Another Birthday Cake Story

Every birthday cake has a story, this one is quite something though…

BikerMouse1990

5 min readMar 25, 2020

“Happiness is reality without expectations”

I found a little chameleon on a tree, how special it was to me 😅.

Ah, this past Friday was our birthday. Yes, Zacck and I were born on the same day. My aunt calls us birthday soulmates, ’cause it’s literally like the same year, month, day, everything.

Except he brags that he is 2 hours older 😂.

Yeah, so this was our 4th birthday together. And wow, what a special one! They have all been superbly special, but this year we were in Kenya, as you might already know.

Early this year, while planning my year ahead, I decided I wanted to celebrate my/our 30th in Zanzibar.

And mysteriously the universe brought us so close to this dream it’s not even funny. Like, I really dreamed this, and yes, it was kinda like a pipe-dream. I honestly did not really know how we were gonna be able to realize the dream but I told myself to dream it anyway.

And so as all things go when you believe in them, this dream too became something tangible.

Even though we couldn’t go to Zanzibar (Thanks Corona) — we’ve still come so far as to be much closer to realizing this dream than we were in January 2020.

So yes, my birthday was super special.

One it was my 30th, two it was once again shared with the lovely Superbike_Z and three we can for realz go to Zanzibar soon! Once Corona clears the way that is…

Anyhoos what also made our birthday special was the fact that we had Zacck’s sister Vanessa over. Whereas the previous 3 birthdays we were in South Africa with my family, we always wished and hoped one day Zacck can share his birthday with his family too — we now had that dream realized.

Unfortunately his mother and younger sis could not make it though… due to guess what?

🤿Corona of course.

But oh well, we still had the dream half realized which is close enough considering that happiness is reality without expectations.

Left: Found this one on Instagram. Right: Lucky for us Zacck’s sis Vanessa loves food, and she is a great cook too! She spoiled us with a scrumptious pot of Kenyan Pilau that night.

One of my biggest things with this corona birthday was that I imagined one day we’ll look back and remember this from the distant future and laugh, as one always does at horrible things when they are long gone. And this is reality and reality is real — other than expectations which are things that only spoil the precious moments we can be grateful to experience in this life.

Oh and last but not least at all, all the precious voice notes, video calls, Whatsapp messages, emails, calls, videos from all of you beautiful people — how extremely special and truly spectacular!

My heart is so warm and fortified right now, I know I will have a beautiful year ahead, thanks to all your well wishes and all of the ‘spoiling’ we received. We are definitely ready to face whatever comes our way and still prosper towards the greener side for sure😉.

Some things we could bring with, some things we had to leave behind. Flashing on the left you see the ‘drinks cabinet’ decorated with lego toys we brought from SA (I also reffered to them in the previous post). Right you see Baby cat Neon, and one of my high school paintings (in the back) — both being kept safe and loved by my awesome cousin Janine.

Having precious memories like this to think of is all you need when tough times come knocking and we have each and every one of you to thank for this overflow of love.

Wow how can I forget. The story of all stories…

We ordered a cake, a wheat free (I think it was gluten free too) and sugar free birthday cake!

We could even write something on it! LOL at first it was so funny, I didn’t know what to write. I mean what does one write on the birthday cake you ordered for yourself 😆 ?

Alas I remembered it’s not just mine… of course, I can write something as a surprise to Zacck, yeah!

This was still morning.

The cake guy said it will be delivered at 3pm.

Good.

Comes 3pm we were giving directions as the guy was lost and couldn’t find the house. Alafu, (Swahili filler word meaning ‘and then …’) he found the place at last.

He apologized and said the cake had crumbled and the icing does not look so good anymore. He asked to be excused, so he can go back to the city (an hour away) and bake a whole new cake! He promised he will deliver it the same day still though.

What could we say?

“Nikosawa,” (Swahili for ‘I am all good’).We had some more things to do anyways, so we can wait.

But not just that though, we were actually very impressed with this guy as it’s been quite hard for us to find businesses who are that adamant about good service here. Mostly we’ve had really bad service and quality at places we’ve eaten and ordered things from since we got to Nairobi.

And lo’ and behold, our double layer chocolate cake was delivered at 7:30pm, all in one piece, looking amazing — and delicious!

And so it was.

🎂 Special beyond words.

‘30 With You’ — we really struggled with taking these selfies as you can see.

Stories, I told Zacck, we always have stories (LOL).

And he said something like, “Ah well, isn’t that what makes it so amazing, sharing this adventure, having these stories, memories, for forever.”

Sharing a birthday is more than just sharing a number I can tell you. It’s really hard to explain how significant these memories are.

But I’m sure you can relate in some way or form. We all experience things special to our own lives.

On that note, we’d love to hear a story from your life!

Even if it’s just something that this story reminds you of, perhaps it’s a birthday story, maybe it’s just a ‘nini’ (Swahili for ‘thing’) that happened and you were reminded of right now…