Being a contestant on Survivor, which debuted its forty sixth season final week, looks as if an undeniably humbling expertise. You might be quasi-marooned in a stupendous however distant location, stripped of all of the comforts of modernity, and pushed to your bodily limits. On high of that, you’ve got subsequent to no privateness—you’re surrounded by a crew of producers and cameramen, in addition to your fellow contestants (who could or might not be conspiring in opposition to you). This denial of solitude goes a way in direction of explaining why, of all of the questions viewers have concerning the behind-the-scenes workings of the present, one of the crucial persistent is, “How do Survivor contestants poop?”
For probably the most half, the present doesn’t brazenly tackle the contestants’ toilet habits for apparent causes, however there are two strategies that stay fairly constant from season to season. One is colloquially referred to as the “aquadump,” which implies precisely what it seems like: squatting within the surf and going proper within the ocean. The opposite is just pooping on land—and every tribe of contestants on Survivor will designate an space of their seashore for use for this function, which is usually referred to amongst producers and solid members as “Coconut Grove.”
Based mostly on conversations with two earlier present contestants, the aquadump is the vastly preferable possibility. “I solely land-pooped twice,” Season 44 winner Yam Yam Arocho tells SELF. Arocho, whose infectious good nature and humorousness made him a fan favourite, even made his grand entrance on the present by saying, “I can’t wait to not eat, not bathe, not brush my tooth, poop within the ocean…Carry it.” Whereas Arocho was clearly being tongue-in-cheek there, he says that aquadumping is definitely surprisingly straightforward to regulate to, albeit with one consideration. “I assume it will be like pooping in area, type of—it floats.”
Season 45 finalist Katurah Topps, a civil rights lawyer in Brooklyn, tells SELF that aquadumping felt “liberating as hell,” but additionally? Weird. “How actual are we getting right here?” she asks, laughing. “It’s a bit of bizarre, to look at it wash away. That’s just like the surreal-est feeling. Being like, ‘Huh. That is my life.’”
Each contestants say that the ocean expertise nonetheless felt way more hygienic and refreshing than the choice: pooping en plein air. “Once you go on land, you’re wiping off with leaves,” Topps says. “It simply doesn’t really feel good. Within the ocean, you stroll out feeling so clear.”
Regardless of contestants’ preferences, they don’t at all times have a selection, because the present’s producers don’t enable individuals into the ocean at evening for security causes. So whereas the identify would possibly evoke a surfside resort bar the place one can sip Mai Tais, reasonably than a spot the place you bury your bowel actions within the sand like a cat, the occasional go to to Coconut Grove is just a mandatory evil.
Arocho says he and his tribemates collectively agreed on an organized process to make utilizing that stretch of seashore barely much less gross: “You dig a bit of gap, poop, cowl it, then take two sticks and do an ‘X’ on high, so that you don’t dig up any individual else’s poop.” However he nonetheless averted this methodology as a lot as potential, as did Topps, who says: “The worst half is once you can’t poop within the ocean.”