Okay, you’ll have to stay with me on this one, but apparently the city government of Harare, Zimbabwe needs all their citizens to flush their toilets at the same time. I’m not kidding about this. Just check out this article.
According to the article, the city has been affected by drought and has had to implement extreme water rationing. Due to the water outages, waste has accumulated at sanitary facilities and needs to be cleared. Now that water is being restored, the city officials indicate that the only way to clear the waste is for all citizens to flush their toilets at the same time (7:30 p.m. Saturday).
Now, I know that this is probably just an odd-sounding solution to a real problem (and probably a real one at that), but doesn’t this sound like some kind of high school prank? Perhaps something from Rock ‘n’ Roll High School Forever?
I saw this article and I immediately thought of an old Bloom County cartoon. Binkley was suggesting his plan at a rally to protest some government thing (I don’t remember the context). He suggested that they sneak into the pentagon and flush all the toilets at the same time, exploding the pipes and causing “higgledy-piggledy.” Someone tried to take the floor away from Binkley (I believe it was Milo) and Binkley (not understanding that his plan had not been well-received) felt it necessary to clarify that higgledy-piggledy meant “a real mess.”
I wouldn’t want to poke too much fun at Harare, Zimbabwe over this. After all, this may be an extremely creative and completely viable solution to their problem. Still, it just sounds funny. I can’t help that.
