Botswana Birthday!

As with all Katchmark women (or at least the ones who at one point resided at 2438 in Coon Rapids) I tend to like to celebrate my birthday. A lot. I warn people about its approach from months off, and like to get at least a good 2 weeks to a month mileage out of “my special day”. As it turns out my time in Botswana has been no different.
It began when one of my PCV buddies came to Seronga as she had an event with her NGO and brought chocolate as a birthday present. We then had dinner with Simon and we mentioned that my birthday was coming and he a bit drunkenly wrote down the date, and muttered that we would “make a plan”. We then spent the weekend in the bush, complete with super close elephant and hippo sightings and barbeque and my friend V even made me a birthday cake. I was feted with bottles of African liquor and marshmallows and granadilla yogurt and it was a great party. They actually sang happy birthday with at least 5 different forms of the English accent (Australian, English, Irish, American, and southern African). It was cool.
Tuesday was my actual birthday- (it began with B calling to serenade me with Frank Sinatra singing happy birthday from his ipod.) and I had made brownies (no measuring cups again!!! And they were good!) and I was running around the village distributing m&m covered birthday brownies to all my buddies (and the extremely destitute man who always begs me for chibuku). The Kgosi in particular was amused with my attempt at cake. I had several different Setswana infused attempts at the happy birthday song and all the children who had given up on begging from me were pleasantly surprised at their half hearted attempts being rewarded with a sweet (although many of them got the oranges and various other remnants left in my fridge that had to be disposed of before leaving for such a long time. They were still happy as ripe oranges are a treat here too).
I been trying to hitch a flight to Maun to begin the journey to the Peace Corps In Service Training that I had to make the seemingly endless trip down to Kanye for. I checked the houseboats company who subcontract with the bush pilots out of Maun during the brownie tour of Seronga and ended up being in luck. There was an empty game flight going back to Maun that afternoon. I rushed home to get prepared to close up the house and get down to Maun. I checked the mail, cried over my birthday packages and then it was over to the “airstrip”. I got there early enough that I had time to sit with my buddy the air traffic controller (whose name means “judgment” in English and really just spends his time writing down the numbers and getting signatures of planes that land.) The plane landed to pick up the tourists and the pilot jumped out.
The accent hit me first. British. Scruffy dirty, and giving off the distinct impression of being hung over. He greeted the tourists who were going to take the game flight and I introduced myself. He was exactly the type of bad boy that I'd been known to fall for in a former life. As he walked to the end of the tarmac and turned his back to the crowd to pee, (in and of itself not extremely odd behavior in a land where toilets and pit stops are few, and the overpowering smell in the heat of the porta potties you do find is enough to make even those with the worst sense of smell cringe.) I realized I was potentially in big trouble. The beautiful thing about getting older is that I am sometimes wise enough to more clearly see the trouble that has always been completely visible to everyone but myself from a mile away. The other beautiful part about being older is that although I know better, I can still claim to be too young to care. And so although there was clear and present danger ahead, I tossed my head (now such a less effective move without hair) and walked right into it.... or rather climbed into it. As in the cockpit of the plane with this British devil. Happy Birthday to me. We chatted for a minute, (or spoke as much as two people can over the roar of a small engine taking off on a tennis court covered runway) and he told me his name (his name for these purposes will be "Bruise", for reasons to be revealed in a later blog entry.) and I immediately recoiled. It turns out V had been speaking of this very pilot earlier in the weekend, and as the saying goes, chicks before... well in the interest of not being completely vulgar online (hi grandma!) I'll let you fill in the blanks there the hint is that it rhymes. I immediately discretely (again as discretely as one can be being so close to the person next to you that you're constantly bumping each other... or was that an accident.. never mind) text v asking her if she was sure she wanted dibs (all the while thinking perhaps there might be a cultural confusion with the concept of dibs or at least a technological problem with v being out in the bush. No such luck). After my party this weekend I was increasingly coming to appreciate v as a friend, and in the interest of not losing her, (in a land of HIV gone wild and not a huge amount of reliable dating prospects, there are even less cool girls you can trust, the women of my village have a tendency to scoff at my attempts to "blend" as they seem to think I'm after their men. and let's be honest their men are proposing to me daily. I'd be pissed at me, too) so I toned down the flirtatious "Jen of the party" vibe and as is sometimes typical of men Bruise didn't seem to be able to read my thoughts and didn't realize he no longer had a chance.
The banter continued and eventually because I love my birthday I mentioned this fact to Bruise, also asking him where the party was in Maun that night. He speculated that because it was my birthday perhaps I'd like to fly the plane. Well hell yes I want to fly the plane if for no other reason than to brag about it on my blog! With that innocent question Bruise set off a month of "yes" the likes of which are seldom seen in the Jen in America which seems to come completely naturally to the Jen in Botswana.
So after a bit more mild flirting and plane flying we landed in Maun, a glorious 45 minutes after taking off on a drive that takes between 10 and God knows how many hours. I went immediately across the street from the airport to Bon Arrive' a little restaurant coffee shop and really bar that is the place where the who's who of Maun hangs out because it's the first thing that you see when you come out of the airport. So it's the quintessential place to scope and be scoped; a combination of the people who basically run the town, the flyboys, the tourists, and those who want to be seen with (or become acquainted with, I've found that when you're poor and in the Peace Corps it helps to have friends with connections) one or all of the above. Eventually P arrives and we get to having a few drinks and talking, and I'm running my mouth about my latest and greatest ideas about fish in Seronga, and soon enough we've made friends with a good number of pilots and such. As we get home the international birthday well wishes ensue, and by the end of the night I was drifting off to a happy 27 year old sleep. The festivities of course continued for the next week at least, with birthday packages and cards waiting for me when I got back to site a few weeks later. I have to say that all in all, my first African birthday was a smashing success.