These are some random pictures I totally forgot about uploading a few days ago ("weeks" become "days" inside the warped prism of Africa Time).

Might as well just it as an excuse to write a few short stories.

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This is The Africandle.




I made it out of a little bit of cardboard, an empty matchbox and the cap to a glass Coke bottle.

I think I could make a business out of selling these things online -- we all know how well I did on www.NewCollegeIdentities.com, after all (bold means "click please").

Instead of cardboard, which, as I've learned, tends to catch on fire when a candle burns down really low, I'd use rusted iron. It's something that middle-aged, wealthy, white suburban women like my mom would go crazy for. Ya know, sort of that, "It's rustic, but not white trashy, which meshes perfectly with my whole urban cowboy motif." Case in point: we used to have three rusted metal Christmas trees in our yard, with built in candle holders.

But why stop at Africandles? What about North Americandles, and Suraméricandelas, también? Antarcticandles, which would be a little too symbolic of the fate that awaits our planet, might be too uncomfortable to stare at for hours on end to be a big seller. Plus, who can recognize the shape of Antarctica when it's viewed from a direct aerial view? Those are out. The rest of the continents, pending development of catchy product names, are in ... as are individual U.S. states, like Texas, and those other ones that are smaller. Big name countries around the globe are eligible for R&D initiatives as well.

Hunter tried to draw an African continent to compete with mine, and he failed miserably.




Talk about The African'tdle .... bahahahahaha.

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This is our next door neighbor Biti, Baba Juma's 17-year-old daughter.




I write about Biti because of what she represents for Mwindaji ("Hunter" in Kiswahili) and I.

She is mchizi waaaaaangu. Literal translation: "my crazy person." Street translation: Biti is my homegirl. And you know homegirl acts as the perfect liaison for Mwindaji and Hatari ("Bayless" in Kiswahili) in their real life East African Affairs semina ("seminar," pronounced seh-mee-nah, in Kiswahili).

The only truth in this part of the world is that truth is not a commodity. Since, as Mwindaji says, humor is the "way I deal with everything," does it come as any surprise that I've dealt with this issue by creating a game? Making my way through the mist every second of the day wouldn't be bearable otherwise. I laugh off attempts by Babylon, sometimes successful, to play me by playing the Burns Family East African Circle of Distrust Game.

There aren't really any rules, per se; it's more just like an overall awareness that nothing anyone says, does or writes can automatically be imbibed. You "win" when you call someone on their bullshit, with an And 1 for blowing up their spot in Swahili. You "lose" when you fall for someone's bullshit, their And1 coming if they somehow succeed in taking some money off of you, which is almost always the target of the opponent in the Circle.

Jaded? I prefer the term "seasoned." You can hate and call it a seasoned tomAHto for all I care. The point of me telling you about stuff like the Circle is simply to highlight the good in one specific person here, mchizi waaaangu, my homegirl, Biti.

Biti is the one African I've met who I wholeheartedly trust, 100 percent, with every fiber of my being. Fluent in English, but not attempting to co-opt Western culture to the substitution of her own, she has just enough of "us" in her to relate to our humor, but keeps it real to the point that my eyebrows don't budge when mchizi wangu tells me something.

Biti is typically the one nominated to bring us any extra food her family doesn't eat from that night's dinner. Since Tanzanian cuisine is about as diverse as a frat party at UVa, we know to expect only something from the following list: ugali (basically just flavorless grits), maybe some chapati if we're lucky (there are two kinds: 1) think Ninfa's flour tortillas, 2) think crepes), ndizi mshare (green-skinned bananas that, if you never told me, I would just assume to be potatoes based on taste), maharage (pinto beans) and occasionally some mhogo (cassava root).

None of these things come with flavor; that, my friends, is provided by my jumbo bottle of Redgold Chilli Sauce, which I add to just about everything. (Yes, there are two 'L's in "Chilli.") Usually, Biti will just chill at our pad after that for a few hours after that, teaching us street Swahili or trying to play Mwindaji's guitar. Ally, her 11-year-old brother, used to chill here every night.

I worried for a while that the friendship we had with Biti might be damaged by the transgressions committed by Ally -- the mwizi kubwa, or "big thief," as I call him. Is it awkward that the little punk who stole from us more times than he could count has yet to return my iPod, Hunter's Swiss Army knife (pictured in The Africandle scene), or the $130 U.S. he took from my wallet, and then some?

Ally, in happier days as an mgeni in our home

Yes.

Is it even worse that he has never once showed a smidgen of remorse, save for the time he literally threw himself at Hunter's feet, screaming "MWINDAJI! MWINDAJI!" in pleads for mercy accompanied by tears, while Baba Juma repeatedly beat him across the face with a rubber tire hose?

Most definitely.

And the situation isn't made any better by the fact that Biti's older brother Abdulli continues to lie, through a plastic smile that is short one front tooth, about selling the iPod which Ally stole and flipped to him.

Lying through your teeth: difficult when tooth is missing

I wish that stuff had never happened, but it doesn't change the fact that it happened in a very real way. As a result, I've amassed a bucket load of cultural experiences all tied to the same event: bribing a police officer; causing a car chase between a taxi and a dala dala (public transport Hiace van); being offered an opportunity by a young boy's father to whip his own flesh and blood with a rubber tire hose; the works. The past is behind, and while I will forget nothing, all that I can do is not throw Biti, nor anyone else in theory, out with the bathwater. After all, the third of Baba Juma's four boys, Bobu, is back in our good graces.




Though he got a few gifts from Ally, his sins were more ones of omission, and he knew he was a sinner. I could see it in his eyes every time we would cross paths in the village. Turned down, little recognition of a former friend, guilt deluxe. After a few weeks of living through an unspoken agreement that he was banned, Bobu came over with Biti one night, eyes predictably to the floor, voice like a mouse.

"Nimekuja kuomba msamaha."

I've come to beg forgiveness.

Both Hunter and I leaped at an opportunity to say "Haina shida," no worries, and allow him back in. Had my singing voice not been so bad from birth, I might have just started singing "Hakuna Matata" right there, I was so happy to have someone just say they're damn sorry.

Simply because Ally and Abdulli are in my eternal dog house doesn't change the fact that Biti is still seated at the head table of my Tanzanian dawg house. Nor does it mean that Bobu won't some day make a full and total return. But Ally and Abdulli's stories, dime-a-dozen tales of friends-turned-foes, provide an explanation of why there are so few spots available in the inner sanctum.


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Tom, you'll be glad to hear that the bump on my nose has just gotten even worse.

I will never again be as pretty as I once was.




I've since pushed it back almost all the way, using nothing but my own two hands. But I'd estimate it to be only 95 percent of the way to full recovery, leaving me looking just a tad more like a hockey player than I did before. In a way, the injury almost made me look more symmetrical, maintaining a tilt running parallel to the levels of my eyelids, one of which has the Parsley Droop. So at least I've got that going for me.

The lesson to be learned from this is that taking a charge in pick up basketball comes with a price. If you try to stand your ground in front of a moving freight train like Elia, who reminds me of a shorter, non-dunking version of Tractor Traylor, you better be prepared for a collision.

When the collision is between his elbow and my nose, though, there will be ramifications.

Blood all over the place is one thing. A blinding rush of pain through your face for a few seconds is another. Full body shakes last a little longer for a third. And scaring yourself when you catch your reflection in the door panel, a fourth, that's always fun.

I saved face that day when, after sitting out two games post-Elia elbow, pulled a Steve Nash and returned wearing a blood-soaked Band Aid on my nose. This was before I realized how bad it was.

The upside to the pain and trauma caused by my temporary stint of looking like a character from that Stephen King TV movie "Predators," I think it was, is that I learned just how much human cartilage can bend. I mean, my nose was bent to the side. As in, wow, your nose is diagonal. It's something you need to feel to believe.

Did I believe the doctors who tried to tell me it wasn't broken? No -- if you'd seen the way they went about their business, I doubt you would have either. The first one initially said it wasn't "possible" to break your nose; the second said he was unable to even ponder a course of action for me, seeing as he "wasn't a specialist;" and the third? Couldn't tell you. He was on a food break when I arrived at 7, and was still "coming back right now" when I left, at 8:30.

It was kind of cool, though, being able to push my nose back into place over the course of two days. Kind of that hurts-so-good style of pain, like pushing into a nasty bruise from a D-pole in lacrosse, or wiggling around a loose tooth perilously close to the edge. Every time I pushed, I would hear the sound of recovery, also known as crunching cartilage cells. Ahhhh, hurts so good.

I've never been able to breathe out of my nostrils very well. At least not since I can remember. The initial crookedness inflicted upon my nose, I believe, came in 8th grade when, once again, I got 'bowed in the shnoz by a bigger, older player on the basketball court. Only that time, it was during a varsity-faculty game, and the role of Elia was played by Coach Fines, the guy who reminded us approximately 1,000,002 times that he guarded Greg Ostertag once in a high school game.

Coach Fines and Elia are responsible for me losing out on any potential modeling opportunities, but I can't blame them for stuff that happens on the court like that. What I lack in beauty, I make up for in stories that make me seem a lot tougher than I really am.