A Thoroughly African Birthday

Well if somebody had asked me two years ago what I’d be doing on my 24^th birthday, I’m pretty sure living in Senegal wouldn’t have been anywhere on my list of possibilities. And yet my birthday has come and gone, and that’s exactly what happened. So here’s how my birthday, Africa-style, went…

We still had to have language class (even though I swear the schedule said that the whole day was free), but at least Jackie and I played the “but it’s my birthday!” card on Sakhir and got ourselves the late morning session. I had hoped to use that extra time to sleep in, but tin roofs heat up pretty quickly around here and by 8 AM it was getting a little too hot in my room to sleep. So I got up and set about getting ready for the day. Then Jackie came over and brought me a birthday card and some Biskrems (which are a delicious shortbread type cookie with chocolate filling that we are all addicted to) as a present. As evidenced by the wish list I made on the side of the blog, food is very high on my list of “Awesome Things to Receive” these days, so it was a pretty great gift.

Then it was time for Wolof class. During class Senegal said “Happy Birthday!” to me in a way only it can… And by that I mean, we were having class under the big tree at my house and I got pooped on not once, but TWICE by birds. Thanks, Senegal!

Mostly this was funny because the first time it landed on my arm, which is easy to clean off, and the second time it only got my notes. It would have been an entirely different story if it had landed on my freshly washed hair. (You grow to appreciate the effort that goes into washing your hair more when you are trying to do it out of a bucket. Trust me.) Wanting to avoid how angry I’d become if it happened a third time and did land in my hair, this finally prompted me to break out “the hat.” I call it “the hat” because I hadn’t yet worn it in country, due mostly to the fact that it absolutely guarantees people laughing at me. Why? Because while the huge floppy brim and UVB-proof material make it great for protecting one from the sun, it tends to look a little out of place here. Also, buying the hat in pink was, in retrospect, a bit of an error in judgment on my part. Nevertheless, I decided that compared with bird poop in my hair on my birthday, it was the lesser of two evils; and so I broke it out…much to the amusement of Jackie, Sakhir and my family.

Thankfully, I made it through the rest of class without any bird issues and we had the rest of the day free. I wanted to go into Thies and have some American food so we made plans to meet a few people from other training villages and headed out. Which is another way in which it was a thoroughly African birthday…10 people crammed into a car roughly the size of a circa-1992 Dodge Caravan on the way to Thies. Fun times, as always. But we made it in one piece so no worries.

We met everyone for lunch at a restaurant called “Big Faim,” and pretty much proceeded to wile away the rest of the afternoon eating too much, using the free wireless, enjoying the A/C and catching up on all the latest PC Senegal news. Definitely not as exciting as birthdays I’ve had in past years, but it was fun and I really appreciated the fact that people endured the sept-place ride to Thies to hang out.

After exhausting nearly 5 hours sitting around the restaurant (and making yet another failed attempt at finding handheld fans called ubukais at the market), we headed back to Tassete for dinner. When we got back it was time for another thoroughly African experience to remember the day by…popping the blister Jackie got from a blister beetle. Blister beetles are lovely little creatures that essentially pee acid on you, causing blisters to form on your skin (not fun, as I have since experienced for myself). With most blisters you just wait and let them pop on their own, but with these you have to do it right away and under water, otherwise the acid will just get all over you skin again. Lucky Jackie, one of the little buggers got her right near her collarbone…a place that is difficult to submerge without being indecent and definitely hard to reach to pop oneself. And so we dragged out her med kit and I got the lucky task of popping it while sitting on the mat in my frontyard. Again, fun times, haha.

After that the day pretty much wound down…I finished reading Into Thin Air (which if you haven’t already read, I’d highly recommend it), hung out with my family for a little bit, had a little birthday-related meltdown that prompted screaming at children who tried to grab me and demand money while I was freaking out…you know, the usual. Let’s just say that while it was definitely a good birthday overall, seeing as it was the first birthday I’ve ever spent that far away from home (and the only one in 24 years I haven’t seen my Mom on)…it was hard and my emotions were on a bit of a roller coaster. Sometimes you stop and wonder what you’re doing with your life and I feel like birthdays are a prime day for doing that. Without going into the gory details, I’ll just say that while I’m happy in my decision to join the Peace Corps and I know that we’re doing important work…sometimes it scares me to think about the fact that this is a totally temporary life. Even if I decide to extend longer than two years, at some point I HAVE to pick-up and start all over again somewhere else. But that’s life, right?

Thankfully, Jackie is well accustomed to dealing with my minor breakdowns at this point and was able to calm me down in pretty short order. Plus I got a few phone calls from people back home, including my parents, which certainly helped.

Thank you to everyone for the birthday wishes! I very much appreciated them all :) Looks like 24 is going to be a very interesting year…