My Swiss Army knife came in handy yesterday during the preparations for my birthday party. My community mates and I planned on having people over in the afternoon for some chakula (food) and piga story (telling stories).
Before this I should share how I woke up. Starting at 3 am, the rooster who lives literally 3 feet from my room began crowing. Not only did this rooster crow, but all of the roosters in Mabibo decided to have a mini convention and crow at different intervals. After trying to sleep until at least 6:30, I opened my door t streamers o magazine cut outs of celebrities hanging from my door. Nicholas, Caroline, and Christen surprised me with these hilarious pictures of random people along with a happy birthday sign on my door and some other notes attached to the wall. This was going to be a good day!
Slowly people started trickling in around 4, which is actually early since we said it is starting at 3. Nicholas, Caroline and our friend Davey went to get the potatoes for the chips we were going to make. Too many hands and not enough knives, this is where the Swiss Army knife comes in. Christen and I whip ours out and what do you know! We have six people sitting on our front porch peeling many kilos of potatoes and slicing them into french fry wedges. As more people come, the cooking goes quicker and soon enough we are frying all of the chips. Whenever we have a party at our house, we usually cook chips and katchumbali (a vegetable mixture) because its relatively easy to make for a lot of people and they all help cook it. So the fire was set up outside over some charcoal on the ground, the potatoes cooked in about an hour and a half and around 8 pm dinner was ready. We all sat in our living room, 14 of us in total I believe, and the MC, Jeflo, began the evening. Tanzanian birthdays, as I mentioned in a previous post, have a cake feeding part. If you remember, this is my absolute favvvooorrite part, NOT. I loathe this part of the parties because it can be extremely awkward depending on if you know the person feeding you, if they are joking around or being serious, and if you know the other people there. But this time because it was my birthday, I got to feed all of my friends. So I cut the cake (Caroline made a chocolate coconut cake - it was delicious!), into tiny pieces and started to make my way around the room feeding each guest a piece on a toothpick. Not awkward for me, but awkward for some of them!!! Then at the end a few people fed me cake, not too bad because I had done it to all them first. So then after the cake feeding comes the actual dinner (nothing like having dessert before dinner!). The mtoto (child), aka the birthday person, goes first so I got my chips and katchumbali and then everybody else followed. After dinner there is a speech making part to the party, so our MC got up and directed the whole thing. He announced that this was the time for saying any words that they wish to me and wishing me luck in the next year. Slowly, one by one everybody got up and said something. Keep in mind that this whole evening is in Swahili, and some of these people I have only met a few times, one of them I only met one evening for a few hours but he came to my party! Phew, that was finished, I received many blessings from my friends and many nice things were said, but again it was in Swahili so I didn't catch all of it. My favorite part of the whole evening was what happened last. We turned up the music and had a legit dance party in our living room...around the coffee table. Listening to Jay Z, Beyonce, P Square, Rihanna, don't forget the Celine Dion and Shania Twain every once in a while, while dancing in your one small section of the room, watching our friends check themselves out in the mirror and realizing that this was actually happening was the absolute best part of my day. Everyone was having such a good time and we were all together. Thats what a birthday should be.
Times like these make me so thankful for the family I have formed here. These people are not just my friends, but they are the ones we celebrate good times with and commiserate over bad times. While I am away from my own family back at home, celebrations like birthdays and holidays, times when we ge together with our friends and family remind me that I am definitely living the life I love.
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