entitlement granted?

I had to pee bad.  I had been holding it for way to long.  The day before I had arrived at the Lukla airport with 2 duffle bags of climbing gear at 8am.  I left at 6pm after a policeman with a rifle crossed the tarmac and in broken English delivered the message "you flight cancel".   With the way things work in Nepal I wondered if he was supposed to deliver that message 6 hours earlier.  Today I stood in a line with tons of gear from different climbing and trekking groups vying to fly to Kathmandu.  I did not want to lose my spot in line and risk another 8 hour day at the Lukla airport with no flight.  A Sherpa friend of mine tapped me on the back and instead of the cordial Namaste, hello how are you? I said "wait here".

I ran to the bathroom.  Bathrooms in Nepal can be harsh.  I have often straddled a hole in a dark, dank outhouse.  The wood floor flexing under my weight, creaking, legs burning from the squat.  Is this floor going to hold?  I burst out of the door gasping for breath.  I am at altitude but hold my breath because the smell is horrible and am happy to escape the dilapidated floor and the possible plunge.

I expected something different in the Lukla airport bathroom but was greeted by a stench that had me holding my breath.  The floor was covered in filth and dampness.  It seemed as if people were urinating,  and worse, on the floor.  Even though I had been wearing the same pants for 20 days I lifted the hem hoping they would not touch the floor.  I tiptoed passing a sink that was equally filthy as the floor and thought to myself "I wouldn't wash my dirty pants in that thing let alone my hands".  I am still holding my breath and a man in his mid twenties enters.  I look to my right from the stall toward the sink.  He pauses sets down his backpack on what looks like a puddle of urine, bends over the sink and begins to wash his face.  I can see that the water is rust colored out of the tap.  He fills his hands and takes to big handfuls into his mouth swallows half and spits out half.  He stands slicks his hair back and acts as if he is refreshed.

At first this sends repulsive shivers down my spine.   I zip my pants and tiptoe past the man holding the hem of my pants.

When i arrive home in Seattle I want to take a shower to wash the travel off my body.  I walk into a clean bathroom, flip a switch and the clean bathroom is illuminated.  I drop my clothes on a clean floor.  Turn on the sink and brush my teeth with clean water.  Enter a tiled shower surrounded by glass.  I turn a lever and hot clean water comes out.  There is a button I can push to have a hot steam bath. 

I think back to the man washing in the Lukla bathroom.  I am reminded that nothing can be taken for granted.  To turn a lever and have clean hot water is nothing short of a miracle.  To turn a switch and have a flame appear on the stove, to push a button and have heat flowing into the home, to be able to pick from 10 different kinds of apples,  simple things that may take days, weeks, or month in the third world we have with the flip of a switch.  I am aware of taking nothing and no one for granted.  I am not entitled to anything and no one is.