What a day!

Starting my birthday off strong with a great quote…

Me: Moses!  Guess what day it is?

Moses: What?

Me: It’s my birthday!

Moses:  Oh of course, we have to slaughter a chicken.

Me: Why a chicken?

Moses: Or a goat…

Today might have been the best birthday I’ve had… like ever.  It consisted of me interviewing farmers about their issues with wildlife damaging their crops with a local guide, Tatu (one of the few women guides, but super stellar!).  The interviewees complimented my Swahili, but frankly did not care at all about the fact it was my birthday because they don’t celebrate birthdays here.  Then we were told that we had to walk back to our meeting point (pizza shop J ) because the car was far away but we didn’t want to walk the 10 km back to the shop.  So instead we hired two motorcycles and rode the way there for only 500 shillings ($.30).  It was incredible!

Then it followed by going to Safari Park which is a local bar.  I ordered my first drink which was Malibu rum mixed with mango juice and it was quite tasty.  I never thought I would be at a bar with my professor, but then again I never thought a lot of things would happen until I came to Africa. 

After returning from Safari Park I decided to kucheza na watoto (play with the kids) down the street.  I discovered a new baby that I might just have to visit daily and turned duck duck goose into a mambo mambo poa game where the poa was just me tickling the chosen one because the running just wasn’t going to happen.  After the adorable children I came back to cookies from Erica, our student affairs manager, and then dinner followed by cake.  The cake tastes delicious in my mind but actually no baked things here are really good.  It was a crunchy, thick, mushy, corn bread like, cake with orange hinted frosting that literally still had solid chunks of sugar in it.  Yet, it was a big deal. 

But, as if the day wasn’t miraculous enough I’ve realized that it’s going to be weird not being famous when I go home.  Every time I step out of the gates of our school people flock towards me.  All of them want to hear me speak Swahili, kids want to hold my hand, they want my pens because they are “higher quality” pens than they have here, and the waving and yelling “Hallo” is never ending.  I don’t know if you guys realized, but in Karatu I’m kind of a big deal.  Not sure that will transfer to Tolland….