Birthday in Botswana

Last week was my 2nd birthday in Botswana.

Birthdays in Botswana are kind an odd phenomenon. Like the U.S., celebrations tend to happen on the weekend when people are not working. For the same reasons, funerals and weddings also happen on the weekends. It's not uncommon to attend a funeral on Saturday morning, then at noon, go to a wedding; even in the same family... You can bury a cousin in the morning and then attend your sister's wedding later.

People in Botswana also like to make things big occasions by getting specially made and personalized T-shirts and even Birthday videos (like a wedding video). A few weeks ago, I attended my friend Wame's birthday where they got bright pink t-shirts printed marking her 40th birthday and had a professional video crew shooting the afternoon boat cruise. Earlier that day, she happened to bury a cousin who died in a car accident.

My birthday on the other hand, was not quite so dramatic. I joke that I got bats for my birthday; since first thing on Saturday morning, I went to finish the project at Motse wa Tsholofelo Orphan Preschool and the bats that we had extracted a month ago, had come back to party. They'll have to be dealt with at another time...

After a morning of work, bats, I spent the rest of the day in the company of my good friends Ross and Heidi and Camilo. One particular dork, knowing my affection for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, sought to make me seem dorkier than I really am and commissioned to have a cake made Buffy Style. Who would have thought screen printing and fondant made it to Botswana? It turns out, one of our good friends is a fabulous cake decorator and should be on Ace of Cakes Botswana Edition. The cake is made to look like the ancient book about vampires with an edible stake which I used to clobber my friend with.


A customary birthday practice of Ross& Heidi's is to celebrate birthdays with a Happy Lap Around the Sun (possibly something like a Snoopy Dance, you'd have to see it yourself). And of course, I customarily popped some champagne which we enjoyed by the Thamalakane River.

We had a cute little dinner, with a few drinks, and Ross baked his famous chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting - in a cute heart shape. And finally, to mark my 26th birthday, I blew out the smiley face candles.