Food on your table

When I was in Zambia, I worked at a clinic in the laboratory. I helped the lab technician enter all his results onto the computer (because they were going paperless donchya know) and what took him through the afternoon when the going was slow, I did over my lunch break. He said the cold weather made his fingers stiff. I believed that like my name is Gertrude. And it's not. Anyway, every so often we had to do tests on people's stool and such. You know - samples of urine, blood and other bodily fluids, basically robbing the already embarassed patient of his/her remaining shred of dignity. It's like that. If you wonder why six meals a day (not counting snacks) isn't doing you justice, chances are, your intestines have company, and unlike good guests, they do not want to leave.
What was really interesting though, was seeing how the reminder that no matter how rich and important you thought you were, no matter how fancy a car your drove and how loud your heels clacked when you sauntered into the clinic, even you were unfortunate enough to have a digestive tract with two openings. The patients would come into the clinic, stride nonchalantly to the window to deposit their unthinkables and act like they hadn't a care in the world, but I knew it. They knew it, the whole world knew it. In a minute, his/her most private of substances, most intimate of materials would be exposed for the entire lab to see, and his/her decency would be stripped away to nothingness. You could see it in the slight curl at the end of their smile, in the way they clutched at the plastic and paper wrapped, foil ensheathed bottle as though willing themselves into oblivion. In the panic lurking at the corner of their eyes that screamed "Yes, yes - it's true! Even I have a rectum! Oh, the horror..."
And when they came back for their results, amid the polite handshakes, the carefully worded greetings, the mortification lingered. "Oh yes...what is it I am here for? My crap? The bottle of fecal matter I deposited at your window? Quite forgot, really. Slipped my mind. Yes, smile at me and tell me I have Giardia. Make idle chit chat with me as though you didn't smell just how putrid my excrement stank, you sick, sick lab technician. Yeah, grin at me as you prescribe a course of deworming. Just remember, buddy, my anal discharge puts food on your table.