When I first came to village, I asked my host grandma how old she was. She responded, “Oh, Abby… I’m at least 120.”
I then asked a grade nine student how old he thought she was, and he said, “Probably like 100.”
It’s an accomplishment here if you know the year you were born, much less the day and month. So, needless to say, birthdays are not seen as a very important day in the course of a year.
Last year, I told people it was my birthday, expecting some sort of reaction. They responded with either confusion that I would recognize such a day as different than any other, or apathy.
This year, I told no one about the anniversary of my birth. I decided to use it as a test to see if there’s some sort of benevolent birthday spirit out there whose job it is to make sure birthdays rock.
On the eve of my birthday, I got two pre-birthday delights. 1. They extended the traditional wrestling contest for another day, so I got to watch not two, but THREE days of wrestling. 2. We had domoda for dinner.
Maybe the birthday spirits got the days mixed up. The actual day of glory was not nearly as good as birthday eve. I arrived at school in the morning, to be greeted at the gate by a guard armed with a giant, antique looking rifle/machine gun. Turns out I was born on pay day, because the money truck was there to deliver the teachers their salaries. Armed guard surrounded by 400 young students – just another day in the Gambia!
I’d been planning a trip to Senegal with one of my friends. We were going to go to Dakar, stay with a family we knew there, eat ice cream and go to the beach, while we waited for our visas for our later trip to Ghana, Benin, and Togo. I got word at about ten in the morning that because of Senegalese election/demonstrations/corruption, all travel to Dakar is forbidden. Thus, my week break was also cancelled. Thus, and most devastatingly, our trip to Ghana and Benin may also be impossible.
To make up for this, the birthday spirits must have had some mercy on me, because they brought domoda for lunch… but this happens every Tuesday.
Mail run had come in the middle of February, and I had saved three packages for birthday presents. Because of this, I had cake and ice cream on my birthday (oreo cakesters and ice cream sandwich flavored snack packs). I got enough calories and sugar to last weeks and weeks and weeks. So basically, I had a birthday like every eight year old wishes for: Candy, cake, ice cream, and not much else.
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