Quick note: My hair has finally reached ponytail status, tenuously, which means I'm finally able to get this dead animal carcas out of my face. The sensation of the wind against the back of my neck is a feeling I had long forgotten. The reason I even bring this up is to show you two quotes from opposing camps, an unofficial straw poll review of how my Tanzanian acquaintances view the New Hatari.

From my student in Standard 6 English, 12-year-old Frank, who raised his hand in the middle of class and asked me to come over to his desk, as if he was confused over the formation of the present perfect tense: "Ticha BP, you look like a girl. You must cut your hair. And why do you not shave your beard? Oh, it looks very bad, Ticha. Very bad." (I had a Richard Reid beard at the time)

And from Ras Munir, our neighbor who has a tattoo of a weed leaf on his right bicep: "When I saw that you had," -- he searched for how to say "put your hair in a ponytail" in English, before going with Swahili and hand motions -- "umefunga, I thought that you looked like the man from 'Desperado.'"

Ya know, I always thought I looked like Antonio Banderas too. Whatever, Frank.

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So I wrote a few months ago about all the names I've got in Tanzania:

• at school: Ticha BP
• in Patandi: Hatari, Billy, Bayless (*that's once a month, maybe)
• at the Nkoaranga Orphanage, where I went a lot in the early goings, back when I thought I had found the correct translation to "Bayless" in Swahili: Hakuna Pwani
• at basketball, originally: Beel

Well, now I've got another. The dudes at Soweto no longer call me "Beel." They call me "B Show."

"B Show" remains an enigma to me. Every time I feel like I've got down its true meaning, I hear someone use it about another person in another context that sure doesn't apply to me.

The answers I've gotten from people have ranged from a gangsta, to a guido, to a looker. I'd prefer the last one, would take the first, and have nothing but beef with anyone who dares think of me as the middle.

"Kwa nini mnanita 'B Show' sasa?" I asked Bariki Mkubwa after about two weeks of being called this when he picks teams.

"Kwa sababu we ndo 'B Show,'" he answered without answering. "Because you are B Show."

Maybe he's just jealous of the Yao Ming Shanghai Sharks jersey and shorts that I brought back with me from Shanghai last year -- my threads bomb on his Magic jersey. But what I've heard from other players is that I am 'B Show' because of how fancy I look with all my headbands and bandanas. That eliminates "looker" from a reason for the new name. So am I gangsta, or am I a guido?

Sadly, it might be a little bit of both. I mean, have you seen "Desperado?"