Three days before her 29th birthday, writer and host Chima “Naira” Ikoro, who lives in Chicago, set up her phone to record an invitation for the celebration. “I’m gonna go to the park and have a picnic with myself and if you’d like to join me, you can,” she starts the video, telling p eople about the Mandrake Park party before adding some stipulations. She outlines possible activities: basketball, pickleball, volleyball and more, but informs invitees that if they want any of that, they’re going to have to bring it themselves — unless it’s a gift, that is. “If you want to bring me something since it’s my birthday, I’ll take a potted plant of any sort, except for the flowering kind that dies easily, because I got ADHD, and I can’t afford to have any more plant funerals, it’s weighing on my mental health.” She ends the video with a little side-eye, along with the time and location. “Okay, bye,” she says. Ikoro’s Instagram video, which she posted on May 1, got millions of views and tickled people with her markedly casual delivery. “I love the dry ass invite,” commented one person. “Are parents and toddlers allowed?” asked another. “girl that’s my birthday too i’m coming,” someone else said. Other folks said they’d be attending, bringing provisions for the party like pickles and Capri Suns. “I got a basketball and a tennis ball and a blanket and a wagon to carry all of the food and a link card and a Bluetooth speaker and Bubbles,” added another person. “This is the only way to invite / promote anything . Happy early birthday ❤️,” Grammy-winning artist SZA commented. Ikoro tells TODAY.com that the party went off without a hitch, and people brought pickles, a DJ and other gifts, like potted plants, for the birthday girl. “It’s funny because like I started getting trolled in the comments by people being, ‘Oh, I would have came to your birthday party, but I’m all the way in Japan,’” she says with a laugh. “For sure, thank you for letting me know. I’ll save you a slice of cake.’” “I’m just honored that I could share and create that space for y’all,” she tells viewers in a follow-up video, expressing gratitude for those who attended and the fact that it didn’t get rained out. “When I tell y’all, ‘God held the rain,’ I looked in the distance and I saw rain pouring in the distance, and it had not reached us.” “The cool part was I remember going home and it just started raining hard,” Saeed Habib, a graduating doctoral student at the University of Health Sciences who attended the picnic, tells TODAY.com. “Look, just the power, the energetics of love and community can change things like that. I believe in that.” Now, sitting in front of a wall full of potted plants gifted to her by relative strangers, Ikoro wants people to know they can grow together, too. As for the party, which took place on May 4, she says over 100 folks attended, and she met most of them that day. “It was a decent amount of people,” she says. “There were also people who were in and out, some people who just pulled up to like drop off gifts or whatever the case.” Ikoro says Habib fit into her friend group so seamlessly she thought he was already part of it. “I didn’t know a single person there,” Habib says. “I didn’t know what to expect walking in, but I was like, ‘You know what, I can talk to a wall,’ so I was like, ‘We’ll just chat and just get to know people,’ or also just lie down and hang out.” Saeed Habib and Naira Ikoro pose for a selfie. Courtesy Saeed Habib Ikoro says she loves to chat with new people and forge new friendships, despite the monotone manner in which she delivered her invitation. “I was super stressed out and there was a lot of stuff going on,” she says, adding that she almost did nothing on her birthday but thinks people should celebrate themselves no matter how charged their social battery. “My friends know I hate when they say, ‘Oh, I don’t want to do anything for my birthday, I’m just going to chill by myself,’” she says, “I’m like, ‘I don’t care, I’m outside your house, open the door.” On her birthday, revelers showed up from as far as Detroit and Vancouver, Canada — like Habib, who is moving back there this summer — to celebrate the birthday of someone they’ve never met. “I definitely should have counted, but if you count people joining from Live too, a few hundreds of people were in and out,” Ikoro says. “Leaving Chicago has been really, really hard, because it’s become my new home, and will continue to be,” Habib says, adding that he’s going to miss all the people, including Ikoro, he’s met in his time there. Ikoro says she was so touched by the way strangers showed up for her that she plans to have more casual hangs to bring new people together, perhaps once a season. “You would have thought that it was a park full of people who knew each other,” she says. “For it to mean so much for them as individuals, and for them to have a good time with one another? It wasn’t just about me, and I thought that that was really cool.” And Habib, who will officially move to Vancouver in August, is already planning a friendship picnic in the Canadian city, citing Ikoro as inspiration. “Home is something we carry with us everywhere we go and the people that shape it for us,” he says. “I’m definitely looking forward to taking a piece of Chicago with me.” This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY: MM’s Is Cutting 2 Colors From Its Bags — Here’s Why Popular Frozen Foods Brand Issues Recall for Possible Plastic Contamination Aldi’s Blind Boxes Sold Out Quickly on the First Day. When’s the Next Drop? This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser. ...read more read less