toilet paper

I've come down with yet another bowel affliction. The regularity with which I seem to endure these bouts of toilet-hovering tempts me to make a comment about developing empathy for menstruation, but that might be in bad taste. Besides my periods seem to take place nearer to 3 times/ month, so the comparison isn't very symmetrical. Today was the most anxious I've ever been about reaching a toilet in time. We were sitting on a bus to the city and I was knelt over with my head on the bench in front of me praying "Oh God, please deliver my bowels to an appropriate resting place," all the while Luke was chatting to me about what it's like in Bwane and wondering how politics worked in Maputo, and asking me questions to which I could offer only vague shrugs and grimaces. I felt bad about being rude and wanted to explain that my intestines were currently very busy tying themselves into thousands of tiny, aching knots; but I couldn't find the words. In town I had to walk a block to the mall where I knew the nearest public restrooms were. I wish I could have seen the expression I wore on my face, so as to imitate it in the future as it proved to be rather effective against touts and street vendors. I wasn't approached once. Of course that also might be attributed to the fact that my walking speed must have approached 15 miles/hour. I burst my way into one of only two stalls (far too few for such a busy restroom) and found that the door was broken and wouldn’t shut. I picked the whole thing up off its hinges (its wasn't a normal flimsy stall door, it was a full sized whole-meter doorway door) and jammed it into the doorway. The restroom attendant yelled at me and in my frenzied state I very rhetorically asked him, in Portuguese, if he had a problem. Seeing that I had already barricaded myself in, he retreated. All I can say is that I'm very very glad that I carry around my own toilet paper.