Colour, Consistency, Frequency, Volume

(photos of my precious latrine pending internet reliability)
This is for you, Stan.
You all know I do it. You do it too. You all knew it was going to be a challenge resplendent in all aspects of my life here.
For my sake and yours, lets talk about it.
Poop.
In Ghana, excrement is everywhere. I smell it in the streets, sweep it from the compound 3 times a day, witness its manufacture in fields in full view of all passing public (especially by grinning children screaming “Salaminga Hello!”), worry about it in my water. Its presence is dangerous and essential: it grows the food I eat from infertile soil, holds the walls of my compound together, gives the first danger-signs of illness, and can kill you when trifled with. Every illness in Ghana is accompanied by it. Revealing you are ill is a surefire means into a discussion of its colour, consistency, frequency, volume, pain, and anecdotes about any of the above, by your host family, your boss, random strangers at the house or in the street, and doctors of every type. After such discussion with the latter, it is often likely you'll be requested to somehow scrape together a sample for study, assumedly from somewhere in the ten foot concrete hole you last deposited into, housed in a container of your provision, not theirs. For Western volunteers, poop is such an accepted and open aspect of life that we buy an arsenal of pharmaceuticals and adult diapers to ward it from our clothes before we even leave the country—and when that fails, we have a support group to discuss and get through the, uh, fallout. The group gets its exercise, too—we often have someone new to add to the club. In West Africa, the laws of gastrointestinal logic are disbanded: there is absolutely no correlation between the volume put into the system, and the volume expelled from it.
The considerable exposure to the presence and reminders of poop require some psychological assimilation just to help volunteers get through the day. The latrine becomes the one dark, smelly, buzzing and uncomfortable point of solitude in the busy compound; even the clicking of the resident two-inch cockroaches fades away into the background noise as the call of nature is answered. Reading material is available—in the form of old school notes and waste paper, destined for what could be termed “hygienic use”. The flies become the group of friends you always knew were a bad influence, but still hung around with out of habit. Although expensive, toilet paper is available, allowing soft, holy respite from the chapping continual use of Hilroy notebooks tends to cause in the nethers. The leg-numbing squatting for what feels like hours is great for the glutes. It's not ideal, but it certainly is dealable—and I personally enjoy the knowledge that my use of the latrine prevents my personal contribution to the contamination of the local water table.
Urine is a completely different story for another day, but suffice it to say I try to calm myself with the reminder that it's largely water, ammonia, and sterile.