Birthday

Yaangiy ci kaur ?

As my lovely mother said, 24 years ago (plus a few days now) a bundle of joy came down from heaven. Thank you all who filled my inbox with your kind words. You made my day. But I still haven’t seen any packages!! Just kidding, I know they’re on their way…

Y’all gave me a chuckle with your inquiries on Senegalese birthday traditions. When I told my host family we were celebrating my birthday, they gave me this look which seemed to say: ‘Your birthday? Who celebrates their birthday? Clearly the 6^th pilgrimage of the year for a 20^th century marabout to some obscure village is more cause for celebration than a birthday.’ Most Senegalese don’t even know their age, let alone their date of birth. My curiosity often leads me to wonder how old people are. That’s an important part of how we Americans frame people in our minds. Sort of like how Senegalese wonder whether a person is married. I always get a kick out of asking people how old they are, as they ponder this bizarre question, beginning with a year of birth, correcting themselves, waiting for me to do the deductive math for them to arrive at their age, and finally responding with a range of two or three ages, while I change the subject. It’s hard not to laugh out loud.

Cakes are things that we volunteers joke about having, as they are far from attainable in our cow-cow towns. Chickens, however, are had easily. My family cooked an awesome lunch, see pictures. A fellow volunteer came and hung out for the day. My host sister took the liberty to invite all her friends over, which gave me a headache, but all in all the day was a fine one. I only got a little bit of crap from random people that I’ve met but once for not having invited them to my extravaganza of a birthday party. So I got that goin’ for me. Which is nice.

In other news, it is heating up. If I’m in my room, and the power is on, so is my fan. I complain on this blog in hopes that my fellow volunteers will not read it, as they assuredly have it worse than I, what with my relatively cool location. But it’s still hot! Let the countdown to the rains begin…On the plus side, mango season has begun. I am hooked.

A quick anecdote- the other night I walked into my room and found my five year old brother, Fallou, inside. When asked what he was doing, he responded by saying that he was looking for me, and proceeded to scurry out of the room. I found this to be even more contradictory than the normal conversation I have with people here. Slightly confused, I noticed that my desk was mysteriously missing the change that was there not ten minutes before. Even I could solve this case pretty quickly. Word later came back to me that Fallou justified his thievery by explaining how he was saving money to go to Spain and work. This is the Senegalese equivalent of an American 5 year old stealing to save money for a down payment on his first house. I bit my tongue as I put on my stern face to tell him that stealing is bad. This kid is the man.

Dem naa.