Date: June 23rd, 2018 10:35 PM
Author: Comical Pit
http://www.monitor.co.ug/LifeStyle/Reviews/-/691232/923972/-/view/printVersion/-/fp2eaq/-/index.html
LETTERS FROM INDIA: Such poor hygiene affects foreigners
By Flora Aduk
Posted Monday, May 24 2010 at 00:00
There is a part of my experience in India that I must always cringe about as I narrate it. It is one of those bad moments of a good story when you can’t ignore the downside, however much you try because it stubbornly won’t go away.
I can best relate it to failing to tell your colleagues that while the food at the hyped wedding you went to was tasty, it was cold by the time you were served and this ruined it for you.
That is what talking about the hygiene situation in India feels like. Despite everything I love about India, my tales often come to a dim end when I must mention the fact that the society is not that hygienic. One of my bolder friends would put it straight, they are dirty people, period!
Sad, I know, especially when your nostrils are always met with a rather foul smell as you stroll in even the most sophisticated of places in the cities. I never knew that an environment that looks sparkling could still manage to have such odour until I came to India.
Whether it is in the metropolitan cities like Delhi or smaller towns like the one I live in Behror, the sanitation is wanting. I have failed to decide whether it is the drainage system or the total disregard of littering. You think Ugandans litter? Well, you should see the sidewalks of some of the streets in India. Litter or dark stagnant water is part of some of them.
It is a common place for your heart to be broken when despite how neat and clean a place looks, lurking somewhere is a sign of poor sanitation. It may be displaced garbage in some corner, foul smell, flies or just about anything that reads not so clean after all.
One of my friends who visited with a family for two weeks confessed that the situation was no better there.
While naturally there are many other families that have high sanitation standards, this has made us fail to accept invitations to spend any of the many holidays in our colleagues’ homes.
Amusingly, the only people who seem to find a problem with the sanitation are foreigners. It is not unusual to find nationals, even those who look like they would know otherwise eating at roadside mobile snack bars set in a dirty environment.
However, what takes the cake is the spitting habit. At the risk of making you lose appetite for your meal today, I must tell you about this disgusting habit. Men, especially, spit every 10 minutes or so, and in the street too, so draw a picture of about one billion people spiting all over the place complete with a heavy cough and snort too.
Well, that sounds a bit exaggerated, but I am sure you can now understand that part of our suffering as foreigners. One of the things I look forward to is taking a breath of fresh air in Uganda.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3992431&forum_id=2#36298976)