Happy Birthday

Every year most of us expect some sort of celebration on our birthday, whether we like to admit it or not. It's part of our culture and it has become a norm.

Tonight we went to a fancy restaurant for Aseena's 20th birthday. She is Ayiko's wife and to be honest, I don't really know her. I'm not even sure that's how to spell her name.

Today Krysten and I went to town to buy her presents, cleaned and decorated the living room, and Krysten got her a cake and made reservations at the restaurant. As we were wrapping Aseena's presents we were grumbling and complaining because we were organizing most of it.

It was frustrating because she is never the friendliest person to us and somehow we had to pull together the party of the century. The party was probably the worst celebration I have ever taken part in. Really.

But things changed quickly when Aseena told us that she hadn't celebrated her birthday since 2000. She spent that birthday with her late mother and a cake that "wasn't as good" as the one sitting before her (a cake that I didn't think was all that great).

As the tears started to come to her eyes all I could think about was how terrible I felt for complaining not even 15 minutes before. Then I thought even further back to all the birthdays that I've thrown and have expected to be thrown in my honour. It's a weird feeling to understand how grateful and ungrateful I am, all at once.

Africa is tough. My heart breaks every day. And as they told us as soon as we got off the plane, "nothing is as you expect it to be."