My birthday was March 3rd, the big 2-3, putting me one year closer to renting a car in the US, senior discounts, and social security (just kidding, my generation won’t get that!).
I thought I’d lie low, not tell anyone who didn’t know, spend time with some PCVs. All PCVs knew because our newsletter announces birthdays. Also, I’m friends with a few people here on Facebook, who astutely noticed the impending anniversary.
I woke, made breakfast, went to work, the normal routine. I got home and my parents called, singing “Happy Birthday” according to family tradition. We talked until my Cape Verdean buddies came to practice English. After the lesson my grandparents called crooning “Happy Birthday” as well. Then we ran, I went home and showered, and went to dinner with some PCVs.
We had the best Chinese food on Fogo: grilled pork ribs and chicken, with fried rice. It’s too bad the multitude of Chinese people on the island don’t open an authentic restaurant. Nonetheless it was good and I’ll go again.
We stalled at the restaurant, watching Brazilian reality TV (“Wife Swap,” in Rio). Jonny fielded several phone calls, disappearing from time-to-time. I received well-wishes from the two awesome young women who lived in the same training village as me. We became intimate friends packed into the beds of pickup trucks shuttling our fellow villagers, livestock, and sacks of produce back and forth to Assomada, airing our concerns, frustrations, highs, lows, with uninhibited honesty. It approached 9:30, when I thought a few friends might stop by, so I was antsy to get back. No one else seemed hurried.
Finally we got to the house, Jonny searched his pockets, and said, “Oh I forgot my key,” so I opened the door. I looked left and thought I saw something strange on the futon but it was dark so I wasn’t sure.
I hit the light. “SURPRESA!!!” (surprise). On the table a huge, beautiful cake, and all of our close friends jammed into the diminutive living room: the Portuguese volunteer nurses, our German pals working in tourism and wine-making, our Luxemburger friend overhauling the water utility, my running partners/English students/friends, our Cape Verdean buddy (Joãozinho) who teaches Tae-Bo and has been a good friend to Peace Corps on Fogo for years, and a few others. I was astonished. They broke into “Happy Birthday” in Portuguese, then English, as I stood awed, like a deer in the headlights.
I shuffled towards the kitchen, dazed, to get extra plates and silverware, when my phone rang once again. Far too many digits appeared on the caller ID for a Cape Verdean number (no area codes here), and to my utter delight some of my best friends from the US, Shanka, Jamie, and Ammar called. Still floored from the surprise, it was nonetheless awesome to speak to them. More icing on the cake.
Every year there’s that nagging possibility in the back of my head, “If I open this door is there a surprise waiting?” But never did I expect it here, so far from home. It turns out the scheming Portuguese nurses who’ve become my good friends organized it. This mammoth effort, as their term ends and they return to Portugal the 5th, aided by Joãozinho and Jonny. I’m not an emotional person but I am, extremely touched, grateful, and lucky to be surrounded by such incredible people, even if I lack the words to express those feelings.
So despite the unremarkable, anticlimactic nature of the 23rd birthday, I count this as one of, if not the, best birthdays ever. A million miles from home, on a mysterious volcanic island rising from the unforgiving Atlantic, I continue to live a charmed and undeserved life. Thank you everyone. It means more than you know.
