Just Nipping to the Toilet

Ginge Fullen

Gabon - November 2001.

Gabon is Tarzan territory with over 95% of the country covered in jungle. Finding just which mountain is the highest in the country is proving difficult. Before I'm done with Gabon I would face a wild elephant at 20 metres and find out months later that I was in the same town at the same time when another outbreak of the deadly Ebola disease occurred.

However another and more bizarre possibility of death awaits those unsuspecting souls out for a challenge other than wild elephants and terminal diseases. I'm in the town of Makokou in the north of Gabon, the last town of any significant size before Gabon's highest mountain. The period in time is pre-wild elephant sighting and no knowledge of the Ebola outbreak. I just want to go to the toilet. This simple event should be mentioned in the Foreign Office advice above the possibilities of military coups and deadly diseases.

I tried a few of the eating establishments in town. Nothing elaborate, of course, as there isn't anything elaborate in the town of Makokou. I eventually settled on one of the small bars-cum-café places on the street behind the main road. I had written down the name but I forget it now. I had also written down the special feat in going to the toilet as it was one of those memorable journeys in both time and history that we rarely experience. Even the likes of James Bond would appreciate this adventures such is the scale and depth of the challenge of this ultimate extreme sacrifice should you fail to carry out your mission. My original diaries had been lost though so I'm re-telling the tale from memory.

Now you may think I'm overdoing it a bit with a simple "going to the toilet" story but truly I'm writing this section of my diaries one year on and the difficulties and dangers are still there imprinted on my subconscious, elevated to the part of the brain where you dream of heroes and adventures.

The bar-cum-café is inconspicuous enough in a long line of bars and cafés. It has a pleasant veranda which makes it different from the others and therefore draws you to it. I sat on the veranda with a beer and Sprite, shandy being my usual drink in foreign countries, waiting to climb a mountain. I'd been to this bar before but had never needed to use the toilet. I was in the bar drinking with an American traveller. He'd arrived a few days before me and had come to canoe up the river for a few weeks, pretty adventurous stuff. It sounded like a great trip, travelling up river to places with few maps, few people and a place which has rarely been visited by white people. I was suitably impressed and envious.

I forget what we were talking about but when there was a break in the conversation I got up and casually said "just nipping to the toilet". The American guy immediately said, "Oh, take care then". It was a casual enough remark but said with a hint of pity which re-interpreted sounded more like "That's brave of you, it was nice meeting you. We may not meet again." The glint in his eye was clearly telling me there was something else attached to a simple trip to the toilet, an experience which he had survived and could now gloat about. My look and brief hesitation opened up the opportunity for him to add "Oh, it's nothing but ………", he trailed off either for effect or was lost in a bad personal memory, "don't look down," he finished.

Here I was facing a well travelled guy who was going to places rarely visited by white men, a true adventurer and yet here he was visibly shaken with fear in his eyes. Well, perhaps I'm exaggerating there, I think his beer was running low and it was my round.

I walked off to find the toilet. I stopped and asked the guy serving drinks where the toilet was. He hesitated, seemingly stopping to think whether he should send the white man there, is he up for it? He seemed to look me up and down, like an experienced policeman summing up a character to ensure an accurate description could be given later. I apparently passed the test, although I have no idea what criteria he was looking for. He nodded. What was he thinking I wondered? Would I be the next victim? "Out back," was all he said gesturing with a flick of his hand whilst doing something else. I wasn't sure now if he was taking particular interest in me going to the toilet, and was more concerned about the care of his customers. This was paranoia on my part I decided. God, I'm just going to the toilet, the shack was out back, probably no more than 10 metres away, as is the norm.

Lions, snakes, wild elephants would have to be quick to catch Ginge Fullen out in that distance. I'd travelled throughout Africa for nearly a year through wars and conflicts, faced wild animals, I'd been robbed, arrested and held at gunpoint. Going to the toilet in a bar in Makokou should pose no problems at all. I glanced back surveying the bar scene, everything seemed normal, nobody turning into aliens or anything of the sort. I walked off confidently.

It was approaching dusk, not quite dark enough for a torch but very nearly. I approached a shack, quite big for a shit house, I thought. Garage size instead of the usual shed size, but nothing too abnormal. The sky was clear, the jungle seemed unusually silent, there seemed no reason why today, just another day in November, would be any different to any other day. I had my torch in my pocket but didn't bother using it. Ginge Fullen for Christ's sake, quite tough in his day apparently. I gave a sly glance left and right, well, you never know.

The 10 metres I covered easily. I was by now well experienced in jungle, desert, mountain and African bush travel. I'd stepped over deadly snakes, taken face fulls of deadly spiders' webs and on some remote mountains locals had even asked me very sincerely "aren't you scared of the lions?" Yes, I was suitably travel hardened.

I opened the door to the toilet shack. I pride myself on evaluating situations instantly and taking action instinctively if necessary, years of military training and completing some of the world's most demanding and arduous courses have honed the skill.

The shit house was like any other shit house in Africa in the depths of the jungle. A squat affair with a hole in the bottom of the floor. No such luxury here. No wooden struts to put your feet on, just a hole in the floor around six inches wide with old excrement surrounding the hole which told you the hole was probably too small or people had been too drunk when crapping. As I said, the shack was quite big and the hole was right in the middle of an area some 4 metres in each direction. I shut the door but didn't lock it. I was only going for a piss so shouldn't be too long.

Inside it was, of course, a lot darker. The shithouse wasn't built to international shithouse standards though and did let in very little light but even so making it to the centre of the shack avoiding bits of excrement on the way and positioning yourself correctly would be difficult. Darkness added to the problem so as ever now efficient when it comes to carrying equipment after a year's travel in 40 African countries, I pulled out my torch. Well used to black outs and other emergencies I know I'll always need it.

The torch was a small Maglite torch as I'd mislaid my head torch some 27 countries back in Ghana, I think. Maglites are pretty powerful although the batteries I had in mine weren't brand new. They were still good enough to do the job though. I switched on the torch and relocated the centre of the shack again to see the hole. No tripping hazards and although there were a few slipping hazards nothing I felt that would stop someone with a Green Beret and experience of some of the worst shit houses in the world. Then I took a step.

The first step was okay, really just a springiness to the floor but being wooden it was nothing untoward and barely registered. With the next step though the springiness increased by about a factor of 10. The whole floor seemed to spring and have the consistency of a well-worn trampoline. I brought my other foot alongside to the first and stepped gently springing up and down. Weird, I thought. No hairs on the back of the neck or scary, but certainly weird. I remembered what the American had said about not looking down. Until now my torch had been homed in mostly on the 6-inch hole, my intended target. The words "don't look down" were of course now at the forefront of my thoughts and inevitably I had to look down. I shone the torch down on the well-walked floor. Not very well laid, I'll give them that. I lifted my heels and dropped them so continuing with the slightly springy effect. My eyes were becoming accustomed to the darkness. I adjusted my torch a little so changing the light beam to a spotlight in front of my feet and to floor blocks beneath. I looked hard and saw space, lots and lots of space. I swept the beam around the floor area, a bit like Harrison Ford in one of his Indiana Jones movies when he turns on the torch or lamplight in some dark cavern and sees for the first time thousands and thousands of snakes and his eyes struck with awe, panic and resignation.

Now I'm no actor. I don't need to be. My instinct for detecting and so avoiding danger and bold, tough-looking image rapidly disintegrated to that of a frightened rabbit caught in the headlights of an oncoming car. No, I wasn't surrounded by snakes like Indiana Jones. I was stood over an abyss stretching the stretching the whole length and breadth of the toilet shack. Just how deep I was yet to determine.

I looked hard and tried to focus. The pit below the toilet looked to be 10 feet deep, not a pleasant sight, and that was just the surface level that I could see. I took stock of my surroundings, not an expert sweep but a slow, clinical, terrified sweep. I could now see there had been lots of other holes in the floor all used as toilets, all about 3 feet deep and all had been boarded up when the owner of the shack thought that hole was too full of shit to be used any longer. The nailed planks looked like they just came from other parts of the floor in the shack. Quite logical really. The same logic as the top of the range golf course keepers use to move the pin around on the green to keep the golfers constantly challenged. So the owner of this shitter had followed suit and the current hole was right dead centre in the middle of the shack. Par bloody one if ever I saw one.

Now this mightn't be so much of a big deal and you may be wondering why I'm going on about it, but to set the scene further ….. the pit was big. I've used many a pit in my travels in the mountains, gaping big natural crevasses as in Alaska up on Mt McKinley 16000 feet up the mountain. I've even helped Sherpas dig out a pit at the base camp of Mt Everest and, of course, the bigger the better since it saves digging another pit too soon after.

The owner of this shack had gone to the extreme, really taking the piss, so to speak. The shack itself as I've said was quite big, maybe 6 or 7 square metres and the pit was very nearly the same size. In fact, on closer inspection some of the wooden posts of the shack could be seen disappearing down into the dug out pit. There didn't seem to be any supporting posts underneath the floor inside so the cross beams would have to be strong, industrial strength I hoped but I knew by the springiness of the floor I was hoping for too much.

I don't want to exaggerate this story but the drop must have been a good 10 feet in places, all full of shit. The owner had made the pit to last, that's for sure. On the Everest expedition the pit was to last 8 weeks for a team of 10 so we made a pretty big one. This would last a family of 10 a lifetime. I'm sure it had been in operation for years given the stench. I've no doubt that at one time this shack must have been quite a pleasant place to have a shit, stable and spacious. Now anyone with a non-engineering background could see the foundation was life threatening.

So there I was, only two paces towards the 6-inch hole in the middle of the floor with a scared expression to rival anything Harrison Ford could throw at you in one of his movies. I'd spent a minute surveying the area but my predicament was to last much longer. Longer than the time I'd fought with the mugger with a knife in the Ukraine, longer than the time I backed away from a wild elephant in my tracks, and nearly as long as I was held at gunpoint in Somalia.

I could have backed out now. I only needed a piss after all and nobody would notice me pissing by the shack outside, but would Harrison Ford or James Bond do that? No, I don't think so. Therefore neither would Ginge Fullen. The challenge was set. Have a piss at the centre of this shack. A challenge, a real adventure. Now I hope I'm not being too melodramatic but one day somebody is going to go for a crap in this shitter and the floor will collapse. That's a simple engineering fact, a universal certainty and it doesn't take the likes of Stephen Hawking to write a paper on it to tell you that, nor a comprehensive understanding of Newton's theories to figure out the fact. It's just I didn't want to be there when it happened.

To use a turn of the century phrase said about great explorations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, here I was "placed in a setting few white people had ever explored and conditions no one has ever recorded, and if the worst happens, a fate that no one could imagine".

With six marching paces to go, I took a step, more of slide really, with little bounce. Then another two steps with no real risk to life. Then a little tremor started which progressed to a bounce that had become uncontrollable. I still had three steps to go, or two big strides should I wish to be brave and bolshy. I wasn't about to be either when the consequences were collapsing through the floor. People were still missing in these parts of the jungle. A Frenchman had been missing years heading off from a village near here to do some bird watching, maybe he'd called in for a beer and before he left went up to the barman to ask him where the toilet was only to receive a reply in Hannibal Lecter undertones, "It's out back".

The springiness was now joined by a creak and a steady rhythm. At this point I fully understood why the American had said "don't look down". If the floor collapsed at this moment there would be no mad leap for safety, no bit of rope hanging down over the side to haul myself out. I even wondered if anyone would hear my screams. This was no adventure now.

One more step and then the penultimate step. I could make this now I thought. The bounce factor was now 6 inches on every side accompanied by a steady creak. I slowly undid the zip to my shorts. Maybe I could piss from here. It would put the odds in my favour a bit but there's something about being British that you have to do things properly. Pissing outside the target even though it would go unnoticed by everybody just wouldn't be cricket.

I made it with the big fellow already out ready for business. Well you have to say 'big fellow' since you never know ladies might be reading this long after my demise. The torch I now had in my teeth, aimed at the 6-inch hole. Damn it, I'll leave the detailed description to the imagination. I'd done it. However, the real art of doing dangerous and reckless activities is to live to tell the tale and this was certainly an epic worth surviving just to do that. I shuffled around to face the door. I started thinking surely this would be worth a mention in the "Worst Toilets in the World" book. There is, so I'm led to believe, an actual book of that title. I made a mental note to look it up assuming I survived the next 8 steps, of course. I'd done remarkably well up till now I thought. No heartbeat hammering against my chest, no life flashing before my eyes. I felt I was good in stress situations having completed the Running the Bulls race in Pamplona and survived my first malfunction during parachuting. It had been my 194th jump and I had a total malfunction. You normally pull at 2000 feet at the latest. I tried once then twice for my main parachute and then for the third time which is not in the parachuting manual. I popped my reserve parachute next. I was under canopy at about 500 feet, or translated to time, 2˝ seconds from bouncing. I'd been quite calm, people coming up to me on the ground saying "bloody hell, that was close Ginge". I had to buy the round at the bar that night, as is the tradition on your first malfunction. Then I had time to think how quick 2˝ seconds really is.

Anyway, near death experiences are character building in my book and this shit shack came into that ballpark. I walked slowly with the bounce, trying not to exaggerate it. There were a couple of big creaks and groans from the floor where the major beams that underlay the structure take most of the weight. Almost before realising it I was at the door looking back.Now that I'd made it I was the one looking back into history thinking it wasn't too bad. It probably wouldn't make world news when the day comes and someone dies in a pit full of two-year-old shit, but that fate certainly awaits some poor unsuspecting soul visiting this particular shit shack.

I walked back to the bar pocketing my torch before I stepped back into the café. I stood and watched for a second making sure the scene was how I'd left it, just to be sure it wasn't like a scene in Star Trek with all the aliens stood at the bar. I walked over to where the American was chatting to his boat handlers for his river trip. It was one of those experiences you feel lasted hours and I wondered if the Yank would catch on but he picked up his beer and drained the last inch out of the bottom, the same amount he'd had before I'd embarked upon my toilet adventure.

"Another beer?" I asked so nonchalantly that James Bond would have been proud of me. "Yes, please," came his reply. I called the barman over and thought about asking for a Martini shaken but not stirred just for effect but decided against it. Instead I asked for two beers and a Sprite. I needed another Sprite to make up a shandy. Not quite what James Bond would do but what the heck, he hadn't been for a piss in this shit shack in Makokou in the depths of darkest Africa.