Eleni

One evening one summer I found myself teaching English to a teenage commercial sex worker in a brothel in northern Ethiopia in return for free beers and cigarettes.  Her name was Eleni and she was sixteen and the first thing she said to me was “I don’t want to talk about AIDS, you Europeans always want to talk about AIDS, but to me it is not so important”.  So we didn’t discuss it.  Not at all.

I had descended into Addis Ababa early one morning a couple of weeks earlier while the cool dew clouds were still settled on the mountains surrounding the city they call New Flower.  During my first few weeks I engaged in appropriate tourist activities such as museum visits and waterfall sightseeing excursions, but when I got to Debark in northern Ethiopia I was tired.  Tired of taking photos, tired of traveling alone, tired of checking the time for the next bus ride and so I welcomed the chaos the electrical storm brought.  It caused a landslide which made the road impassable and it also broke the computer in the bank which made accessing cash impossible, so I was stuck in this chilly little town with just 4 dollars and no ways of leaving.  Then I met Eleni.

“If you teach me English, I will pay for your beers” she offered as she sidled up to the bar next to me “I know the owner of this house so your room will be free and you can stay until the road is fixed” so I made myself more comfortable and agreed to her deal.  There was a single silver pink clip in her curly brown hair which matched the same pink of her lipstick and chipped nail polish.  The youth of her skin matched the short leather jacket she was wearing, but not the high-legged boots with the broken heels, or the way she exhaled my cigarettes.  Yet, despite her bored expression she seemed to enjoy talking.

She told me about her short sixteen years of life.  The eldest of five children she had moved from her village when her father died to support the family, and at first, she cleaned rooms in the hotel and ran errands for the owner.  Then some man said she was beautiful while another one offered her money for sex and it started like that.  One man turned into another and this was now life.  It wasn’t the worst of lives but she hoped for better…

“And it’s better with the foreigners because they pay in dollars and this is why I have to learn more English” she said to me.  So we began our classes.

I met her at the bar before or after her sex with the clients and she would practise her English.  At first she just looked around the room vacantly, but when she was sure there were no customers present she would write down her new words in her tatty little notebook; her verbs and her tenses, her adjectives and nouns.  She would repeat new vocabulary carefully with the precision of a poet until she was sure she had them memorised in her heart.  For three nights we did this and I grew to be fond of her.

But then one morning, without much warning, the road was fixed and the bank was working so I was able to buy my onward bus ticket and leave Debark.  I looked for her all morning, so that I could say goodbye and give other words of such insignificance.  But I couldn’t find her on the main street, in the bars, down near the river or in the Church.  So I got onto the bus, headed west and  never saw her again.