It was not the only birthday I had spent overseas, just the worst one. I had very much not wanted to go on that trip. The preparation was nerve-wracking, the trip itself was miserable, and its purpose lying on the other end was miserable. Plus it was really hot and everyone spoke French.

I was living in Kigali, Rwanda working for a global health non-profit headquartered in Boston. I had recently accomplished the elusive mid-career change from the technology industry to non-profit. I had wanted to get out of a workplace driven by quarterly earnings and stock prices and instead help some people who needed it. Instead, I found an arrogant, neo-colonial business run by charading do-gooders who abhorred the word “business”. A place where white doctors and ascended African doctors stayed only in the nicest hotels, lived with servants behind barbed-wire-topped fences, and had drivers take them from home to office to expat restaurant in air-conditioned SUVs. On top of the irony of all of it, the irony that I continued working in this rank soup also was not lost on me.

When the job in Kigali came up, I jumped on at a chance to transfer out of headquarters. It got me away from the worst people. In general our employees in the field were much nicer and doing some good work. Most of our employees in Kigali, including some of the management, were Rwandan.

They put me in a furnished apartment that was nice enough and I walked to work every day. My job was onsite at a Rwandan government agency, working with the staff in the Human Resources office, helping them with contracts and computer systems, writing policies and organizing meetings.

Without sound rationale, my boss in Boston continued across cultures and time zones to press me for service. I often did extra tasks for Lenny in the evenings after a full day in the office.

One day, Lenny had an unusual demand. He had decided to fire someone in Africa and thought it was a good idea for me to go there to do it. In person. For him.

The gentleman in question lived in Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso. Getting there required more than two days of air travel over three hops covering more than 3500 miles, followed by a five-hour bus ride. I remained convinced it was not the best solution. Try as I might, I was unable to persuade Lenny that this might be better done by phone. Or by him. Or his deputy. They could fly there in less time from the United States. Flying within Africa improves greatly with each decade, but still it is not easy. I lost the argument.

Preparation for the trip required that I send my passport by express mail from Kigali to the Burkinabe embassy in Washington, DC to get an entry visa stamped in my passport. U.S. citizens cannot get a visa upon arrival at the airport, and of course there was no Burkinabe embassy in Rwanda, or anywhere near it.

For days, I lived as an American in Rwanda without a passport while it crossed the Atlantic Ocean. It was a strange feeling. I drifted from meeting to meeting almost constantly aware that I could not get out of the country, though the airport was a mere twenty-minute drive away.

I do not remember the reason for Lenny’s urgency, but my flight was mere days after I express mailed my completed forms and passport to D.C. We calculated that DHL and the embassy both needed to be at their maximum efficiency, with maybe two days to spare, to turn it around successfully.

The day before my flight, my passport, which was to be returned by express mail, was not back in my hands. I had been nervous and losing sleep all week. That morning, rather than my usual office at the Rwandan government, I went into my own company’s Kigali office. Everybody there spoke English, had functioning office equipment, and knew how to “work the system.”

DHL had not arrived. Job, the office manager, called them. The truck was out around town. The DHL office closed at 2pm. My flight was the next morning. Job knew I was nervous for days. We hopped in his truck and he sped around town, trying to track the DHL truck.

About an hour in, I said, “I think I am going to throw up.”

“Do Americans always have that problem?” he asked.

We laughed and laughed and cried until I thought I really would throw up.

At 1:30pm, we finally found the truck parked at an outdoor market, missing its driver. I ran around the market, darting around vendors and shoppers, looking for the driver. Then I saw a man in black shorts and a purple polo. I had my passport back in my hands.

The flight to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia departed the next morning, and I was on it, with my visa to enter Burkina Faso. I waited in the Addis Ababa airport for the next leg of my flight.

We flew to Accra, Ghana and sat on the runway there. We sat for hours. The climate control system was not working and it grew hotter and hotter in the high tech tin can on the tar runway. Africans of various nations got up from their seats and complained about the heat and lack of ventilation.

“Please take your seat, sir,” they were told time and again.

They complained out loud from their seats. I feared things could escalate.

We finally took off, headed for Ougadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso. Upon arriving at the airport, I had no driver to meet me per usual, because my company had no office there. I negotiated with a taxi driver with my ten words of French.

As we rode to the hotel, he chatted away in French. He was a friendly guy., which I would find throughout the city. I had found the Rwandan culture to be more reserved.

I managed to say that demain was my anniversaire. The driver gasped in surprise and smiled broadly, wishing me well. It was sweet. He knew I was far from home. I was a stranger to him.

He left me at my hotel where English continued to be of no use. While I was checking in at the reception desk, a co-worker pinged me on Skype to check on me. She was the only one to ask me how I was.

Ouagadougou hotel review: not terrible, but no A/C and it was a thousand degrees. Internet service spotty and only in the lobby. Mosquito net over the bed waiting to be unwound. En-suite bathroom on the other side of the cabinets.

The next day was my 43^rd birthday, I took a taxi to the bus station and boarded an air-conditioned bus.

The Ouagadougou bus station (not my bus)

The ride was five hours to Bobo Dioulasso and I spent it listening to the English chatter of religious missionaries surrounding me. I longed for a return to French.

I checked into my hotel in Bobo Dioulasso, connected to the internet in my room, and called the gentleman I was to fire.

“I’m here in the city,” I said, “across the street in the hotel where I’m staying.” He seemed only mildly surprised, as though visitors had come through Bobo randomly before.

“Can you give me til 11 or so?” He said he would come over and we could have lunch here. I was getting sicker by the minute.

At a plastic table in a sun-baked cement courtyard over spiced cabbage and white rice he helped me order (je suis végétarienne), I told him he was fired. There I was, glowing white and sunburned in my wide boubou and he was a perfect gentleman. He wished me a happy birthday and paid for my lunch. I didn’t think I would keep it down that evening.

The next day, I boarded the bus to return to Ouagadougou and continue my journey back to Kigali. Why again was I there? There was no charm to the city and I did not want to walk around the hot streets in the open sun.

In Ouagadougou, I treated myself to dinner at the hotel restaurant, which was outside in a cordoned off section of the parking lot. I was told it was one of the best in town. There were tents set up on posts, the kind you would find at an outdoor wedding, strings of white lights in the trees, and bushes of birds of paradise in bloom, even in this desert.

After I told the waitress I was a vegetarian, the restaurant managed to prepare me a nice vegetarian meal, even though nothing was listed on the menu. They produced a nice variety of orange and yellow carrots, sweet yams, and rice seasoned with fresh herbs. I also requested the local pounded starch – fufu was the only name I knew it by – as it was always my favorite in West Africa. They served it with a bit of pungent peanut sauce.

A team of three emerged, genuinely smiling and singing in French near enough to the tune of a familiar Happy Birthday. The waitress carried a silver platter and had managed to find two candles, burning brightly. She had the one cook with her and they’d managed to grab the front desk guy too.

The waitress placed the platter down on the white tablecloth and now I could see that it was mousse au chocolat. It was a perfect moment, one I will never forget. They clapped, we clapped, and they sang it again from the top. Then, the front desk guy had to get back, but the other two hovered to see if the dessert pleased me. It totally did. Somebody had produced a delicious chocolate mousse on the edge of the Sahara.

My 43rd birthday