JOYEUX ANNIVERSAIRE!

And it was indeed joyeux! I have never celebrated my birthday in such style! I feel I need to take you through it from beginning to end...which means really that I start at 3am when I first woke up!! Or perhaps it would be even more appropriate to start at 11.58pm the night before when I was almost too excited to be asleep before the two minutes past midnight that I was born (of vital importance because if it got to 12.02 I would never have slept at all). I kept telling Pam to calm down and go to sleep - she was thoroughly over-excited and bouncing around the bed like a lunatic. She had stayed over so that she could be part of the excitement in the morning, but I almost had to knock her out to get her to go to sleep!

Whilst all this frivolity was going on, poor old Tracy was hiding quietly in her bedroom waiting for us to go to sleep so that she could decorate the house with banners and balloons that she had brought all the way from Tescos!! I really don’t know how she did it because we did not hear a thing! She even managed to get into my bedroom and put up balloons without me waking up – I could not believe it! I didn’t even notice the balloons when I went to the toilet at 3am, and thankfully I managed to get back to sleep again, for a couple of hours at least.

The first thing I did when I woke up (after Pam had sung ‘Happy Birthday’) was to open the birthday card that Hannah had given me before Christmas, carefully saved for six months! Then Tracy came and ate chocolate orange in bed with us – also carefully saved from Christmas!! At 7am Rachael arrived and made us all birthday omelettes while David Cassidy started ‘knocking at my brain’! (I’ve been warned that further mention of David Cassidy on this blog may well damage my reputation beyond repair…but you know, he was part of the birthday fun – what can I say?) We even waltzed around the living room to track 3 before the electricity went off! You’ll be glad to know it came back on in time for omelettes to be cooked before Tracy had to be at school.

Before I had even had time to get dressed there was a knocking at the gate, and (no the elephant had not returned!) Nathan and various sisters turned up to wish me a happy birthday (in my pyjamas) on their way to school! Then we went to school, arriving to a chorus of Happy Birthday from Flora and another matron, but we did what we needed to and went back to T House for lunch after Tracy’s lesson. We hadn’t planned to be at Sonrise at all, but it turned out to be a good thing that we went because Munyana came and handed me a whole pile of handwritten cards & papers from her and her friends with some lovely birthday messages! It seems to be the Rwandan way of wishing someone a happy birthday to say “May you grow to be toothless and to blow a hundred candles with your grandchildren”! Even Justus poked his head around the door and shyly wished me a Happy Birthday before disappearing…I was in the middle of parking the car so I couldn’t get out to talk to him! I was allowed to do all the driving that morning because it was my birthday and I love it!
This is my new birthday outfit from Tracy - we kept seeing this fantastic pink material with yellow fish on it in the market and she kept saying it was a bit bright really and that maybe I could buy it for a table cloth when we left...but then got it made up for me for my birthday! I love it...and there is enough material left to decorate my house with as well!

After lunch at T house we all piled into Sue’s car to drive to Kigali where we spent what seemed like an incredible amount of time searching for ‘gravy granules’…though I later discovered they were the kind of ‘gravy granules’ which have icing on the top, candles stuck in them and taste remarkably sweet!

We went and checked in at the Guest House in Kigali and had a rest (and a quick swig of martini…sorry classy aperitif…) before we got ready to go out for dinner. We were planning to go to a Chinese Restaurant which came highly recommended, but on arriving there we discovered that Wednesday was the only day it was shut…so we had a quick change of plan and ended up at Kazana Indian restaurant. Justin came (a Muzungu from the US who Pam has known a long time) as well as Eben, Peace (Nathan’s brother and sister who are local to Kigali) and Nathan. The Rwandan contingency turned up after round one of the food but I was really glad they came. Nathan and Peace are in the picture together, and Eben in the other one.

The highlight of the evening was the lights going off (which I thought was a power cut) and then about ten waiters coming in dancing and clapping and singing ‘Happy Birthday’ in English, French AND Swahili, presenting me with a cake (the ‘gravy granules’ in fact) and a silly hat and then disappearing off into the darkness again! It really was an experience to remember – one of the waiters was even dressed as Father Christmas – I was totally blown away by the whole thing!

Wow…I’ve just seen a jackdaw catch a grasshopper mid-flight in my back garden (more about grasshoppers later…)

So, we spent the night in the Guest House and then Sue departed to spend the day in Kigali and we got on the Virunga back to Musanze. Tracy had swapped a lesson so that she didn’t have to be at school until the afternoon which was perfect…until Pam was told she had a meeting with the Bishop which meant we had to get an early bus after all!

However, to conclude – I had an absolutely fantastic birthday…and that was just the 16th May…there is more to come!