Living the Dream

There’s a certain type of conversation that certain types of expatriates (mostly the do-good variety) have in any number of last bars at the edge of civilisation. At any given moment, somewhere in the developing world, someone is wittily bemoaning the challenges of daily life – chuffing, self-deprecating and mockingly exasperated.

(for a whole lot of brilliantly rendered moaning about moaning, see here)

There’s an unspoken scoring system comprising various axes of remoteness, personal safety, communicable disease, language, dress, general obscurity, human rights violations and proximity to livestock. We were already learning to play expat bingo at our pre-departure training in dreary, functional, thoroughly first world Canberra (PNG took out all-comers on the security question, but Bangladesh was undoubtedly the overall winner, with the double-hit of risk of assault and explosive diarrhoea).

Alotau scores relatively low in most categories. It is safe and sleepy. There are supermarkets, guesthouses and a handful of expatriates. People speak English. On the other hand, it is inaccessible by road, and, you know, MALARIA. And the money shot: No tampons available for purchase anywhere in town.

Oh yes, it is open season on bodily (dys)function at the expatriate auction, the most intimate ailments broadcast like brass buttons and girl guide badges. Which brings us to my own personal moment of arrival, in a concrete toilet, with cracked seat and high cell-like window, surrounded by containers of petrol and inexplicable tubs of water – no soap. I am doubled with loose and tortured guts – self-inflicted after accidentally swallowing a caustic mangle of betelnut, mustard and crushed coral, the widespread local stimulant. NB. Betelnut should be chewed and spat, not ingested.

Hunched there, amid all the indignity of my rebellious stomach, it occurred to me that in all probability it is these stories I will still be telling years after I have left this place. Wonder fades, the foreign becomes familiar, but toilet jokes are forever. In the world of the intrepid volunteer in international development, there is never any loo paper.