Monkey Butt in the developing world.

Now if you first read this correctly you had no idea this was a word. I too, did not know what this was until about 14 years ago. During the initial Staging process, a bunch of other Volunteers like myself met for the first time and departed Washington DC for that long flight to our host country Romania. Since this was freshly after 9/11, many Volunteers in the Central Asian region were recently evacuated and reassigned to other countries.   Luckily, we had a few of those Volunteers in our group tell us about their brief Peace Corps experience and some of the cultural and language differences.

Those Volunteers who were assigned to Uzbekistan had no major issues at all. The only thing they mentioned was dealing with monkey butt. Naturally, when we heard this we all kind of looked around at each other with a head-scratching look. When one of us finally asked what that meant we were told the quality of toilet paper did not live up to 2 ply, extra soft with aloe expectations we were accustomed to.

Apparently, urbandictionary.com defines it as “when your ass gets so chaffed that it gets red, like a monkeys butt”. Due to the coarseness and burlap sack quality of the toilet paper available, repeated use would eventually take its toll. The images of primates on National Geographic or the Discovery Channel illustrate all too well what monkey butt looks like. Luckily, during my volunteer experience in Romania I lived in a large enough city that offered many choices of toilet paper. Yes, the good stuff came at quite a premium and I felt bad for my fellow Volunteers who were in more isolated areas who didn’t have the toilet paper selection I did. Some of the other Volunteers even had “nice” toilet paper sent to them with their care packages! Oddly, a quick search on Google about monkey butt shows that one can get this for riding motorcycles for long periods of time too. There are also products that help alleviate this on www.antimonkeybutt.com.

As I began to travel more and more throughout the years I learned that its always wise to bring at least a roll or two while on vacation. The hotels and hostels I’ve stayed at have been hit and miss in terms of quality toilet paper. Beware of the pink toilet paper. That was the standard in most places I went to that was most likely to give you monkey butt! While traveling abroad, be prepared to pay for using a public restroom, you may have to pay extra too for the toilet paper. Since the monkey butt toilet paper is usually the cheapest, it will most likely be available.   Also, since running water is not always available in public restrooms do bring some hand sanitizer too!

 Happy traveling!