Our Eight-Month Battle for a Bathroom

Finally! Acueducto workers dig up the street to connect up our bathroom.

After nearly eight months of waiting, countless visits to various city offices and meeting with a seemingly endless series of bureaucrats, Bogotá Bike Tours finally has a BATHROOM.

Our bathroom as bookstore.

In case there's anybody left in Colombia who does not closely follow this blog, this drama started in September of last year, when our landladies' sewage system failed, and their old house flooded with wastewater every time it rained hard. Preferring not to live with sewage up to their knees, they hired workmen to repair the house's old pipes. The men did their job - but then came the turn of the city's aqueducto department, which had to hook our pipes up to the main line in the street.

That began endless appointments, mostly pointless, for the landladies, with the city's transit department, public space, Urban Development, and even the historical center's Public Patrimony office - each of which was supposed to sign off before acueducto could come and provide us with the great privilege of bathroom service. Meanwhile, these older women, who suffer health problems, lived with sewer service in only half of their house.

During all of these long months, the broken sidewalk where the men had worked on the house's pipes threatened the ankles, knees and hip bones of unwary pedestrians.

During this ordeal, the broken sidewalk in front of our landladies's door was a threat to passers-by.

Our bathroom as
bicycle storage room.

Meanwhile, we invented all sorts of conspiracy theories: Did the city have something against us or our landladies, two older women with health problems? Was it the mayor's goal to recapture the spirit and aromas of past centuries, when residents tossed their waste out of upper floor windows into the middle of the street? Was all this the result of lobbying by the owners of public restrooms, which wanted to monopolize the industry?

Still, we never forgot about our bathroom: We used it as a handy storeroom for books and bicycles.

The big hang-up was Patrimony, which took some six months to decide that us having a bathroom was not a threat to the neighborhood's historical patrimony. I appealed to local government offices, which just ignored our problem.

Finally, in March, they decided that our having a bathroom was no threat to the neighborhood's historical quality, and Acueducto scheduled the work for mid-April.

The finishing touches:
repairing the sidewalk.

But April came and went, and with no sign of Acueducto. It turned out that Patrimony had issued a permit to do the INDOOR work WHICH OUR LANDLADIES HAD ALREADY HAD DONE LAST YEAR.

As a last resort, we filed a tutela, which is a sort of mini lawsuit, citing constitutional reasons why we had a right to a working bathroom.A judge, thankfully, swept aside all the bureacrats' paper shuffling and box ticking and applied common sense: 'These people eat and drink and experience normal human bodily functions. So, give them a bathroom!' Finally, Acueducto showed up late one night last week and did the work.

Needless to say, in a nation with a sane, functional bureacracy, our bathroom would have been hooked up in a few days. Anything longer would have been a scandal.

So, we have a bathroom. But I'll never forget this episode, as a wonderful example of government apathy, incompetence and irresponsibility.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Bathroom's Back in La Plaza del Chorro!

The bathroom is located at the bottom of a stairway.
It is almost dwarfed by the elevator for wheelchair users. 

Finally, La Plaza del Chorro has a bathroom again!

It took only about three years and 50 million pesos, but there it is.

La Plaza del Chorro, always lively. 

For many years, two neighborhood women had operated a bathroom at the bottom of the stairs on the plaza's west side. Their bathroom wasn't always the cleanest, nor did the women observe the strictest hygiene rules - I often saw them preparing their lunch on a hot plate and eating it inside the bathroom.

How long will the complex new
wheelchair elevator last?

But the bathroom served an important function, particularly because the plaza is surrounded by hostels, universities and bars and restaurants. For the ladies who ran it, the bathroom also provided a modest income.

So, when officials from the city government showed up and ordered the bathroom closed in the interests of public hygiene, lots of us shook our heads. Now, instead of less-than-perfect bathroom, the whole neighborhood would turn into an open-air restroom, with no hygiene standards at all.

The shiny new bathroom
(model not always present).

Which was exactly what happened. And the plaza's bars and restaurants got pestered by drunken young people demanding to use their facilities.

But the local City Hall promised that a new public bathroom would be built....soon. Soon turned from months into one year and then three years. Local officials kept promising and promising that remodeling work was just about to start, which it of course did not.And there was a problem, I learned: city regulations required that the new bathrooms include handicapped access. The obvious way to provide such access would be to build a ramp into the steps. But that possible ramp would be a bit too steep to please regulators, and so an expensive and sophisticated elevator was required. But the city didn't have enough money for the elevator - which meant no bathroom for anybody.

Why couldn't the city instead just make an agreement with one of the plaza's restaurants to allow wheelchair users to use their bathroom?

A special stall for wheelchair users.

Besides, in a neighborhood full of drinkers, in which drug addicts rip away and sell every piece of metal they can, how long would a beautiful wheelchair elevator last?

Meanwhile, the neighborhood's alleys and corners continued serving the needs of alchohol-saturated bladders.

The porta-potties didn't
contribute to the plaza's colonial
ambience (or aroma).

The city did place two porta-potties on the plaza, where they looked ugly and quickly became so filthy and revolting that few ventured inside. So much for improving hygiene standards.

Late last year, work finally started on the new bathroom. And this week it was finally inaugurated. After three years' wait and 50 million pesos spent, it does look nice. And it's a plus for the neighborhood's residents and tourists.

Now, let's see how long that elevator lasts. 

Heading to the bathroom. 

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours