Butt Sweat

The last two posts have been a bit serious so on a lighter note, I'm going to talk about butt sweat. My apologies if that is too personal for some readers. The boundaries of what is appropriate change in a country where I see men urinating on walls every day and women have stared to see whether breastmilk from a white woman is the same color as from an African woman.

Apparently I suffer from it.

Every expat I know in Djibouti seems to have different abilities to sweat.

Some don't at all. I run with Lorraine and at the end I will have not one single dry centimeter on my shirt and she won't have a single line of sweat.

Some do in normal amounts and in normal places, which, in Djibouti includes sweating from the eyes, the backs of the knees, behind the ears and between the toes. As well as every other normal place.

K.W. sweat from her wrists, it poured out like water.

R.S. sweats from her face. I also suffer from this and have had to lean back from pots and bowls while cooking or they will be over-salted.

Tom sweats from his back.

I sweat from my butt. I suppose the region could be more accurately referred to as the backs of my thighs, but I prefer 'butt sweat' to 'back of the upper thigh sweat'.

Sitting, standing, walking...it doesn't really matter, I have streams flowing down the backs of my legs. Sitting is, however, the worst because the sweat has nowhere to go and pools on my skirt or pants. It soaks straight through multiple layers and when I stand up people wonder how an adult could pee her pants without flinching while sitting at the dinner table in an air-conditioned Chinese restaurant or during an REI business meeting.

So if you see me with a large damp patch on the back of my clothes, rest assured, it is only sweat, not incontinence.