My Urgent Run!

Volunteering for #UrgentRun# The Bhutan Toilet Run was not as easy as it sounded. From scornful colleagues (When they heard about ‘cleaning toilets’) and my own tight teaching schedule made me really run. More apprehensive than that was not getting enough materials for the final #UrgentRun# which literarily made me run into shops seeking sponsors. Listens only half to what I explain to them, not exactly paying attention, call out their sales boy and give me a solitary brush and a water jug to wash the entire toilets of Punakha. Being my first experience in seeking sponsors, I knew not how to go about and where to start. After spending some time, I gathered my guts to approach no matter what the eyes and ears around me think. I stepped into shops asking for material donations. The experience was my worst nightmare. My expectation of their reaction to our cause did not justify as a human being. How should I describe the experience? Shameful? Disgraceful? Awful? Appaling? Disrespectful? Snobbish? Arrogant? Insolent? Bothersome? I couldn’t think of all those adjectives to describe what I saw on the faces of those shopkeepers when I opened my mouth. Never ever have I imagined that would be their reaction to a noble cause?

However, the turnover of volunteers for the #UrgentRun# The Bhutan Toilet Run was overwhelming (42 in total). Literarily I had to ask the Bhutan Toilet Members of CNR to limit the volunteers. As it seemed the number of volunteers were escalating and this would jeopardize our #UrgentRun# for I could get minimum materials to wash up the three toilets. With what little materials we hadin our hands, we set off at three different locations: Zomlithang, Duethroe (Cremation Ground) and Khuruthang Vegetable Market. We set our minds and hands straight that we are going to Do It. We pledged to clean the toilets in such a manner that next time a user uses the toilet, the cleanliness of the toilet should speak itself- make users feel guilty whenever they misuse the toilet. We started our campaign to instill this sense of guilt in the minds of the users and are pinched to the core that the toilet must be used properly and maintained at all times…[to be continued]

My Urgent Run...shaking off some runs! Eh!