Birthdays: Kenya Style

Every few weeks, one of the children has a birthday and we celebrate
at school. The parent or parents usually come at break time with a
cake, biscuits, and juice for the kids. Biscuits are what they call
cookies and you'll remember that these are pronounced bis-qweets and
ju-eece (rhymes with Greece).

We sing happy birthday in the standard way but then there comes a
tradition of feeding each other cake. First, the child is fed a piece
by the parent. Then, each parent is fed by the child, then the
teacher's, and finally the child's best friend.




Here I am being fed cake by Abednego (in one of my kanga dresses):



I have not gotten a clear answer as to the reason for this tradition
but I've now seen it happen at about 10 birthday so it's definitely
very common. The other tradition is painting the child's face with
icing:




The cake also demonstrates a very interesting Kenyan principle that
nothing is ever wasted and everyone gets their share apportioned to
their status.

The kids are served very small pieces, perhaps one or two inches
square at most. These are cut and handed to them since paper plates
are an unecessary expense. The parents and teachers are given larger
pieces about 2.5-3 inches square. Kenyans don't like sugar as much as
Americans (especially me), so I ususally find these cakes to be really
dry except for the top part with a lot of icing. On the other hand,
the other teachers typically remove the icing because it's too sweet
and eat the dry cake part underneath. This serving strategy usually
leaves about half of the cake since the kids are not given very much
at all. We slice up a little bit for the gateman and maybe some of
the maintenance works but there is still a lot left over. This cake
is carved into 4 very large pieces and each teacher (including me) is
given a portion to take home wrapped in napkins.

I don't like Kenyan cake and I really don't need to be eating so much
of it so I usually give Mary my portion. Since she doesn't have a
fridge, she eats both portions in one night or shares it with her
neighbors. This is why Kenyans typically eat one thing at a time
because otherwise something might spoil.

It seems so strange to us that you'd give the children (including the
bithday child!) such a small share of cake and then let the teachers
take home so much. In an American setting, the cake would be
completely consumed or the extra would be left in the teacher's break
room and eaten but no one would take home a share.

Food is still seen as a status symbol in Kenya and because of food
insecurity, food is always carried back to family whenever possible.
Thus, as teachers, we have a right to take more cake than anyone else
and take it home to our families.

My friend Linda (up in Nairobi) tells the story of a time that she
hired someone to cook a meal for 200 people at a vacation bible
school. The mama hired to cook took 1/3 of the food home as "her
portion" before Linda told her to bring it back. The woman felt that
as the cook for a child's event, she would entitled to a significant
amount of food despite the fact that Linda had paid her. Linda was
not invited back to this church because she had so deeply offended the
mama who was related to the pastor.

It seems odd to us as Americans to aportion food based on status but
it is deeply ingrained in the culture here. This also probably
relates back to the tradition of feeding birthday cake to each other.
It is a public way for the child to show respect to his parents and
elders to feed them. I still don't get the smearing birthday cake on
the kid but I'll report back if I figure that one out!