Ethiopia

I knew that backpacking was dirty business, but I never expected anything like this.

When I shower, I make the soap filthy.

When I shave, my razor actually slices through dirt.

Even after I thoroughly scrub my skin, I still leave streaks of grime on the towel.

The filth is embedded deep into every pore on my body, and I hate feeling this way. Under normal circumstances, the only dirty thing about me is my mouth.

That’s why I was forced to commit a crime of cleanliness — Deborah and I snuck into the five-star Sheraton Hotel and spent the whole day using their facilities.

Believe me, we did it as much for ourselves as for the people around us.

Being a stinky backpacker, I was worried about getting in the front gate at all, but a Canadian friend reassured us. “Don’t worry,” he said. “You’re white. You can do anything you want in Africa.”

It was an uncomfortably true statement.

Nobody looked twice at two white girls entering the building.

While the spa desk was unmanned, Deborah and I breezed right through the doors and headed directly to the hot tub.

The bubbles were on a timer, so they ran out after 20 minutes.

That was our cue to head to the sauna.

When that got too hot to handle, we hopped back into the hot tub.

After the bubbles ran out again, we took another sauna break.

Emboldened, we tossed our towels over our arms and strutted out of the spa and into the outdoor pool. Again, we waltzed right past the check-in counter.

After several laps, it was time to wash the chlorine out of our hair. We headed back inside.

This time, the spa employees tried to stop us.

“Excuse me,” one of them said. “We need your room key.”

“No, that’s OK,” said Deborah, as we scurried into the locker room. “Thank you.”

That exchange confused them enough to leave us alone.

I proceeded to have the single most satisfying bathing experience of my life. The shower consisted of several nozzles that sprayed various body parts simultaneously, plus a detachable nozzle with adjustable pressure and temperature.

It was my first shower in months that wasn’t cold or didn’t come from a bucket — and holy hell, it was fantastic. I felt like a house cat that had suddenly been reincarnated into a panther.

I could easily say this experience was a baptismal metaphor, cleansing my spirit as much as my body, but it really wasn’t. This was the act of removing dirt from my body. Period.

I scrubbed. I slathered. I conditioned. I used my trusty pumice stone to attack my camel hooves. I lathered. I shaved. I cried with delight.

I didn’t want to leave — ever — but my fingers were decidedly pruney.

Plus, my stomach was growling, and the executive business center had a bowl of apples ripe for the taking.

There was something peculiar about my flight from Bahrain to Addis Ababa.

For one, there was the sound.

Rising above the rhythmic din of the engines was a cloud of chatter — high-pitched and frantic, like 10,000 barking seals punctuated by Britney-like squees. Plastic bangles clanged like church bells on the wrists of gesturing hands. Hysterical laughter drowned out the captain’s announcements.

The cabin smelled of a perfume factory, discordant blasts of scent with oriental spice weaving between syrupy sweet and dense floral notes.

And then there was the line for the bathroom. My god. The line was as long and engorged as an underworld creature, growing in size and scope as the flight wore on.

That’s when I realized what made this flight distinctive. Women. Other than the pilot, there wasn’t a single man on board.

I approached a flight attendant in the back and asked why there were so many women on this plane.

“They are women who work,” she said, her mouth set into a prim line. “If you know what I mean by work.”

“No, I don’t think I do. What do you mean?”

She cocked her head to one side and gestured as if to say, “Really? Do you really want me to go there?”

I nodded in encouragement.

“They’re prostitutes,” she finally said.

She explained that a lot of women leave East Africa to become sex workers in the Middle East. They stay for a couple years, long enough to make money to sustain their families, then return to their homes. And that’s what I was seeing on my flight — retired prostitutes who would soon be reunited with their loved ones.

As the plane descended into Addis Ababa, joyful faces pressed against tiny windows. Jubilant shrieks of “ai-yi-yi!” filled the cabin, then most everyone broke out into a tearful rendition of the Ethiopian national anthem.

These working girls were home again.