my un-birthday.

In the American culture, birthdays are a special day, a time when friends and family come together to celebrate someone’s life and enjoy an excuse to eat cake. In Madagascar, a birthday means pretty much nothing, at least not in villages like mine. One of my friends at site explained to me that in the ambanivolo (countryside) of Madagascar, most people don’t have extra money for parties and gifts, so birthdays are rarely celebrated. In fact, many people don’t even know when their birthdays are. As such, I tried not to feel entitled to anything particularly special happening on my birthday this year, but something truly extraordinary happened… extraordinarily ridiculous, that is.

It started off all right. Having spent the night before partying in Diego, I needed to catch the taxi-brousse back to my village. Unfortunately, I was dreadfully hungover and dehydrated. 90-degree heat. No Tylenol. Bad idea. I’d been waiting about two or three hours in the hot sun when the driver finally showed up (half-drunk as usual) and announced that the brousse was broken. He was still going back to the village in his personal vehicle, but there was no room for me and my bike, he said. I begged, in my best broken Malagasy, “Please, it’s my birthday,” (which means nothing), “can you please take me today? My friends are waiting to have a party with me!” I’d even bought a couple of expensive slices of quickly melting cake to share with my friends; everyone should learn about the funny birthday tradition of candles on top of cake. The driver reluctantly agreed to take my bike and me too.

After some major confusion on my part, based on the fact that I still don’t speak Malagasy very well, I was somehow informed that there was also a problem that day with the police in Diego, and as such, they were charging brousses extra for carrying cargo out of town. This meant that I was going to have to carry my bike on some other sort of public transportation to the next town south of Diego if I wanted to meet up with the car that was going back to my village. (I’m sorry if this is confusing you, for it surely confused me!)

In the meantime, both my mom and dad were trying to call me to wish me a happy birthday. I was crammed in over-crowded bus, standing room only, sweating profusely, head pounding, wondering if it could possibly get any worse. And oh, did it.

After about an hour of awkward neck wrenching to keep my head from banging against the roof of the bus, I arrived at my stop. I met up with the car going back to Ambolobozokely and in no time at all, we hit the open road with my bike strapped to the back of the car with rope. I watched a gorgeous sunset over rice fields and figured we’d be arriving in my village just in time for my big birthday party. Everything was going so smoothly that I was giddy: this kind of luck never happens, I thought to myself! Turns out, when something’s too good to be true, it usually is, at least in Madagascar. The driver was driving recklessly fast trying to make it to back early; not easy to do since the last 17 kilometers are rutted, gullied dirt road. Finally, we were close to home. It may be hard to fully appreciate what this means, but by the time you arrive in the last village closest to mine, it feels as though you have just accomplished some great miraculous feat.

However, as soon as we made our last stop, mere miles from Ambolobozokely, I knew something wasn’t right. Everyone was arguing, though I couldn’t be quite sure what about. Suddenly, we were speeding back down the road in the direction we’d just come from. I tried to ask the now-very-drunk-driver (he stops in several villages along the way to drink rum) if I could please just get out and bike home. Even though the sun had already set, I knew I could make my way easily by moonlight in no time. He grumbled incoherently and sped up, saying somewhere on the road he had lost someone’s bag off the roof of his car. Why he felt inclined to take me along for the ride, I’ll never know.

I was pissed, and made it known with all sorts of lewd comments -in English- because I was tired of trying to express myself in Malagasy, and anyway, I didn’t really want him to know everything I felt like saying. The driver, laughing, told another passenger, “Vanessa only speaks English when she is really upset!” How astute.

At this point, I felt depressed. It’d been over four hours since we left Diego, a distance of only 30 miles, and I just wanted to go home. I tried to think of all sorts of positive things to derive from this experience. Look at the stars, I told myself. Learn how you deal with disappointment, I considered. Finally, I settled on my go-to thought during times of struggle: hey, someday this will make a good story.

But then the headlights didn’t work, and the driver was driving like a maniac, and I started to fear for my life.

Then we crashed into a big rock in the middle of the road.

Then he tied a flashlight to the front bumper with rope.

Then we waited in some other village for a half hour while everyone argued about the lost bag.

By the time we finally arrived in A-kely, bag still missing, it was about 9:30 at night and the whole village was fast asleep. I lugged my stuff back to my hut and wept like a child, feeling completely, pathetically sorry for myself. My birthday cake was a crushed, gooey mess in its plastic box. I took a picture to commemorate the sorry event.

What could I do in that moment to create joy out of the discontentment in my heart? After a bucket bath in my leaf-lined showerhouse, I took a quick walk along a sandy path to the beach. There I sat gazing out at the Indian Ocean, listening to the lapping waves. A million stars and the entire Milky Way splayed out before me like an ancient fireworks display. I thought of all the people I love in my life, and how fortunate I am to live in this beautiful country, as wearisome as it is sometimes. I made a wish on all the candles in the sky.

My 32nd birthday might not have been the most fun I’ve ever had in my life, but the wave of peace that washed over me in those quiet moments under my own private night sky will stay with me for years to come. And maybe, just maybe, next year’s birthday will be better.