Sometimes we end up in a strange land and we have only the American taxpayer to thank.

When I contacted the renowned journalist Pierre Salinger in Washington -- whom I'd met some years earlier -- I hoped he might hire me at his public relations agency, one of the largest in the world.

After years of freelance writing, all I wanted was a regular job and to be part of the news-making, high-stakes scene in DC.

And after years of living all over the place, all I wanted was to settle down.

I had thought Pierre liked me until he sent me over to be interviewed by one of his colleagues, a guy in charge of shipping people off to Central Asia.

"Kaza-what?" I said.

"We have a manager's position open in our Kazakhstan office," he said, "and I think you'd fit right in."

It was 1995 and I had never quite fit in anywhere but for some reason -- call it PMS, false bravado, low blood sugar or restless legs -- I immediately said yes.

Three weeks later I was flying business class toward Almaty, the country's capital, to join an established team contracted with the US Agency for International Development (US-AID) in this former Soviet republic.

Our mission? To help this huge new nation transition from the miseries of communism to the joys of capitalism. And we were being paid big bucks to do it.

Like any American expat on a hardship assignment, I was given a big apartment, a personal chauffeur (Akhmed, a Uyghur, to the left) and a personal housekeeper and cook.

It was only right that I should have a comfortable home, and that I should not have to drive, buy my own milk or chop my own onions. I mean, really, as an American living abroad, it was only right. Right?

As it turns out, the only thing I had to do at the office was to keep a chair moderately warm, and make sure the six Kazakhs and Russians who worked for me did their job.

This was easy, as those five women and one man knew exactly what they were doing and could carry out their tasks of monitoring the local media for finance-related articles and writing press releases -- in Russian -- without my help.

So I spent most of my days at the local banya instead.

This was where my new American women friends and I went to do like the locals do.

That meant having three massages a week and whipping each other buck naked with wet branches in the sauna.

Burly Russian women gave us those deep-tissue massages -- and I do mean deep-tissue -- on slabs of pink marble laid out one right next to the other.

No modesty allowed -- not even a pair of underpants or a sheet. Funny how we humans -- even prudish Yankee women -- can get used to anything.

After the massage -- our legs wobbly and spines flapping in the warm mist -- we headed over to the dripping wet sauna where we had earlier placed the small branches of an elm-like tree in buckets of steaming hot water.

"Looks like they're ready," one of us would announce, shaking them to check their malleability.

The first time we had tried this, we very daintily brushed the leaves up against each other's skin.

"Nyet! Nyet!" The sauna attendant yelled at us, grabbing the branch from Nancy's hand and suddenly smacking Jenna hard on the back with it.

"Vot!" She said, handing Nancy the branch. That's how you do it.

We all cringed until Jenna slowly turned and with a big smile said "Wow! That felt great!"

From then on, we whacked and thwacked each other until we were laughing our heads off and every inch of our skin was bright red and smarting. We then stumbled our way over to the freezing cold "swimming" pool and jumped in, screeching as we surfaced and bobbed.

I don't know how cold the water was but it reminded me of racing into the 50-degree waves off the coast of Maine -- and racing right back out.

As soon as we jumped out of that pool, we headed back to the sauna for more whacking and thwacking. And then another splash in the icy vada.

Now, this whole endeavor probably sounds perverse if your idea of a sauna is simply sitting quietly on wooden slats in a tightly wrapped towel, but let me assure you that these Kazakh and Russian women -- of all sizes and ages -- know exactly what they're doing.

Though I have no scientific studies to prove it, the health benefits of getting each other's blood circulating in this nonsexual and primate-like bonding activity have to be enormous.

When we had finished having our way with each other, Akhmed would drive me to the office for a brief check-in then on home where Olga would be preparing blinis or a beef casserole or a salad with exotic ingredients that she had bought at the market that day.

After a delicious meal, I would sleep more soundly than I ever have since childhood.

But it wasn't long before I began to question what we were really doing there and if American taxpayers really should be paying for our little frolics at the bathhouse. Were we really helping others or just helping ourselves?

Stay tuned.

Note: Painting of "Russian Venus" by Boris Kustodiev (1926)