Birthday Celebrations
on Paul Sills (The Gambia), 26/Jun/2011 09:18, 34 days ago
This week I celebrated my birthday along with Mary the owner of the school whose birthday was on Friday. Mary as she does every year had arranged for cakes and drinks to be delivered to the school for the children and staff to celebrate with her. We had a short assembly and then everyone sang happy birthday to the both of us we then took some group photos before returning to class. The cake and drinks were distributed around during the first break.Ida& MaryOn the evening we had planned to go out for a meal as my birthday treat however we had a twenty four hour power cut so I had to cook the chicken which had defrosted in the freezer, hence chicken yassa was our evening meal. Then plans were changed for a Saturday meal out when Max phoned late on to say he was hosting a party at his house. As we discussed if we could make it as we were also attending a naming ceremony on the afternoon of one of Paul’s rugby players we suddenly remembered that it was Max’s birthday.On the Saturday afternoon we made our way to Tallinding which is where the naming ceremony is to be held. We walked through the back streets and after twenty minutes Paul phoned Billy to check if his directions were correct. Billy met us to take us the rest of the way first calling at his wife’s compound. There were a number of relatives mainly women and children waiting inside a very dark basic cement floor room. Outside aunties were busy preparing food, one lady was breaking up a huge bucket of cold cooked rice with her hands this is probably what we are going to eat later. Next we called to see his wife she was in his uncles compound who is the local Iman hence there was also a mosque in the compound. His wife had been there for the last six hours getting her face and hair done by her cousin from Senegal. She had styled her hair (or wig) up onto the top of her head very much like we do in the UK for weddings and was busy painting gold lines onto her scalp. Her face was heavily made up with jade green eye shadow. We went and sat outside for a while and were introduced to Billy’s father and uncle. We then had a ten minute walk to Billy’s compound where we were shown into a room and introduced to his mother who is visiting from Senegal for the occasion. Billy was brought up in the Gambia by his fathers second wife who works as a chef at the Kairaba hotel in Senegambia. As we sat a group of girls outside were also busy preparing food some of which was brought in for us to try. Chakary is a sweet yogurt and cous mix which I sometimes buy for Bradley and is very tasty. It was now 5 o’clock and we had hoped to get to Max’s for around 6 o’clock. Suddenly the food Benechin which had been prepared in the other compound arrived. A group of lady’s placed some of the rice on various large platters and then scattered the cooked vegetables with there hands over this and then the ram meat was added on top. We shared a platter with one of Billy’s friends, the meat was very tough and hard to get off the bone hence Bradley decided to chomp on it using his hands. We waited a little longer before managing to make our excuses to leave for Max’s just as another couple of buckets of cooked chicken were brought in to be made up into foil containers to be eaten later on in the evening. We declined the offer of a container of chicken knowing we would also be enjoying some Philipino food later at Max’s.