It’s a Saturday afternoon in downtown Cairo and the city is teeming with weekenders. Amid the heavy foot traffic and bustling streets is a public restroom in the centrally-located Bab al-Louq neighborhood. It’s as empty as a haunted house. The men’s room’s three urinals are drier than a documentary on sand and the ceiling is weighed down by cobwebs thicker than a Hardee’s quadruple Angus cheeseburger.

Across the street from the bathroom is the Cairo Chamber of Commerce, an official government building whose regal steps are stained with urine.

It’s not just the Cairo Chamber of Commerce. A laundry list of public locales throughout Cairo have long-been established as home to Cairene’s bodily fluids. A taxi-driver stuck in a traffic jam on Ramses Street may casually urinate behind his open door or on the picturesque boardwalk along the Nile that is mottled with dark, damp, incongruous shapes that reek of toilet (yes, toilet), or at nearly every bridge in Cairo that hosts public offenders from diverse walks of life who sport everything from tattered galabeyas to three-piece suits.

Why is this happening? Perhaps people are just finding themselves stuck in the Middle East’s most unruly concrete jungle with no place to go? Indeed, this is part of the problem. Some parts of town, like the Nile boardwalk in Garden City, are far from public establishments and ill-equipped when it comes to meeting the bodily needs of its frequent strollers and loungers. But what about the people opting for the steps of the Chamber of Commerce instead of the restroom a stone’s throw away? What about local coffee shops and even mosques that typically allow passersby to pop in for a tinkle?

Mohamed, a manager at a petrol station downtown says most of the people peeing in public don’t feel like paying the nominal fee to use public restrooms. A garbage collector downtown says that even though he makes a point to always go to a nearby mosque or coffee shop, he feels like others don’t realize they can do the same.

“Someone from the upper class has no problem coming in here and paying 0.25 or 0.50 piastres to use our bathroom but someone poorer is thinking ‘why pay money when I can do it in the street for free and have free access to water at any old place to wash up?’" said Mohamed. The manager added that a lot more people come to use the hose (a free service) than the actual bathroom.

So what’s the solution to this stinky situation? Well it seems simple, downtown needs free public bathrooms and they need to be everywhere. Places like the boardwalk should be peppered with a few portajohns, and public restrooms like the one in Bab al-Louq should materialize every few blocks, free of charge.

But the rampant offenses in close proximity to places with free-to-use reservoirs for public urine like coffee shops or restaurants, leads one to believe that this might not be enough. Sure, both are places to go, and the realization that such places exist is part of the problem, but perhaps something in the human psyche just doesn’t care – I say human because this seems to be a global issue.

Consider Paris. During the 2007 Paris-hosted rugby world cup, an incident where dozens of men peed on the walls of the city's Town Hall despite the presence of 62 free, clean public toilets nearby made headlines.

Then there’s India which has been battling this problem for ages. Recently the government launched an awareness campaign, that used billboards on buses and highways to embarrass its public offenders.

So what about Egypt? Does the government recognize that it may be wise to focus on awareness? Let’s check in with Cairo governorate’s spokesperson: “We don’t need to focus on awareness, it’s more about cleaning our polluted streets,” he says, explaining that a clean street is one that doesn’t get peed on.

Well then. Seems like they are on it.

I also forgot to mention that all public offenders mentioned in this story are men. Women don’t even have the privilege to be so inappropriate. But hey – we’ll get into that next time.