On November 23rd I woke up at 5AM to a decorated house. Charlotte and Elisabeth had snuck in during the night to decorate the house where I sleep with balloons and a fun little birthday game- they folded up a bunch of pieces of paper with suggestions of what people should give me for my birthday and pasted them to the wall. As my neighbors started to come by on their way to work, they were instructed to choose one. The gift suggestions were pretty great- flowers, hugs, dances, tell her how awesome she is, take a photo with her- and I felt pretty loved.
At 5:30 I took off with a couple of my pals to get wood for the stove we were making in order to cook hot chocolate and bunuelos for the entire town. Around the same time my amazing best friend turned cake-baker started whipping up birthday cakes in her cake-mixing bowl (made from a seed that hangs from the tree outside our house). I booted up, put on my ridiculous pink peace glasses, placed all of the flowers given to me in my hair, and threw a large woven basket over my shoulder. As the moon and stars gave way to the sun, we hiked up through the cacautera and down to the river in search of dry branches, passing my favorite view of the community along the way. We had a photo shoot at the river’s edge and walked down the sandbar in the middle of it. We posed with jungle leaves that dwarf a gringa, and on flat smooth slabs of river rock that allow the rapids to break against them, but never budge. We filled our basket with heavy macheted wood in the shape of thin sticks and we put tree trunks over our shoulders to be axed down back at home. The hour of my birth I was wading in a war zone jungle river… this thought crossed my mind. I wonder if my mother would have expected as much the day I was born. I chose river rocks to bring home as a birthday gift to myself.
In the campo, eggs are cracked on the birthday gal’s head. Sometimes. Actually, there were 6 birthdays the same week as mine, and I think I was the only one to get eggs cracked on my head. Four in total. Always a surprise, and always smelly. I showered three times, used nearly an entire bottle of shampoo and still couldn’t get rid of the stench. Most people got a kick out of my plastered, yoked hair. One laughing lady said to me, “Who did that to you?” I listed the names of the culprits. She said, “They haven’t done that to a FOR volunteer before.” “Really?” “Nope. They must really like you.” “Yeah. Clearly.”
By mid-morning the bouquet on the kitchen table had grown considerably and I had received far more hugs than a normal day. I made breakfast from the remaining eggs in the house (a defensive move) and then headed to a friend’s porch to make popsicles. While I had planned to take the day off of work, it just so happened that the Internet connection was out (surprise!) and thus Charlotte and Elisabeth decided to jump on the “why work when it’s Gina’s birthday” train. We went to the swimming hole. We walked further down the canyon than I ever had before and we swam under waterfalls. When it started to rain and the river started to rise, we shimmied back up the rocks and waded along the banks, criss-crossing as necessary to get back home.
It was afternoon and time to get serious about cooking. Cake decoration was in full force, and soon our kitchen was a bunuelo and chocolate factory- cheese grinding and flour kneading, deep oil frying, and wood stove burning. The cakes were decorated pink and blue and when she finished decorating them, she put them on top of my bed so the kids wouldn’t get at them. Not quite a foolproof plan… Sapa got to one cake… and then Sapa was nearly killed by a campesina baker (“10 hours of baking for the cat to lick the frosting!?!”). Thank God the cook has a good sense of humor. We chopped off the cat-eaten corner and then salvaged the rest.
The sun set with a golden hue and I thought I may be in one of the most beautiful places in the world to turn 29.
When the fried food went a wafting into the night sky, my neighbors came by. They wished me well and told me how wonderful I was. (I was never sure if these hugs and well-wishes came from them directly or if they had chosen said paper on the wall, but in the end it didn’t matter.) We ate bunuelos and listened to vallenato. Even though the community is in mourning and there was to be no dancing, they granted me one birthday dance (“she’ll dance alone anyway, so she may as well do it right”). It was vallenato. And amazing. The kids played with balloons and the adults talked and laughed and gorged on bunuelos. Those who stayed late got stuck in the rain and ended up staying really late- later than anyone has ever stayed over. Mostly I think they stayed because the company was good and the party was fun- afterall, the rain never hurt anyone.
I was supposed to get up the day after my birthday to pack and prepare to leave. I was supposed to finish working and say my goodbyes and prepare for the big city downtown. So I did. I packed and cleaned and organized my life into one bag. I finished up work and pulled documents off the computer. I walked through town and said goodbye. I did all of these things right on schedule, but in the end there were so many landslides that I couldn’t go anywhere.
I won a few extra days in the community and because they were unexpected they were oh so fun. Some people in the community are bad at goodbyes (if only they stuck around to see me try and say goodbye they would feel better about themselves) and so they left at 4 in the morning for the fields so that they wouldn’t have to say anything or see me go. I sure did love the looks on their faces when they saw me at lunch time: “What are you doing here?” “I simply couldn’t go with out saying goodbye…”
In my “extra” days in the community, I ran around laughing like a crazy gringa. I cartwheeled and wheelbarrowed and skipped from rock to rock through town. I walked jungle paths and crossed jungle streams. I bathed in jungle waterfalls and jumped in jungle pools. I pulled with all my might to get yucca out of the earth and lifted with all my might to carry a tree on my shoulder. I celebrated a friend’s birthday by eating masamora and I listened to my neighbors whistle. I listened to them rhythmically work their land, swinging a machete without a break for hours on end. I danced in the kiosks overlooking town and played with my favorite campo kids. I tanned next to drying cacao seeds on my friend’s roof and I disappeared behind huge green jungle leaves to protect myself from the Caribbean sun. I talked to a friend of mine in Bogota from atop a jungle mountain. I saw a poisonous snake, and then another and then another. I walked in the rain without changing my pace. I appreciated everything from the symmetry of the palm tree to papaya juice with a squeeze of lime.
I cried saying goodbye to the people I truly love and respect in La Union. Some of them cried too. One said, “It is better to laugh than cry.” So we did. And another said, “This is not a sad goodbye. You will come back. A sad goodbye is when your son leaves to fight in the jungle. That is a sad goodbye. That is a forever goodbye.” Knowing she was talking from experience, I wiped my eyes. Knowing I was crying from experience, she started to laugh.
My last sunrise in the community was clouded over. I took off across the plain and headed down the hill with my two best pals. We talked on the walk down- commenting on the path and the jungle and the memories we have of the places and people we passed. They accompanied me all the way to the city and I held their hands crossing the road and stopped them ahead of cars, just like they’d held my hand crossing rivers and stopped me ahead of prickly jungle thorn bushes. And over juice we talked about this. And we talked of other things good and honest and funny. And we talked about how lucky we are to be such good friends.
Then I got in a cab and I went to the airport and I waited in the waiting room for the plane. I waited with mud from the jeep still on my shoes and prickly jungle thorns from my hike still on my backpack. I looked out the window at the palm trees in the Caribbean sun and the mountains in the distance where my neighbors were just coming down from the fields for lunch. And then I boarded a plane for the capital.
