My 26th Birthday

Yup, so I turned 26 in Moshi. A real rager, let me tell you :)

For the first time in a long time, I made a huge deal of my birthday just to make sure I'd have at least one other person to celebrate with. And guess what, the tactic worked!! Jeff and Sumera had everyone over for my birthday, which turned out to be about 15 people. The power even stayed ON the whole night (whole weekend, actually!!!), and Brandi's carrot cake, per my request, was simply scrumptialicious. Yeah, it deserves its own word.

i turned 8!! :)

Then, the adventure began Saturday -- the plan was to do the first hike of Kilimanjaro to Mandara Hut. I had convinced Aaron, Sarah, Andy (the latest addition to our women's health research program here, still a bit jet-lagged!), and David (the peds doc from Baylor) and his family to join me. Excited, we left Moshi... but the fun was only beginning.

First, our car gets stuck in 1st gear and has some serious problems going up hills....

Aaron pushing..

Andy pushing...
the scene we created as mzungus...

This was pretty entertaining, especially as they kept trying to make us reverse -- but between Aaron and Sarah's swahili and Sarah yelling, "forward!," we made it to our destination. Sadly, we first had to fix the car to make sure we could get home!! An hour later, after much gesticulating and miraculous diagnosing skill, turns out it was the master clutch cylinder...

the car is on during all of this!

.... but we made friends in the meantime!! Our guide who was to lead us on the hike had a nalgene from Stanford!! (Apparently, Stanford is 'an expensive school in the U.S.,' but the water bottles are readily available at Moshi flea markets.) Andy made friends with the 2 little kids, one of whom turned out to be a girl. Diane (David's wife) and I made friends with a kid who had a cameleon on a stick.

Andy made some friends :)

Anyway, so then we decided to turn back -- I was a bit bummed, but who could have predicted?! But not before a fight with the drunk guy who claimed he had helped us, when all he'd done is the pollute the air with his bad breath and dirty words!

the guy w/ the cap and red sweater is the drunkard

Some scenery on the way to and from the start of the hike... I failed to catch a picture of the dala with 'swagger' on its back. It was blasting lil' wayne, btw!

note the world trade centre butcher shop above

men push these buckets of water everywhere, at a running pace

My consolation activity was Aaron's Moshi river adventure hike, with Aaron and Andy. Why is it named so?

Yup, this is the bridge of doom.... it's pretty freaking scary!! But we all made it, and thankfully made it back on the bridge of forgiveness :)

We walked all around the KCMC-Moshi area, found the police training academy, who exercised their power over us as a dude with a billy club refused to let us take a shortcut through their grounds. It was a gorgeous day and, don't worry, a good consolation hike.

That night, my actual birthday, we were going to go the Watering Hole for their weekly Saturday night party... but we were all a bit tired and headed for Brandi's, where my surprise awaited me -- a second carrot cake!!! Yeah, that's right, I'm that special -- two birthday cakes!! And we played apples to apples, which I dominated!

So all in all, a pretty tame birthday, but really fun nonetheless because everyone made it special.

And, I did end up hiking the hills of Kili last weekend, on my first ever hash!