Cape Town: "I kissed a man for Nutella cake"

As most of you know by now from Facebook, my birthday was on Monday. I'm 21! Now I can drink in the U.S. Is there anything else I can do now? If so, I can't think of it.

Rewind to Sunday though. That day, I had to shadow another reporter while he went out to check on a body of water that is used for fishing and suddenly is polluted. There were dead fish everywhere and the whole place smelled like sewage. Something is taking the oxygen out of that water, because the fish were struggling to breathe. There are also eels in that water--little snake-like things. It was sad to see all the dead fish and to see people from the neighborhood gathering at the water's edge. People were angry, and a lot of local fisherman had taken the day off from fishing to save the fish that were still alive and take them out of that water. Hopefully, the government will do something soon, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Then, on my birthday, Abby and I were sent out to go with a reporter and photographer who were following up on some rhinos. The rhinos, Higgins and Lady, had been poached four months earlier and both of their horns were taken. The rangers had managed to save them, but they were both really traumatized (as they should be, I mean really). They are the only rhinos in South Africa to survive being poached in the last year. Higgins and Lady were attacked by the poachers in different areas, so they were separated for three weeks because Higgins was blind after the attack. He was tranquilized facing east early in the morning, so by the time the ranger found him, he'd been looking into the sun for two and half hours. He tried to use the fence where he was to find his way around, but there isn't grass up there, and he would just lie down and give up. Bit by bit, the rangers used food to lure him down to where Lady was. When they were reunited, the ranger said "It was beautiful. It was almost like they were kissing."

The reason people are poaching rhinos is because a lot of Asian doctors are now saying that rhino horn is an aphrodisiac and that it can cure cancer. It can't. Rhino horn is made of keratin, so eating it is like chewing your own nails. But one kilo of rhino horn goes for 65,000 US dollars, and most rhino horns are a full 8 to 9 kilos. Do the math--it's an attractive proposition, isn't it? But these animals are beautiful and they didn't ask for this.

The moral of the story is: don't poach rhinos. Or I will find you.

That story was a great one to do one my birthday though, because I got to drive through beautiful South African mountains (it was an hour and a half from the office both ways) on a beautiful day. Everyone should come here and drive through the Western Cape; it's beautiful and ancient and just mind-blowing. We also got to drive around in a tank-like vehicle that was used in South Africa's conflict with Angola. As the ranger who took us around the reserve said, "I drive where I like."

After work, we headed out to this restaurant called Ocean Baskets, because we heard it had really good seafood, and it did. I have had so much calamari since I got to South Africa. Then we headed to the other Irish pub (besides O'Driscoll's) in Cape Town, The Dubliner.

I got a pint of Carling Black Label, which is more or less my beer of choice, and for some reason I went from 1 to drunk in like, 20 minutes. I'm a lightweight, but even I can handle two drinks (I'd had a bottle of cider at Ocean Baskets). So I'm sitting dead drunk in Dubliner (with my friends who had their eye on me) and who should walk in but Gabe, the singer we met at O'Driscoll's the previous Wednesday. Apparently he does the Dubliner on Mondays. He saw us and came over, and he was quickly informed that it was my birthday and that I was wasted. At some point after this, Lauren and Zach brought me a cake that they had made, since Dubliner is half a block from our apartment. They know I don't like cake but I love Nutella, so they had frosted it with Nutella about an inch thick. One of the Dubliner's staff came up and told us we couldn't eat the cake in the bar for some reason. Gabe caught wind of this and then negotiated with the bar to let me have my birthday cake, eventually settling on the agreement that if I kissed someone, I could have the cake. Of course, he volunteered himself, which is actually OK given that he tends to keep an eye on us (by "us" I mean me and my fellow interns, making sure we don't get too drunk and do things we regret) and he's generally a respectable guy.

Given my drunkenness and my love for Nutella, I agreed to this and walked up and kissed Gabe in front of the whole bar.

That cake was fuckin' delicious. Happy birthday to me.