Which Way Does Your Toilet Swirl?

You’ve heard it said that “Life is a journey, not a destination”. Accepting this as true then it stands to reason that what makes for a rich life is where the journey takes you and who you meet along the way. Under the heading of “Along the Way”, if you are ever crossing Uganda, say from Entebbe, Kampala, or Jinja towards Rwanda, perhaps to visit the gorillas near the border, safari at Queen Elizabeth Park or camp on an island in Lake Bunyoni you’ll happen across a place in the town of Equator called the Aid Child Café. (www.aidchild.org)

The Aid Child Café serves some of the best Muzungu (White Guy) food you’ll find in Africa, with brown sugar muffins the size of your head, real latte’s to help wash it down, veggie wraps and chipati chips with Mexican guacamole. And you’ll know you’re on the right path because of the entertaining roads signs starting about a 100 meters before getting there. Signs like, “That’s alright, that’s ok, use your credit card and let daddy pay.”

The founders and staff of AidChild live out the words of Robert Louis Stevenson when he wrote, “So long as we are loved by others, we are indispensable, and no (one) is useless (when they) have a friend.” The café is designed to provide a revenue stream for their work of supporting and rescuing AID's orphans, so stop by and load up. Besides they have the only clean sit down toilet you’ll find for another 100 miles.

Speaking of toilets and equatorial lines, since the café sits astraddle the equator you can answer once and for all the question, “Do toilets swirl in opposite directions on opposite sides of the equator?” To make it simple and clean and conducive to sharing with  friends there at the border are three tractor disks with a hole in the center. If you pour water in the disk in the Northern Hemisphere it will indeed swirl in the opposite direction of the disk in the Southern Hemi. And guess what. On the equator, it drains straight down. No swirly at all. Amazing. What that would do to a good flush I'm not sure.

So if you think you’ve arrived in life, hook a “Uey”, and head out for the AidChild Café. It’ll do everyone some good.  And BTW, say "HI" to Ann for me.