Happy Ya Ya Day

KK turns three!

A dubious looking KK

And Fortune and Ralf and Aunt Rachel brought KK, cake, balloons, and bubbles down to my office on Saturday. It seems an odd place to celebrate a birthday, but KK didn't seem to care and my office is air conditioned. After cake we went to the faculty club for drinks and the ubiquitous kabob.

KK starts to warm up

The whole family lives up in the hills north of Legon, about a 45 minute drive. Fortune is taking a class in Legon — a university preparatory class for mature students — so she and Ralf were driving down anyway. It was sweet of them to decide to include me in the festivities. KK and I have just recently become friends, but she seems to genuinely like Dr. Carl (as I'm known).

KK warmed up

KK looks like she wasn't excited about sitting on dad's shoulders with a bunch of balloons, but once the cake came out of the box she started to get the hang of what birthdays are really all about. She was at a birthday a few months ago and had fun. Afterward she announced she liked the happy ya ya and the title has stuck.

I can't decide if the main event for a three year old is blowing out the candles or eating the cake.

What am I saying; of course it's eating the cake.

And what a cake. A spongy white centre covered with thick gobs of sugar, dyed and sculpted into swirls of red, yellow, and white florets, ribbons, and letters. After two big fat pieces I was slipping into an edible oil coma, but KK was just warming up.

The sugar kicks in

Now KK is really ready to party, and dad brings out the bubbles. Even Fortune had never seen these before. But at the mall before the party Ralf recognized the bottle of Chinese made bubbles and wand. I jumped around a bit less than KK, but the attraction to bubbles does seem to be universal and ageless.

Later, while Fortune was at class we sat around in the shade at the Loggia. Each of the Halls on campus has a faculty club, or a facility for senior members, as they say here. Every senior member is supposed to be appointed to one of the facilities, but Ralf said he has never been officially appointed, I probably won't be either, and that after five years of research he has settled on the Loggia, as the facility at Mensah-Sarbah Hall is called. 

We all arrived at the Loggia, with Fortune taking her leave for a few hours. Before she left beer and soft drinks were ordered and this being a special day, not just kabob but a whole guinea fowl. Every club has a barbeque and every Ghanaian seems to like what I call international meat on a stick. The meat up for offer is usually chicken, beef, goat, sausages, and whole guinea fowl. The guinea fowl is a little more showy, and not as good a deal as the boneless meat on a stick. All are served with raw onion and (the only part I've tried) a great, dry dip of ground peanut and chili.

Ralf has promised me that his dogs will teach my dog to hunt guinea fowl.