You know.
It's Saturday morning and you really need 15 litres of fresh, wet, warm cow poop, and you cant find any anywhere.
Man, I hate it when that happens.
We normally have so much fresh cow poop you have to skirt around it.
Well. Saturday I had to walk for 35 minutes to get enough to do the floors.
We needed to re-dung our floors as the dust was getting pretty bad in the house.
We had been putting it off for quite a while (oddly, it wasn't difficult letting "rub fresh cow shit into your floor by hand" slip to the back of the chore list)
Our neighbour, Nonezile (non-neh-zee-leh)kindly showed us the ropes as we broke into virgin territory.
Once we had collected about 15 litres of cowshite (wet, very fresh, no crust)
All we needed was water to add.
I kept waiting for the secret ingredient.
There was none.
Basically you dump a bucket of fresh cow and bull dump into the middle of your floor.
Add a whole lot of water.
Get your hands dirty turning it into sludge. (I believe sewage farms use the term "slurry")
Then you get down on your knees and smear away.
The technique (in case you want to try this at home kids, don't ask permission first)is really about keeping it wet and slurry like, and using the edge of your little finger and the edge of your palm as a squeegee.
Remember when you were a kid and you went for aswim in the pool in the dark alone.
Of course there wasn't a shark in the pool.
But.
In that one James Bond movie they press a button and the pool has a secret door that lets in a shark.
So you laugh at yourself, but your heart speeds up a dash, and you get out quickly, and tell yourself it is simply because you don't want to miss Magnum PI.
Well, halfway through mixing everything with your hands, you have the following unavoidable thought process.
"I know I collected all the poop myself"
"It was all definitely cow poop"
"I definitely didn't get any human poop by accident"
"80 percent of the village poops in the bush and grass"
"I wonder what time Magnum PI starts out here"
"I wonder what higgins will be p to this week"
For about 30 minutes it smells like a cow shat in your lounge.
Then it smells sweet and rich and reminds you of horses and summer and clover.
Honest
And it is soft well insulated.
And free.
And it only took us about 20 minutes. And that my friends is quicker than a vacume.
It sounds brilliant, Charles. I am so going to do it. Because I live in Central London, I will use dog shit. I reckon I could fill a bucket in about five minutes as they have special dog waste bins in Hyde Park. I will go down and have a rummage this evening after work.
ReplyDeleteJust to be pedantic, it isn't quicker than a vacuum as you didn't include the 35 minutes of foraging for poop. You also didn't include the drying time. End-to-end, I feel that it must be around an hour and a half from the time the first bit of cow shite hits your bucket and you picking the last piece of partially digested grass from your fingernails.
Enjoyed reading this very much – your whole blog is entertaining and I look forward to reading each new submission. I particularly liked the part where you were waiting for the secret ingredient to be announced. I think that you could come up with your own secret ingredient. Wood glue could be worth a try. It's water-based, it's cheap (R70 for 5 litres), it's flexible, non-toxic and it dries quite quickly. A bit of it (perhaps 500ml?) might help to keep the dung from breaking up and might make more of a sheen to make sweeping easier. If not wood glue then flour could be an option. It’s also cheap and the gluten in it is very sticky indeed. Wood glue would keep its integrity if it were to get a bit wet whereas flour wouldn’t. Both of these items are heavy and I can’t imagine you carrying a 5 litre drum of wood glue from Umtata or carrying food to your house to then spread on the floor with some faeces. Chicken shit might set quite well but I think that it can be very bad for health if breathed in. Perhaps bull semen might have some good flooring qualities but it would be time-consuming, difficult and dangerous to collect and collecting it could alter your gait. If you do try any secret ingredient, you would have to test it on a small piece of floor first as it could be a real disaster – it could be really stinky or sticky or just not work. At least it won’t just be plain crap.
Gawd you are a funny chap.
ReplyDeleteMy eyes are still watering and my son wants to know why I am chortling so.
Absolutely priceless.
Can't top it.Won't try.
Bloody good stomach aching laugh and all.
Very nice hearing from you and knowing if the poop smell and bucket bath ever got too much we could visit you for nice long hot showers and nice smelling poo time.
Love to you all.
Heh heh. Good one Highwood. Who's Highwood?
ReplyDelete