Imagine waking up one day only to discover your birthday has been… stolen. Shocked? Or as I would say, “shock-prised?”
Come along as I tell you a story.
Recently, during a journalism fellowship in Cairo, Egypt, I met Sakina – a calm, brilliant, soft-spoken Nigerian colleague I fondly teased as my “noisy West African neighbour.” Within days, we bonded like siblings who had known each other for years.
Sakina was turning a year older during the training. A continental birthday, I joked – how many people get to celebrate a new age across 15 African nationalities? But what made this even more special was the backstory.
Life had not been entirely smooth growing up. She grew up in an environment where birthdays were simply not priority – not because they couldn’t afford them, but because they were not something the family really valued. Still, she always admired those who were celebrated when they turned a year older.
And life did not pause for her either. After school, marriage came early and with it came full responsibility mode – caring, nurturing, building a home and celebrating others, even when she herself had rarely experienced that joy firsthand. She handled it with grace, faith and strength, never complaining – only living.
So when a few of us – led by the ever-energetic Munan’ye from Kenya – decided to make this one memorable, it wasn’t just a party. It was redemption. It was love. It was Africa at its best.
Our hosts graciously sponsored a beautiful cake. As usual, I appointed myself official paparazzi. The plan was perfect: reconvene quietly at the hotel restaurant, call Sakina in unsuspectingly and explode into joy.
And oh, Africa delivered!
The minute she walked in, Munan’ye grabbed her hand and the room erupted into singing. The happiness on Sakina’s face was priceless. She laughed, shed some tears and glowed all at once. I nearly cried behind the camera. It was pure joy – her very first real birthday celebration.
And then… drama.
Just when the cake was ready to be cut, our Congolese brother Jay suddenly announced, in his best broken English,
“We have two birthdays today! Sakina and our sister from Mauritania!“
Two? Since when? All day, we only knew of one birthday on our WhatsApp group. Eyes widened. Mouths froze.
Shock was written all over Sheila’s face as she drummed away with two plastic bottles, and the same look was plastered on her compatriot Emmanuel, our ever-faithful backing vocalist from Malawi. Meanwhile, Gaël from Côte d’Ivoire bounced around in pure excitement – understandably so, since he didn’t speak much English and couldn’t follow things as closely as Caroline from Kenya or Kheiti from Morocco.
Even now, when I replay the video in my mind, I still see it vividly: Munan’ye stood there like an Egyptian mummy carved in disbelief. But hey, we are Africans. If one birthday is good, two must be better. I told myself: Let’s celebrate both. Unity, right?
Except something didn’t sit well with me.
This ‘second celebrant‘ – let’s call her Mia – was suddenly shy, resisting, hesitant, almost guilty. Her Algerian friend, Jack Toronto, however, pushed her into cutting the cake alongside Sakina.
The candles were blown. The cake was sliced. And then came another twist – Jay again announced publicly that Jack Toronto sponsored the cake.
Interesting.
After the celebration, the ‘interrogation committee‘ on our WhatsApp group got to work. Questions flew. Stories changed. Facts twisted. Eventually, the truth crawled out like a guilty cat.
Then came the moment of clarity – South Africa’s Aka and Zambia’s Chichi calmly dropped the ultimate evidence: screenshots of Mia’s passport bio page, clearly showing her birthday was nowhere near April. Case closed.
There was no second birthday.
Mia’s birthday was in July, not April.
Jack Toronto didn’t buy the cake.
And yes – they deliberately hijacked Sakina’s moment.
To make it worse, when organisers – thinking they had “wronged” Mia – later gave her another cake, she and Jack Toronto ate it secretly by the poolside like a Netflix crime scene.
But here is the twist of grace.
The only person not angry… was Sakina.
She laughed. She thanked everyone. She wrote:
“I have received love from all over Africa today. Yes, there was drama – but what is a birthday without a plot twist? I am happy. Truly happy.“
That day, a Nigerian woman standing calmly in the middle of African confusion taught me one of life’s greatest lessons:
Kindness loses its meaning the moment ego hijacks it.
And unity shines brightest when we choose grace over chaos.
We wanted to give Sakina a birthday. In the end, she gave us something far greater – maturity, forgiveness, humour and strength.
Her birthday may have been ‘stolen,‘ but she left Cairo with something thieves can never snatch: dignity, love and a continent full of brothers and sisters who will never forget her.
Because sometimes, Africa’s greatest stories are not in the headlines we write – but in the humanity we live.
Emmanuel Dzivenu is a broadcast journalist with The Multimedia Group Limited, specialising in human interest journalism with a strong focus on disability, education, health and climate reporting. His work spans television, radio, and digital platforms, producing in-depth documentaries, special reports and feature stories that spotlight underreported communities and national issues.
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