We had some
family visiting us. Not close family. Cousins.
We got into
a discussion. Enough said - this should be the end of the blog.
However, if
I stopped here, I would forfeit the enjoyment of getting riled up.
Living in
Africa can be a bipolar experience. There are tremendous ups, but as with a
sign wave there are deep downs. At dinner table my spouse described a 'down' as
experienced in a local hospital. This hospital lost one of it’s patients for
three days. He was found in one of the toilets – dead. Now this is not the
story for today.
Today's
story is about cleanliness. That of the toilet my spouse intended using while
visiting a patient in hospital. Fortunately we had finished eating. The toilet
bowl, seat and cistern were covered in shit. Some brown, some old black. The
walls and floor were sprayed with shit and urine. Some people were fussy enough
not to use the toilet and shat on the floor.
My spouse
immediately confronted the nursing staff, questioned their lack of pride in
their work, their hygiene and their culture. Yes their culture. Nursing
practice is very much determined by ‘culture’ and not by the text-book. If a
intravenous needle is dropped on the bedding, it will be inserted into the
vein. If questioned, the nurse will say: “Oh – it is our culture.” The toilets
are also a ‘cultural’ thing, as is the indignation shown by my spouse towards
the nurses. But they did not understand what the fuss was about.
To be fair,
not all our hospitals are like this. Part of the problem is that our hospitals
now have ‘nursing managers’ and do not have ‘matrons’. Matrons were like
sergeant majors in an army camp. You would hear the hell coming from a distance
even if everything was heavenly clean. The nursing managers only manage
themselves and their entitled position, their fancy cars and clothes. A ‘job’
is really just a political appointment allocated by the party, and has nothing
to do with service and responsibility.

The
discussion at the table became quite lively around the subject what other
people thought of clean, not so clean and dirty toilets (we had done eating). Until
one visitor, who is an utter relativist, killed the conversation with another
one of their relativist statements: “A clean or dirty toilet is relative to who
you are. To some it is clean, to others it is dirty.” I wanted to say: “Is your
STATEMENT about clean or dirty toilets RELATIVE or is the STATEMENT TRUE.” But
I bit my tongue and allowed the conversation to go elsewhere. I had decided
before the visit that a relative relative(cousin) was relatively irrelevant.
That’s close to nothingness, relatively.
Now to get
the perspective in place. The toilet described in the hospital above is, lets
say ‘filthy’. The Thesaurus cannot give me a better word for a room that is capacity
filled with shit. Not even any standing room.
A clean
toilet, as my mother would say to her domestic servant (that’s politically
correct ‘speak’ for ‘house maid’) is a toilet, when clean, one can wash one’s
face in it. She would show the servant how to clean the toilet, and then demonstrate
how clean it is by washing her face. First you will shudder, but if you think
about it, that makes sense. Clean is clean.
So we have
what is a filthy toilet and what is a clean toilet.
This is a
relatively clean toilet. I cannot see anything offensive. Some people would not
notice if a toilet is clean..
This is a
relatively dirty toilet. I can see some offensive stuff. Some people would not
notice.
My mothers
toilet is clean no matter who you are. The Hospital toilet is filthy no matter
who you are. CLEAN and FILTHY are absolute objective concepts, and there is
nothing relative about them. CLEAN and FILTHY does not depend on subjective
notions from culture, class, colour or training.
So to you
relativists. Your opinion is relative, and therefore worthless. Stop relativizing
everything into relative dreamland. Get real.
Oh, and by
the way
Fokjo