Nichol’s job is to chip away at shit leaking out of a drain. Because she lives in Antarctica, this shit is frozen. It’s like chipping brown diamonds. Diamonds covered in corn. Diamonds covered in peanuts. Twenty-four carrots and two pieces of potatoes are in this shit. This shit is hard.
There has been a leak in one of the sewer pipes and the stuff that comes out of us is now leaking beneath one of the buildings. Someone has to crawl beneath a dorm, and clear this shit away so the plumber can then belly-crawl under the dorm and repair the pipe.
Even though the sun has been shining 24 hours a day, Nichol needs to grab a flash light, because, just like the source of this shit, she is going where the sun don’t shine. She wears a knit hat her mother made and four layers of clothing. As she knocks away at the shit her fingers become frozen around the hammer’s handle. In fact, she realizes she wished she had put on one more layer of clothing. The ground seems to be sucking away all of her warmth.
Nichol wants to clear this shit and then go into the Galley to get a hot cup of coffee. She didn’t know this would be her job when she applied to work in Antarctica. She thought Antarctica would be an adventure with penguins and seals. She imagined she would write letters home to her mother saying, “This hat you made is loving life at the bottom of the world.” Instead, she’s covered in shit.
As she whittles the shit from a mountain to a mound to a molehill she thinks, “Hey, this shit don’t stink.” What Nichol doesn’t realize is that if someone were to see her, it would look like she had just rolled around in the sand on a beach. However, this sand is brown. It’s on her hat and the corners of her mouth. Just like on a beach, this sand has worked its way into every available crevice in her clothing and the wrinkles in her skin. It feels like 30 degrees below zero beneath this building and Nichol just wants to get inside.
Satisfied with her work, she hops on the radio and tells the plumber the pipe is ready. The crack has been exposed and this shit is ready to flow downhill.
I’m the first person Nichol sees when she walks into the Galley. Her face looks like a box of Neapolitan ice cream. The tips of her cheeks are white—the beginning signs of frostbite are setting in. The chubby parts of her cheek are healthy and pink. Her face, I think, is covered in brown dirt.
I walk with her to the coffee machine and she tells me how she just spent the last two hours.
“It’s a dirty job,” she says, “and I’m the one to do it.” She pulls the handle to dispense the coffee and when her cup is full she sticks her face very close to the rim of the cup. The white parts of her face turn pink. The pink parts turn red. And the brown parts, smell like shit.
This shit does stink and when it melts into her ear and seeps into her eyes as it goes from the corners to inside her mouth, Nichol knows she’s not covered in dirt. This is shit.
For Nichol it all happens in slow motion. The smell tells her brain, the brain tells her stomach, the stomach tells her throat. For me it happens quite quickly. Nichol is puking in her coffee and onto the floor of the Galley. She runs to take a shower and I go get a mop.
Two hours later, Nichol walks up to me during dinner. I’m standing behind an industrial sized dishwasher. I’m wearing rubber gloves and a plastic apron.
“I’m sorry about that,” she says. “I’m sorry you had to clean up my puke. You really have the worst job in Antarctica.”
I also came to Antarctica for an adventure with penguins and seals. I left a well-paying job, family, friends and a to work on a small science base called McMurdo Station. Earlier today it’s quite possible Nichol tasted my shit. And now she says, I have the worst job in Antarctica.
McMurdo Station: 77° 51′ 0″ S, 166° 40′ 0″ E. Population: 1100 in the summer. Population: 151 in the winter. Worst job: dishwasher. I am the dishwasher.
