25 years and going strong

I was a little nervous about the idea of my first birthday far far away from friends and family and Ben & Jerry's. I was just going to have gotten to site, not know anyone, was I going to be sitting in my hut in the dark with a candle on top of a glucose biscuit singing happy birthday to me in a quavering voice? No, silly, Africa is awesome and so are my friends out here.

The night before I biked down the mountain to my neighbor's site where I was greeted with balloons, guacamole and banana chips, some very glittery very fake pink jewelry that I was told I had to wear all day and warm hugs from my nearest neighbors Ashley, Amy and Reid. We went out to dinner at one of the local rice bars where it turns out they were out of leaf sauce and only had meat. Did that get me down? No, because Africa is awesome. The waiter said he'd run down to the market to see if he could find some veggie sauce for me and he did. Took one of the restaurant plates and came back with it filled with leafy goodness. That's Guinea!

That night we had (devoured to be more accurate) a delicious yellow cake thanks to my wonderchef of a neighbor Amy. The wonders you can create with flour, margarine, sugar, and a makeshift dutch oven...anyway the next morning (birthday morning) we headed out nice and early for our grand adventure: biking to a waterfall that we knew was somewhere to the north and at least 10 but probably not more than 20 K away and probably didn't have too many really horrible hills and we thought it was going to be bikable all the way but we'll see. Oh, and our friend Andrea who lives to the north was supposed to meet us on the trail but we hadn't been able to get a hold of her on the radio to confirm plans but we'd keep an eye out for her. Sounds a little haphazard, I know, but that's how things work out here. And it sure worked. The bikeride was rough but beautiful, cycling through the African countryside, asking people we passed along the way "Ko honto Chutes de Suma?" and they'd point us down the right path (paths out here are very informal, just wherever people have worn out the grass by walking between villages, so there are always a lot of fork options). People helped us along, laughed and joked with our strange helmeted party--one guy said to Reid "One man? Three women? That's good!" and when I said it wasn't like that he replied "Oh no, I understand, I've been to Europe" and winked. Grrr...all in good fun! We had a minor mishap with Reid and some incorrectly applies front brakes and a flip over the handle bars, but Reid's a trooper and we pushed on. As we're going along I notice a flash on the path ahead--was that, it couldn't be, is it...? Andrea!! Oh yes, she made it, because she is hardcore. After hugs and some rest (she had just biked something like 40K over serious mountains, did I mention that she is hardcore?) we set off through this gorgeous jungle-y area with giant vine covered boulders in the trees, it felt like a Disneyland jungle ride (only the Disneyland jungles didn't have the cows and sheep of the real thing) After a crazy skidding downhill ride we ended up at the perfect place, river tumbling over worn black stone with a jungle-ringed swimming hole. Perfect, I'm telling you. After some play, some lunch, a dive-bomb attack by an electric blue bird and general merriment we went on to check out the main attraction, a giant waterfall shooting down into a canyon with the calls of chimps, real live wild chimps, floating up on the breeze. The canyon walls are sheer but apparently with some luck and a machete you can find a path down to the floor and someday we'll be back to do it.

After a smooth breezy bikeride back (oh it was hard but I'm trying to block out the memory so I have the courage to do it again) we decided back at Amy's that we needed another cake in honor of Andrea and her hardcoreness, and that was one of the most brilliant ideas any of us have ever had...I think it was demolished in about 30 seconds, maybe 35. Yum. Good food is such a great thing, you know? Especially in the company of cool people after a day of really earning it. So anyway that was birthday number 25. Couldn't have asked for much better 3,000 miles from home.