Warmbaths

In Swaziland, there was a sleepy hot spring: tucked under trees, a short walk from the road into the bush. In South Africa, there was Warmbaths: the size of a football field, banked with waterslides, blasted with announcements in Afrikaans, and packed— standing-room-only—with pot-bellied men smoking, and perfectly-coiffed women in make-up and drop-dead earrings. The ten-year-old and I floated about wide-eyed, and later memorialized our watery adventure in a poem. Warmbaths is a human soup. Where people can pee but not poop. You can’t swim very far. You just float where you are. And everything’s done in a group. (100)