My Awesome African Birthday

Around 3 am this morning I woke up and was so excited about my birthday that it took me forever to fall back to sleep.

This morning for breakfast we had banana bread (which I love) so I was very happy.

At 7:30 sharp we headed to Manyara National Park. We saw so many dik diks in the park. I think that they knew that it was my birthday and I love them so they placed themselves in visible areas. Haha. We also saw lots of giraffes and elephants. And rock hyraxes. I've never seen them in Manyara before today. We saw mongooses too. They were funny to watch because they were constantly running around and vigorously digging.

After the park we went to Pizza Point for lunch :] I ate a whole pizza by myself and enjoyed every bite of it.

From Pizza Point we headed to the orphanage. Finding out that our community service project was at the orphanage today was a present in itself. I love the orphanage and the children there. The kids are amazing. They are getting comfortable in their new home and they remembered me. They were calling my name :D I helped paint a zebra on the wall of one the bedrooms. Some other students painted lions, a cheetah, and elephant holding baloons, flowers and bugs. After I was done painting I went outside and played with the kids. Isa braided my hair again and when he was done Baraka, another kid, gave me a wonderful side pony tail.

The kids were very rowdy and they completely exhausted me. They wanted to be carried, swung around and danced with. It was a blast. They found the music on my phone and started playing that. They loved the music and were very happy to find my African playlist. I found some very funny videos on my phone of the kids dancing that other kids had taken. In order to escape and get a drink of water I shoved my phone in my pocket and danced away. They thought that was funny and most of them let me go and found another mzungu to bother.

When I walked to the car to get my water and take a break they followed me looking for music and pictures. One of the kids stole my water bottle and tried to drink from it; the top was on so no water came out though. He was really confused and tried to drink from the bottom too before figuring out he had to unscrew the top and chugging down the rest of my water in three or four gulps. I pretty much just stood there and watched him in shock. Haha.

When it was time to go the kids walked me to the car and gave me big hugs before I got in. I can't wait to see them again!

I slept most of the ride back to camp and then we had a little down time before dinner when we got back. I took time to look through my pictures from the day and take a shower. Well, the water was freezing so I washed my hair under the faucet and wiped the rest of me off with wipes. It was close enough to a shower: in the end I was clean.

I was the guest of honor at dinner because it was my birthday. I walked in the dining hall and everyone cheered and yelled happy birthday. There were ribbons and balloons hanging from the ceiling and a special seat just for me. My seat had balloons on the back and ribbons, a candle, a bouquet of flowers,and a birthday card on the table in front of it. The flowers were beautiful and the card was cute. I especially loved the messages that the other students wrote in the card; they ranged from simple to funny to sweet. It was really funny because when I got in line for food no one had set there things down next to my seat (meaning it was looking like I was going to have to eat along) but luckily people joined me once they got their food.

I got bumped to the front of the food line because it was my birthday. It was funny though because I walked up to the front of the line and said "they said I have to come up here and cut in because it's my birthday" and one of the girl's responses was "can you cut behind me?"

After dinner there were more festivities. The RAP activity was a song that the camp staff sings a lot. When the MOD did the demo he did a special version for my birthday:

"Jambo, jambo bwana
habari gani
mzuri sana

Wageni, mwakaribishwa,
Tanzania hakuna matata

Lisa hakuna matata"

And then Burrah, the ascari who always sings the song, didn't know they did it special because of my birthday added "Courtney hakuna matata." It was really cute and I just sang along.

Next was cake time. The lights were turned off and the cook crew came out carrying a cake (with candles of course) and singing. They set the cake down in front of me and I tried to blow out the candles; unfortunately they were trick candles so even after about 4 attempts they kept coming back. African trick candles are much more interesting than American trick candle; they shoot off sparks like sparklers occasionally. It's a little scary :]

Once we dealt with the candles I could finally get to the cake itself. There was a nice border on one side but on the other side the end of the word birthday fell off the cake (it actually said birthda). When I was laughing at this Molly explained that because I requested special frosting they didn't make enough to cover the whole cake and they had to cut off about an inch on one end. The frosting was amazing. I requested chocolate and they made a chocolate butter cream frosting. In my opinion that made it the best cake we have had in Tanzania and I ate multiple very large pieces.

Some people had very interesting cake eating habits. I was given a hard time about serving others before myself but I love middle pieces so I gave out the edges I had to cut to get to the middle. Kioko didn't want any frosting so he cut a piece and then left the frosting. Molly only wanted the frosting so she ate his frosting plus a little more that she cut off the top of another piece. For a while the frostingless piece looked sad and lonely but then another girl happily ate it. The best was after most people were done one of the girls came and sat across from me and was scraping the remaining frosting edges off of the aluminum foil. She ate a LOT of frosting and later commented "Ugh, I feel like I have a brick in my stomach."

My favorite way that I was told happy birthday today was the way Courtney said it to me. She walked up to me, took my hands, and very seriously said "I have something I've been meaning to tell you... Happy birthday!!" I was so worried she had something serious to tell me. Haha.

After dinner we all sat around the fire. The Kenya students tried to teach us how to do traditional Maasai dances. We were all pretty horrible at it, especially the woman's dance with requires a lot of shoulder shaking. I was laughing too hard to really make a solid attempt at the moves or the grunting-type sounds that accompanied the dance. Ninah also tried to teach us a song. It was a really pretty song and from what I could understand it was about loving Tanzania. We did okay until about 4 lines in and then we all collapsed into laughter because everyone butchered the words so badly. Ninah said he would write down the lyrics for us later so that we could learn it properly.

So, basically I had an amazing birthday and I am going to bed happy. Nala salama.