“It takes a long time to grow young.” –Pablo Picasso
I’ve had the good fortune to celebrate my past four birthdays on four continents. While it’s hard to be away from family and close friends on the anniversary of one’s entrance into the world, it is also nice to approach the day with no expectations and enjoy whatever comes of it. What follows is a short reflection on how my June 20th on each continent unfolded.
2009/24 years –
Kigali and Nyamata, Rwanda, AFRICA: Summer Saturdays in Rwanda that year meant Indian barbeques. Our small ex-pat community was made up of Americans, Belgians, Brits, Germans, Irish, and most notoriously, Indians. East Africa is home to a large Indian population; many of our Indian friends had never lived in India, but grew up in surrounding Kenya, Uganda or Tanzania and now lived in Rwanda, running factories and tech shops in town. This explains the dearth of quality restaurants in Kigali (at least during my stay) except for the 5-6 amazing Indian restaurants. And the omnipresence of samosas, chapatti and ichayi...I actually had better Indian food on my birthday in Rwanda than this year’s in India. Indian barbeque translated into kebabs of tandoor chicken, paneer and my favorite capsicum (green pepper) and onion grilled to perfection, coupled with a chandy: cold Rwandan Mutzig (beer) mixed with Fanta citron. (For the record, this drink looks gross but actually tastes great, especially when it is the only way to make a “mixed drink” due to lack of other mixers). As if attending an Indian barbeque with Kigali ex-pat friends was not enough of a celebration, the party re-commenced in Nyamata that evening with a surprise visit from my friends Louise and Irani, who came bearing a round, frosted butter cake from a French pastry shop. To top it off, my Rwandan students even remembered, and proceeded to cover me in paper confetti , sing happy birthday and present me with cards that have kept me smiling for years to come.
2010/25 years –
Boston, USA, NORTH AMERICA: Although I spent most of 2010 in Rwanda, I was stateside for the summer months and spent the eve of my 25th birthday out to dinner with a handful of close friends and my sister at a favorite Greek restaurant. It was a beautiful homecoming, and especially marvelous to see my dear friend Alison 9 months pregnant (her now 2 year old daughter MacKenzie was born 5 days later!) After a lovely night out with friends, I spent Sunday June 20th relaxing by the water, eating watermelon and strawberry shortcake with my family at the Camp, reminiscent of most of my childhood birthdays at this special place where my grandparents lived during the summer months.
2011/26 years –
Roma, Italia, EUROPA: Tanti auguri is happy birthday (literally “so many wishes”) in Italian, but it was not what came from the mouth of my 4 year Italian old charge that day. Last summer I worked as an au pair for a family in Rome, and mamma mia, did I have my hands full. The 7 month old baby boy, Federico, required constant attention (feeding, changing, entertaining, rocking to sleep, bathing…you get the gist) and the little wild child, Ginevra, demanded all that and more, with jealousy of her new brother permeating every interaction. Instead of getting into details, let’s just say it was a rough day. Ginevra told me multiple times what she really thought of me (it included the word “brutta”- ugly), the parents arrived home an hour late without calling, and I was effectively late to my own birthday dinner, with my only friend in the city. Thank God for Jessica. After studying in Rome for the past six months, she also had some strong feelings about the Eternal City (eternally sweltering tourist trap was more what it felt like, to me). Her birthday was just a few weeks earlier, so we bought each other dinner at a charming little ristorante off of Piazza Navona, along with an entire bottle of red, dessert and gelati. A perfect ending to a trying day. (As an aside, Italy got much better once I started spending every weekend in a new Italian city. This photo was taken in Florence).
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Dibrugarh, India, ASIA: Like last year in Italy, this year my birthday fell on a regular work day. My team has just begun our field work of visiting two to three Anganwadi (community health) Centres per day in a district where UNICEF has partnered with the Indian government to initialize an accreditation process of such centres. Our field work will take 15 days in total, with 10 spent in a tea plantation region of Upper Assam called Dibrugarh, and 5 in a district in Lower Assam called Morigaon, which serves as the “control” district for our study of the accreditation process. My birthday this year was our second day of field work, with a 7AM departure from our guest house. Both of the centres my teammate and I visited were great; at each, we were presented with the traditional gamosa (hand-woven Assamese ceremonial shawl), smiling children, mangoes and bananas. Following the end of the work day, I talked on the phone to a friend in India and my family in the US, and my teammates crafted a sweet and most fitting surprise: a pre-dinner outing for ice cream.
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