Habby Birday to You...

I'm sitting on my little balcony having breakfast. There's a nice breeze always flowing across this second-floor corner because of the massive mothering mango tree that fills the entire red earth courtyard adjacent. It's filled with little chicks flocking around their mother hen who is scratching in the rubbish piles in the corner; of baby goats hopping around their mother who is tied to a little stake; of huge pots of 'pate' - cornmeal mush - sitting on three terracotta mounds of earth built up from the red earth itself..  The white porridge is bubbling over into the fire centered between the terra-cotta mounds, fed by long stakes of wood that are progressively pushed into the fire. Under the tree, during the day, there's usually a woman with a wooden table and antique sewing machine, surrounded by panels of beautiful colorful chaotic Pagne (African wax prints) that were printed in Holland, China or Ghana. She has a tiny baby tied to her back, head bobbing up and down as she presses her foot to the sewing pedal. In another corner, this morning, there's a mother surrounded by a few bystanding children of several ages.. she's holding the little one in her arms, while a pot of laundry sits nearby soaking.



I sit for breakfast, the balcony concrete rail obscuring my view (and for which I am grateful and don't want to be nosy). And as I start to take my first bite I hear her gentle voice lilting up to me ... "Habby birday to you, habby birday to you, habby birday to you...." she's singing to the little baby in her arms. It took me a second to be sure, because I've only ever heard them banter back and forth in a local (probably Ewe) tongue. But that is a song that is probably the most common song sung across the wide world. No matter what language you speak, this song is an American import to the world. It was the same in Morocco, in Haiti, sung by people who know no other english words, and probably don't understand the actual words they're pronouncing. But celebrating the passing of a year in the life of someone is quite significantly a tradition that we Americans have popularized the world over.

It strikes me every time I'm in a remote corner of the world, far from the conscience of most Americans, that we little realize some of our most universal exports - not goods and products and services - but American music, American movies, and even American holidays - in all their commercialized glory (when affordable).

I recall spending October in Ravenna, Italy in 2014.. on October 31st everyone dressed up and went trick-o-treating. They explained that the American tradition had only become popular in the last couple years. In Denmark, the same - although they have their own version in the spring as well and the two contend for dominance, but so far the Danish version is ahead. I remember Easter eggs hung from skeletal-white painted bare-limbed trees set up in the streets or the few fancy shops in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Or the same, hung with lights and red bows for Christmas in the Caribbean. It was out of place, strange in that hot weather and dusty crowded streets - sometimes I even saw fake snow sprayed around, with santa clauses so out of place and trying so hard to conjure images of a cozy cold snowy christmas - when the temperature hovered between 90 and 100 degrees.

In Morocco, my most vivid memory of the striking contrast in American cultural imports was sitting in a 'taxi' squeezed full of five religious Moroccan men, all in long robes and Haj caps. They had been listening to droning chants of the Qu'ran on the radio throughout the two hour drive. I think it was Ramadan, an especially religious time of the year where sex and drink and all such things were supposed to be abstained from for a month (or at least while the sun was up). Someone switched the radio and suddenly Black Eyed Peas was seducing us with "my hump, my hump, my lovely lady lumps..". No one in the car changed expression or gave any indication that they had any idea what she was singing, or that it stood out in any contrast to the verse of the Qu'ran they had just been listening to. I just sat in the front seat wide-eyed, keeping a lid on my grin, knowing I was the only one in the car who found humor in the situation. And on we drove across the barren moonscape of southern Morocco.

For me, certainly the commercialized aspect of american holiday exports is not something to get excited about. But this particular tradition - taking a moment to recognize a year passed in someone's life, when one realizes as life goes on that each of those years is precious and unretrievable, lived, suffered, savored or wasted - this is a tradition that I can thank our great nation for. Let us celebrate life, life lived and life to come.