July 1: My 21st Birthday!

I turned 21 today—can finally do all of the things an American adult can do except rent a car!

It’s been an exciting few hours, so I’ll recount the festivities before all of the rest of the other experiences I’ve gathered since Friday.

My mom called me a few days ago to tell me that she had a present being delivered to me this morning and that I needed to be prepared to accept it. She has been threatening to buy me a chador for many years so boys can’t look at me, a plan I don’t approve of. After the harassment we got at the market last weekend, she said she’d finally bought me a dark purple one and had it sent to me here. I wasn’t very happy about having something extra to pack that I wouldn’t wear regardless of the colour, but I still woke up somewhat early to wait for it. We left at around 11:30 am to go to Phiphidi Falls for the day, still no delivery.

The falls were absolutely amazing. We spent several hours climbing the rocks up and down the river, feeling like goats. I rested for twenty or thirty minutes in the crook of a massive tree branch that was stretched over the river and got a bunch of moss down the back of my shirt, but the peacefulness was well worth the itching afterwards. While driving back, we passed these extensive tea plantations. I’m not sure what kind of plants they were, but they were the greenest fields in the entire area and stretched as far across the mountains as we could see.

When we got back I’d expected the receptionist to tell me I missed the delivery guy, but she didn’t. My roommate came back to our cabin a few minute after me to say that there was, in fact, a message at the front desk for me and coerced me into the conference room where all of the other UVA students and several other people were waiting to surprise me.

Somehow, from the complete opposite side of the world, my mom arranged this party for me with the help of a lady who caters parties in Thohoyandou. There was the most elaborate birthday cake, shaped like a 21 and covered in purple frosting flowers that must have taken hours each to make, an array of homemade Indian food, an arrangement of purple flowers (and one orange one for Stefan), and a card that my mom’s friend signed “With lots of love, Mum.”

While we ate, the elaborate story of how my mom had gotten help from a lady named Pam, who had contacted my roommate, who had gotten the help of the other students, who were apprised of the plans by the UVA faculty member who left last week and were able to keep the plans from me for a very long time, came out. I’m very impressed that my mom was able to do all of this and tell me she was doing something completely different so convincingly that I was grumpy about her “delivery” for a night or two.

It was definitely the best birthday I’ve ever had. The only thing that would have made it better is if she were here to enjoy Africa too and if someone had brought me toboulleh.

All of this was only the end of a pretty eventful weekend.

On Friday we went out to the villages briefly. I’d calculated z-scores for all of the children in my study from birth through six months, which gives standard deviations in the weight-for-age, length-for-age, and weight-for-length categories based on a reference population established by WHO. Scoring above certain numbers of deviations indicates that the child isn’t growing correctly. I found some children who scored very high numbers and we visited two of them. The first was a five-month-old girl who is fed formula and is raised by her grandmother since her mom is still in school. She had a little cold, so the field workers measured her respiratory rate while I watched an adorable little boy play with a teddy bear, walk around in adult shoes, and try to bounce a ball that doesn’t bounce. The girl was quite a bit fatter than would be expected of a child that age, which the z-score reflected. The most probable explanation is the formula, which causes children to get bigger faster than their breast-fed counterparts, and being fed too much of it. The second child we visited was a seven-month-old boy. He was a lot smaller than the girl despite being two months older, but was long for his age, which joined some undernourishment as the reason he was scoring so high.

It’s helpful for visualization of the calculations I’m doing to see what body types the numbers correspond to. Since I’m not collecting the data and don’t get to go with the collectors most of the time they’re in the field, it would be too easy to forget that I’m looking at the information collected from actual children and mothers who are living within several kilometers of where I’m analyzing the data. But the hundreds of numbers on my screen characterize real children who are in danger of getting sick or being stunted if their caregivers don’t know what’s best. I was somewhat upset that I had to modify my project so much to fit the data I could get, but it’s actually a good thing that not many of the children in the study have parasitic infections and aren’t drinking unfiltered water from rivers or living in huts with dirt floors.

On Friday night the other students here invited the Univen students who are working with them to Acacia for a taco dinner. None of the South African students have had tacos before, so they had to be taught how. Someone brought tortillas from the U.S. that we used. I talked to one of the girls for a while after she came up to me and said “You’re really quiet, aren’t you?” She was right that I don’t talk much, and she was also right that I spend the time I could be talking watching and listening to what’s going on, gathering and storing information. We had a good talk about writing poetry and zoology (she wants to do marine biology research and I finally got to talk about snapping turtles) and then she asked me if I’m content with myself. I haven’t gotten used to the forward nature of many of the people here and am regularly caught off guard by questions from strangers that even my closest friends wouldn’t randomly ask me. We ended the night with a few rounds of the card game capitalism, which I haven’t played since high school, but still won all rounds but the last one where I got second. Definitely my favourite game.

On Saturday we went to a fabric shop nearby which was in the middle of a huge market. My roommate and I walked around a huge portion of it and were largely not bothered by anybody except one guy who yelled “makuah!” to get my attention to make me move out of the way of his wheelbarrow. Many of the stalls had the same things: cell phone covers, traditional necklaces, belts, wallets, onions, school uniforms, and socks. I was hoping for more unique handmade things. We passed a number of stalls that had bowls filled to overflowing with crispy caterpillars called Mopani worms. They’re a common food around here and are collected from Mopani trees around here and then cooked. One lady saw me take a picture of some and started filling a bag of them for me, but I walked away. I should have said “a ti li nama,” which means “I don’t eat meat” in Tshivenda.

After the market, we set out to see the Big Tree, the largest baobab tree around. It was supposed to take 1.5 hours, but we get lost on a set of roads that were basically just rock fields covered in cows, goats, and mules (no tortoises, though I don’t think I could have told one from all the rocks through the dust). Instead it took us closer to three hours to find it after getting lost in a remote village and having to ask for directions and back-track an hour, by which point I was ready to just look at any old baobab and call it a day. We climbed up the tree at first and then were invited down by a man to hear about the tree. He told us that it was 3,502 years old and gave a number of other numerical facts that were more than likely made up on the spot. After telling us seemingly outrageous facts about the tree, he invited us to walk around with him so he could point out the “imaginings.” Basically, he pointed at various knots and branches in the tree and told us what he thought they looked like. Most of them happened to be sex organs belonging to various age groups and animals and I found it very hard not to just bust out laughing at the manner in which he presented them all to us. The man seemed to be an employee of the site, but definitely didn’t have legitimate information to give us.

We bought baobab fruit from a couple of very dusty and barefoot girls who were banging on the car window outside the gate and had to pass a number of other similarly dirty children who were holding out their hands for money. Three of them actually ran at the car while we were driving and we were so afraid we would run over them since they ran with the car and banged on the windows. The trip back took us less than 1.5 hours on paved roads.

The water filter team has made the acquaintance of a man who works in a hardware store in town. He came for dinner on Saturday night and brought ten chickens that he’d skinned and marinated for a braai. Besides those, a girl who used to work with WHIL and lives in town came and made wonderful green beans and butternut squash and someone found veggie burgers somewhere and peri-peri sauce (mild makes my nose run, but it’s soooo good. I’m bringing back several jars and will put it on everything.). The girl painted my fingernails really hot pink to raise some money for pharmacy school. Not a colour that suits me, but she did a good job and has guaranteed it won’t chip for a few weeks.

Update on my sickness: I realized after the first night that I wasn’t actually sick, but was suffering from an allergy of some sort. I think the culprit is in the office since it hit me worst of all in there. I can feel mucus draining into the back of my throat, which has made it itch all day. There have also been mosquitos around today which means the threat of malaria just went up a lot. I’ve missed a day of the malarone every week, which isn’t good, but it will also treat malaria if I happen to get that.

Since I didn’t know there was going to be a party today, I didn’t take my camera. I’ll try to get some photos from someone who did so everyone can see what a beautiful cake it was and how much work was put into the preparations.

**I just found out that a huge storm knocked out the power/phone to a lot of Virginia, including my mom. Now we all have the same amount of communication ability that I have every day!