‘Dumi’

It was the first time I was using a PTT gas station and I was intrigued by a large sign that read Restroom 20. As I got to the entrance I thought I might have missed the restroom for a restaurant because I had entered a brightly lit lobby with receptionists, but yes, this was indeed a toilet.

Well, really more of a luxurious lounge that lives up to the term “comfort room,” with facilities even more impressive than the ones you find in a six-star hotel. The clincher was the commode, which you could sit on while looking out into a small garden.

The “20” in Restroom 20 referred to the amount you’re gently cajoled to donate, to a charity chosen by the local government. I didn’t think twice about giving.

About an hour later I got off the expressway and stopped at a roadside restaurant for a meal and toilet break. This CR was so bad I wanted to holler, “Ang dumi!” But, with memories of a clean toilet, I chided myself: What did you expect? After all, toilets are places where you deposit dumi or, in English, an excremental place.

Maybe, I thought, this is one reason why our toilets, even the ones at home, are so neglected. We zero in on dumi so it seems a contradiction in terms to say you’re going to keep the place clean. We use them as a matter of duty, which we want to get over with as quickly as possible, within 20 seconds maybe. We leave the cleaning to household help and janitors but they too think toilets are meant to be madumi so why bother cleaning?

Now comes Restroom 20 to spoil us, so clean, so bright you’re almost ashamed to use it for dumi.

Instead, you almost want to take a bath in it, which although technically a removal of dirt, is seen as an act of cleanliness. The Jesuit Ignacio Alcina, writing about the Visayan islands 350 years ago, already noted how many different terms the local languages had for washing, depending on whether it was washing clothes or people, which then had specific terms for washing the face, the hands, the feet, and yes, even There. In contrast, the Spaniards only had one verb, lavar, to cover all types of washing and cleaning.

We were, and are, meticulously clean when it came to our bodies. That’s why the bathing portion of our toilets can be quite clean, while the nearby commode is, well, excrementitious.

Germ-free

Our aversion to dumi has been reinforced by the idea of germs, hammered into our heads by parents and teachers. Dirty things have germs and germs cause disease and the fear of the germs become more intense with each generation. In my time, we wouldn’t have thought twice about quickly picking up food that had dropped on the floor, as long as it hadn’t been one minute, and eating it, but today’s kids will scream and leave the food there, even if you explain, tongue-in-cheek, that the germs have run off, startled by the food splattering on them, and will take a few minutes to return.

Of course, if the food was dropped in the toilet, you would never pick it up, no, not even if it has only been five seconds. We agree, across the generations, toilets are super-dumi and we fear the bacteria even more than we fear evil spirits, which we can appease with a “tabi po.” With bacteria you need soaps and sanitizers. Moreover, these malevolent dili ingon nato (Cebuano for the “not-like-us”) are dangerous because, like germs, you can’t see them, so for good measure as we try to create a germ-free environment, we use deodorants and air fresheners.

But all that might be changing again.

Those of us who have to care for the elderly and the chronically ill are still very germ-conscious, especially in the hospital. In the last two months, I’ve had to visit my mother daily in the hospital and because she’s considered immunocompromised—her resistance to infections is very low—I have to disinfect my hands, use face masks, and use a scrub shirt before and after entering her room. If I use the toilet inside her room, I have to disinfect again.

It’s germ warfare out there in the hospitals, the staff, patients and families constantly worry about “community-acquired infections,” which are those that you get inside the hospital. Some floors, for patients with infectious diseases, are literally a war zone, labeled “dirty floors.”

Yet after leaving the hospital, I have another world where I’m more at peace with the germs, aware of recent scientific
research suggesting that dumi can actually be good.

Microbiomes

It turns out we’re all born with a microbiome, an entire ecological system of germs, mostly bacteria, on our skin and inside our bodies, which we acquire from our mothers and which is extremely useful for several body functions, such as digestion. Upsetting the microbiome’s equilibrium can be dangerous, such as when you take antibiotics, which kills off the good bacteria. That’s why you have this probiotics craze right now, where you buy and ingest germs in products like Yakult, yogurt and various pills claiming they contain billions of bacilli, sometimes even several species.

Our microbiome includes germs that fight off other germs and so it’s good to conduct war exercises from time to time, meaning exposure to, or even taking in, new germs. It turns out then that “too much” of the clean can lead to weaker immune systems and allergies.

The potentials for sharing are tremendous, with studies discovering that we begin to pick up from the microbiomes of people with whom we live for an extended period, like our spouses (and longer-term partners). And yes, we can share microbiomes with our pets, with some limited research showing that children growing up with pets have fewer allergies.

But aren’t dogs and cats dirty? I’d worry more about dirty people (read: corrupt politicians) than the kids kissing the dog. I do set limits of course, such as if the dog has come into contact with something or some place really vile, like the toilets. The dogs also have their vaccinations, and are regularly dewormed because I don’t want the kids picking up parasites. Having said that, there’s research in Western countries looking into the use of other people’s fecal material to change one’s own microbiome, something still very experimental.

I also do take precautions when someone in the household has an infection but, by and large, we’re a family that hugs a lot, and beso (kiss) a lot, with humans and with our pets, which is very different from when I was growing up with a terribly germ-conscious mother who was uncomfortable even with light beso.

Let’s be mindful about dumi: toilets are madumi which can and should be cleaned up, while people, and dogs and cats, can have valuable dumi to share. Go now and hug your best friend (which can be your dog) as a way of saying, thank you for sharing your dirt, oops, your microbiome.

mtan@inquirer.com.ph