When I am in place I am unfamiliar with and ask someone, “Hey, where’s the head,” they are usually an army soldier and they look at me like “what the hell are you talking about.” To which I return a very similar look to express “oh shit, you’re a soldier, what the hell do you guys call it?”
Latrine. Head. Ablution. John. Shitter. WC (water closet). TOILET.
Toilets in Afghanistan are pretty shitty (unintentional pun, but left in for effect). The ones found on our bases and fobs are designed such that one either has exceptional sky-dumping skills to drop the kids into the deep and narrow well and land in the water, inevitably splashing excrement water all over one’s backside, or one blasts shit all over the back of the porcelain to where the water from the flush will never rinse it down. Of course, most people are not considerate or attentive enough to realize they left such a mess, and rarely brush the bowl, or even attempt a second flush, to clean it up.
On the plus side, though, at least our toilets have seats rather than the traditional Afghan stomp pads.
We used to call that the old bacon strip.