Thanks for the birthday wishes!
I stretched the celebration into three days which I'm quite proud
of.
Day 1 included relaxing and swimming a hotel pool, waiting 2 hours for
a BLT sandwich, baking a cake (even though its 100F outside!), having a burger
and fries for dinner, and topping it all off with sleeping in an air
conditioned room.
Day 2 included sharing Twizzlers and M&Ms with the teaching staff
then buying minerals (soda-pop) for us all, after which we all had serious
sugar highs. One teacher even needed to
start chewing on a tree branch to try to calm his stomach down. I cooked a pasta dinner for two friends and
they were shocked and pleased over the texture and flavours.
On Day 3 I picked up my Western Union gift from mom and dad (thanks!)
and had fried chicken and fried rice for lunch.
I had a great first Ghanaian birthday that will be hard to top next
year. I guess I should start planning
now.
Oh, I also need to mention that birthdays don't get celebrated in
Ghanaian culture so it was very strange for me to be celebrating mine. There isn't a way to say "happy
birthday" in Dagbani so the generic greeting "happy time of the
year" (Ni ti yuum palli!) that is used for other festivals like the lunar new year is
used. I had fun explaining that I have a
birth certificate that tells me the exact day and time of my birth. That blew people away.
Birthdays are so unimportant here that three weeks ago I was helping
one of my students fill out his high school entrance application and it came to
the place for entering you birthday, of course he didn't know his so we got to
choose one for him! Can you imagine
getting to choose your own birthday?!?1?!
What day would you choose? For
Abdulai we chose June 29th, the feast of Saints Peter and Paul because Abdulai's baptismal name is Peter. He was very
excited to now have a birthday and an easy way to remember it. I can't imagine life without my birthday of
3-27, thank you Ghana for putting my birthday into perspective.
Godspeed. -Zachar
