Oh those blue buckets! Those stinking, disgusting blue buckets. I couldn’t believe what we would find in those damned blue buckets! Each hospital room in Jalalabad, Afghanistan had one and it was used for everything, and I mean everything. I found used needles, poop, pee, rice from supper, eggshells from breakfast, bandages, and wrappers from the muffins that were sold outside the Emergency Department. Then those buckets would be dumped somewhere; sometimes outside the hospital or sometimes down the toilet.

It was not uncommon for the whole toilet system to get blocked up and then a person would have to go down into that terrible mess wearing eye goggles and try to unplug the pipes. I don’t even want to think about the diseases that these people were exposed to down in the sewer.

Speaking of toilets, men in the community would occasionally poop on the street. They considerately chose their squat spots a ways back from the road and walkway. In their defense, I didn’t see very many public toilets.

One of the other problems was the lack of available toilet paper or tissues or any wiping material at all. It was available in the market, but few could afford it. “Let me see, should I buy food or toilet paper? Hmmm.” You can see the obvious choice.

So the substitution for paper was often stones. Not just any stone would do; the best and most sought after were elongated and flat. You would often see these prize stones sitting atop a pile of feces.

When the feces were dry and hard, the stones would be plucked from the piled poop, banged against the dirt to flick off the clinging bits, and then tucked away for future use.

I say “hats off!” (or in Afghanistan “Pakol” off) as I do believe this could get a gold star in setting the standard for recycling, reusing, and reducing.