West Africa Pump Toilet

West Africa Pump Toilet
Accra, Ghana West Africa
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Andy of HoboTraveler.com

Who to blame it on, the French or the English, maybe the Dutch, I am sure hoping it is not the Germans, I keep using them as the example of strict in the world. I wish I could blame it on the Africans, however, as best I can figure few inventions or new gadgets come from West Africa, maybe down in South Africa.



The Pump Toilet

Thank you to an Accra Ghana Hotel for the opportunity to take a photo of a Pump Toilet. This is not a normal push and it flushes toilet, it is better if you give it about five pumps and it works better.

Intermittently in West Africa, I have had this type of flush system in the toilets of the countries of West Africa. I am not above taking off the top of a toilet to make the sucker work, I make them work. Which is a real benefit here in this shared toilet hotel in Accra, Ghana. I do not work to take photos of toilets, they just expose themselves too often and I am in the right place at the right time. This toilet is in a shared toilet, and there is NO top on the toilet, it took zero work, the lighting was good, the situation was there, so I took the photo.

I am a mechanical whiz kid, which is real benefit in a world where 95 percent of hotels do not have maintenance men. When I see a maintenance woman, I will use the politically correct expression.

What you need to know, is if one push doe not work, try pumping repeatedly and it will flush. Elaine a Togo Hotel cleaning girl showed me how to pump by pulling a wire in Lome, I wanted to give her bran a nudge and say,
- Toilets should not need instructors after age five -

West Africa Pump Toilet