this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
95 points (100.0% liked)
Asklemmy
1454 readers
145 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I grew up in West Africa in the 80, and there was a lot assaulting your nostrils. The markets with dried fish, the open sewage trenches in the city, rotting roadkill.
But the very worst experience was when I was trying to cross over a bridge during some festival. The bridge was packed with people, who were either heavily perfumed to mask the BO, whose deodorant gave up or who just went a few days without bathing. So we were all there together profusely sweating in the tropical sun, and I was just tall enough so my nose was at armpit height.
Or no, a buried memory surfaces. You may know that natural latex drips out rubber trees, and that they spritz ammonia into the latex to keep it liquid? Now imagine a plantation the size of a city where everything stinks of ammonia. And then a factory that smells of burnt piss?