Do Men from Peru Know Where to Pee in a Bathroom?
I recently visited a bathroom in Peru.
Check out the sign I saw.
Not to be rude, but do men from Peru know where to pee in a bathroom?
After snapping my photo and pondering if Peruvian men truly need that much guidance, I left the bathroom and mentioned what I had seen to my wife and mother-in-law.
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It is without a doubt true that in Peru many public bathrooms –if not most– are disgusting. The threat of toilet paper and soap being stolen from bathrooms by impoverished individuals leaves many public restrooms without these highly important supplies. This fact, as well a lack of initiative to clean bathrooms, often results in unsanitary conditions. It has a large ripple effect, from contamination of foods, to the pollution of water, to the spread of disease. It also creates a feeling of low national self-esteem that does not inspire people to cherish landscapes in both natural and urban environments (of course, this later statement comes with considerable exceptions).
But why would men pee on the floor purposely? If they are going to pee on the floor, why enter the bathroom in the first place?
I don’t know the answer, but I do know one thing. My mother-in-law summed it up defensively and concisely: “In the U.S. I saw pee on bathroom floors too!”
Touché.
So perhaps for a future article I should ask: Do people in the U.S. know where to pee in a bathroom?
Photo Credit: © Levi T. Novey
but what is that drain in the floor for then huh?
The bathrooms in Cusco are disgusting. In most cases there’s no toilet paper, and in several places there’s not even a sit-down stall in the men’s room - the urinal is the only option.
But is that a reflection on the people of Peru, or all the the drunken foreign tourists in Cusco? The bathrooms I saw in Lima were cleaner, so I’m blaming the tourists for Cusco’s awful bathroom situation.
I spent a lot of time on my hostel room toilet as I got sick the first day, but for the rest of the trip I managed to avoid sitting down in any public restrooms!
This is an interesting issue; there is actually a great blog designed around issues just like this. It’s http://www.peepublic.com
Most men don’t pee right in the toilet anyways, is not only in Peru.
You are right when you say there are very few public restrooms in Peru with soap and toilet paper -that luxury is reserved for the fancy places. Sad.
What offends me of this sign is the tiny piece they drew in the man’s crotch… I don’t think that makes justice to Peruvian men (!)
Matisse painted the nude when a sculpture he was working on shattered.
Me parece muy lamentable la generalizacion al hablar de “los peruanos”, sobre todo cuando hay diversidad de culturas, niveles económicos y de educación. Para los citadinos el uso de un baño es lo más comun del mundo pero para personas que viven en el campo tanto en los andes como en los bosques amazonico el baño es un concepto exótico pues en la mayoria de casos no lo necesitan (algo tambien dificil de comprender para alguien de la ciudad que tiene gua con solo abrir el caño). La adaptacion de estas personas a las costumbres occidentales, sin un apoyo educativo es un proceso lento. Es ovio que si se vá a lugares marginales, con mayoria de poblacion de baja educación, es frecuente encontrar malas condiciones de salubridad, en Perú o en cualquier otro lugar (la mayoria de baños publicos en UUEE, supuestamente ejemplo de modernidad, son un asco). Creo que se deberias usar mejor esta ventana para analizar realidades culturales y polemizar sobre maneras de mejorar, por ejemplo, la educación. Los comentarios despectivos no contribuyen mucho.
What happens when you need to drop a log, and your piss on the roll habit is shared by others?
Notice that in Peru (and Chile, too) not only in the male toilets there is the habit of peeing on the floor. THE WOMEN toilets are mostly the same!
I happened to stay in Peru and Chile many times for work…and now i’m used their poor bathroom standard..
One of the first time I went in a restaurant-club with a peruvian friend collegue,a very nice girl..After dinner and a few drink i Had to visit the loo, you know that girls often go in pairs, and my friend came toghteter with me to the downstair bathroom….
We entered togheter the only large toilet stall, after a few minutes of queue…I find a disgusting situation: smell dirty and the floor was rally wet in pee, it was clear it wasn’t the normal “splash” from overing on the dirty toilet that happens in unclean bathroom, but that more than a woman relieved directly on the floor…I was almost felling sick in that toilet stall, but my bladder was very full…and have to relieve absolutely.. I made a step to the toilet and found it was almost filled to the rim…even more disgusting…my friend told me “no, don’t use it, it is clogged!” and to my surprise, like it was a normal thing, while spaking to me she assumed an hovering position, pulled up the short skirt, held her panties aside with an end and started to pee over the floor like it was a normal thing…I was emabrassed and very puzzled, while my friend , still peeing, said “what are you waiting, just pee like this, weren’t you bursting?” It seemed unreal but as my bladder was full, I ended doing the same squatting on the floor and peeing for a very long time (really bursting)…
The situation was so unreal that I asked my friend why it seemed so “common” for her (and many other woman, as the toilet condition proved) to go into a bathroom and pee on the floor…
she smiled and told me “sorry, I’m used at this, but I get the situation is strange for you. We do this for a reason anyway: we have mostly a poor plumbing sistem that don’t allow to flush any kind of paper in the toilets. It happens very often then a poor woman, maybe a stranger, forget it and threw tp, or worse a tissue (as tp is no tocommmon in the peruvian toilets….) or a sanitary pad in the toilet…then she flush the toilet, it get clogged and immediately overfill to the rim.
than all the other women found a toilet is not more “usable”, with water flowing on the floor..we have few public toilets and it is not so kind to go squat outdoor in the urban area, so you have no choice than pee on the floor yourself…”
“we are used to do this from childood, but i get it is very unusual for people coming from better toilet standards”
Fortunately my friend learnt me where I could find some clean and working area in the lima centre area (mostly hotels that have a better flusching standard) so I happen to use toilets that are maybe not clean like european standard, but at least working…
Anyway many other times, like in bar, clubs, public toiletsI had to go on the floor too…
I remeber that the worst situation I found was in small crowded gas station, afer a 5 min queue i entered the bathroom and found this situtation: 2 disgusting toilets stall with no door, and women and girls were peeing on the floor not just in the stall but even in the common bathroom area (i.e in front of sinks), there were almost 8-10 between girls and woman peeing over the floor, a disgusting situation..fortunately there were drain all over the floor, so the pee flowed in them quickly….I ended peeing with my sister in law directly over the drain in a corner….