My birthday

Monday, August 10th.

Saturday was my birthday.
Hey world: I’m 29 years old!

My friend P. helped me organize a goat. Some rangers showed up with the goat still alive, and I took pictures of them when they killed it, skinned it and quartered it. It was so interesting. I had thought that after seeing the whole thing live I would want to turn vegetarian, but I didn’t. In fact I wasn’t even upset or grossed out. I even petted the goat and tried to comfort it prior to its untimely death.

I thought the guy leaning on the goat was just holding it down, getting ready to cut its throat, until I heard a muffled cry, and realized they were doing it the Maasai way: suffocation. They do it this way to save the blood so that the blood doesn’t spill and go to waste. It takes longer, that is my only regret. Afterwards they cut the skin and expertly pushed between the skin and the body, and it pretty much came right off. I was mesmerized.

We had a party and made half the goat on the BBQ, called Nyama Choma, and the other half into a stew. Fridah baked me three cakes, we had really good sound system playing Kenyan music, almost 3 crates of beer, wine, soda, perfect weather as usual. After singing happy birthday to me, I had to cut the cake for everyone. One of my friends spoon fed me a piece, I spoon fed my neighbour Sam, he spoon fed someone else, and on it went. Then out of nowhere they appeared with a big bucket of water and some towels… obviously it got dumped over my head – a tradition for the “bath day”. Apparently someone felt inspired to dump a bottle of beer on my head also. After changing, we all made a train and danced around the camp, ending in a circle. Then I had to go in the centre and take turns dancing with every single person one on one. Finally after all the ceremonies were finished we all just danced and partied in my field until the sun went down.

I feel so lucky to have had the chance to be here in Kenya, making friends and seeing so much. Having a birthday party was literally the icing on the cake!