It started with kava the night of their birthdays. Since May 1^st was a holiday here, we drank kava with the Oxford volunteers from both Ranwadi and Melsisi, as well as one of the teachers at Melsisi. It was a party. It was enough of a party, that we sent the plastic back to be filled up three times and we all had a shell at the nakamal first. It was the kind of party that made us all sleep in until 7 am. Believe me, that’s late here.

In the morning, we took chocolate chip pancake mix, blueberry pancake mix and the makings for more pancakes to the Oxford volunteers house. We proceeded to gorge ourselves on whiteman food while recovering from our kava hangovers.

The icing on the cake were the hostess cupcakes my mother sent us. She even sent birthday candles and “writing gel,” that clear frosting stuff that comes in a tube. I wrote on the cupcakes, which were mostly intact, and lit 27 candles for Jason and Alexandra to blow out.