Tag Archives: kenya

A toilet suspended above the waters of the Arabian Sea in Bombay

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THE IMPRESSIVE GATEWAY  of India stands on a short promontory surrounded on three sides by the water of the Arabian Sea.  The sea surrounding the Gateway is crowded with small, colourful vessels. Seeing  one of these craft reminded me of a story told to me by a friend many years ago.

 

In Bombay

My friend had just returned from Kenya. During his stay there he spent several days at sea on a local trading ship. It was a very basic vessel.  He told me that he could not find a toilet on board. Eventually,  he could no longer resist the urge, and asked the crew where he could relieve himself. He was directed to the rear of the vessel and shown a toilet seat that was suspended from it over the waters below. With some difficulty he managed to sit on the swinging toilet seat, and to his great embarrassment, the entire crew came to the back of the ship to watch him in action.

 

That really happened a long time ago.  Today, 17 November 2025, while visiting the Gateway of India,  I spotted a small boat. Projecting from its rear and hanging over the water, there was a small, square based cubicle with a door. On the door,  there was the word “TOILET”. Seeing this reminded me of my friend’s story. Users of this cabin are shielded from sight, unlike that swinging loo seat on the Kenyan boat.

An awkward moment

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About 20 years ago, we drove to Loket, a small town in the western part of the Czech Republic, a part of the country that was once known as ‘Sudetenland’. It was home to a large German speaking minority, which was expelled from Czechoslovakia at the end of WW2.

We stayed in a small but cosy hotel with a fine restaurant. One evening, there was a couple of German tourists sitting at the table next to ours. Their pet Alsatian dog, Harry, was sitting under the table at their feet. We greeted them as they seemed quite jolly. We struck up conversation with them and soon we were clinking each other’s wine glasses.

They told us that they hardly ever travelled out of Europe because they did not want to leave Harry on his own. However, they said to us:

“Once, we visited Kenya”

“To see wild animals?” we asked.

They laughed, and then replied:

“The only wild animals we saw were Africans.”

This unsettled us a bit as did Harry who was, by now, licking our ankles with great interest. Somehow, the conversation drifted around to the Jews of Germany. At that time, the German Jewish community, such as it was, was under the leadership of Ignatz Bubis (1927-1999). One of the couple said:

“Whenever Bubis sneezes, Germany must pay the Jews one million Deutschmarks.”

Detecting a move towards further anti-semitic remarks, my wife said:

“By the way, we are Jewish.”

This brought the conversation to a swift end and also led to the couple failing to meet us for coffee and cakes on the next day, as we had planned earlier in the evening.

In a way, it was good that my wife had stemmed the possible flow of anti-semitism, but I was a bit disappointed. I would have been fascinated to discover how deeply they felt about the Jewish people in Germany so long after the end of WW2.

We never discovered the names of this German couple, but privately we christened them ‘Adolf’ and ‘Eva’. 

A couple of years later, we revisited Loket and stayed at the same hotel. As we parked outside the hotel, we saw a couple packing suitcases into the back of thier vehicle. Accompanying them, there was an Alsation dog. Yes, you have guessed right. It was Adolf and (und?) Eva packing up to return to Germany. We greeted each other politely, but not warmly.