hygenique’.

It almost sounds worth it when you use the french term.