We technically live in a small village called Patandi, which is part of larger village named Tengeru, which is about 15 minutes from the larger city of Arusha, Tanzania.

New horizons, indeed.

But I'll take the photo-op, thank you very much.

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Meet Musa.

Elmer's is to glue for Musa as O'Douls is to beer for me

Musa is the neighborhood glue sniffer.

Our joke of a Kiswahili tutor, Bwana Shao, needs to stop teaching us how to say things like "Nipe sindano" ("Give me an injection"), which I will never use in Africa, and start teaching us how to say relevant stuff, like "Musa likes to sniff glue."

Musa anapenda kuvuta gundi. Who needs Shao, on second thought?

Do you know anyone who has ever actually sniffed glue? It can't be good for you.

Baba Juma gave away the answer the first time he ever saw me associating with this kid, but if I'd never heard the truth, and I had to guess someone for neighborhood glue sniffer, Musa would have been my first choice. He just looks so ... glued out. I don't know. You have to see his eyes: they stare into absolutely nothing. It's obvious there are no thoughts going on in his head; he's just staring, mouth agape as usual. He is slow mentally, too -- at least it seems like it to me. And Jesus Lord does he like to come over uninvited. KILA WAKATI! Those visits always include the tongue-bathing of Mwindaji's harmonica, a request to play on the computer or with the guitar, and an attempt to speak to me in Swahili so fast that even an East African Hot Wheels guy wouldn't understand. And the best is how Musa gets pissed when we ask him to leave at 9 at night.

This little punk is only 12, but he doesn't go to school. Nor can he read. Nor does he care. He's got nothing to do, basically, and no D.A.R.E. program in sight. Is anyone else surprised that he would want to takes dala dala trips into town every now and then to pick up some glue?

From what I deciphered from my 13-year-old neighbor Ally, who is Musa's friend, Ally's dad Baba Juma ran into Musa buying glue in Arusha the other day, got really mad and put him in the car with him to drive back to Patandi. Ally told this story with plenty of hand signals to indicate someone who "anavuta gundi," which was funny. Hunter get confirmation on the story -- (Ally is known to lie every now and then) -- when he overheard Baba Juma telling Musa, who's not even his own son, that he was going to "beat him" if it happened again.

I'm not a betting man, but I'll take Baba Juma in that fight.

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"Anakula jamba!"

Last Wednesday (8/8/07), Baba Juma packed Hunter and me into "his" Land Cruiser with the members of his Sub Saharan Cleaver family and took us to Nane Nane (Eight Eight), a festival for agriculture or something .... to tell you the truth I'm still not quite sure.

It was boring overall, but there was one exception: my first third world zoo experience. "Zoo" may be a stretch; it was more like a traveling circus of poorly treated animals that cost 200 shillings (about 15 cents) to enter.

The hyena they had caged up looked leprous. He laid in the corner of a dusty living space, sullen eyes staring at you like an old dog, a series of festering sores making the entire area smell like roadkill. Directly across the way, in a cage the same size, were two huge birds -- I have no idea which kind -- staring into the distance with similarly vacant expressions. The raw skin and open sores dotting their necks, added to the sight of so many feathers either plucked or thinning out because of some vitamin deficiency, only furthered the depressing vibe these birds gave off.

In smaller cages were pythons, poisonous snakes, giant lizard/iguana types, and even a strange animal called a "spring hare," which looked more like a "Yo Quiero Taco Bell"/wallaby hybrid. Hordes of kids -- and a few uneducated adults, too -- swarmed those cages, which were set upon raised platforms that still kept them well from rising even four feet into the air. Kids smashed their hands down on the wire mesh, they kicked at the sides, they jeered and yelled ... kids here basically do not have the lovey-dovey thing going on with animals like we in the West sometimes do. You should see how they treat dogs. That's another story.

All of those scenes left me feeling depressed about my surroundings. Then I made my way over to this guy.

Chillin with an unidentified object in his hands.

I had finally curried up enough bravery to pull my camera out in public -- a bad move sometimes in Tanzania -- and was taking super heady black-and-white photos, not really paying attention to what my subject was eating exactly. People had started to laugh almost as soon as I got my camera out, so I figured it was directed at me somehow.

Until I looked up, that is, and saw why people were laughing.

Smell Test

The monkey/baboon/cho chote was eating his own poo.

Remember that time I was in the hardware store returning a 20L bucket of something that smelled like death? I learned the word for "shit" that day in that dukani (jamba), and it came in handy a few weeks later.

"Anakula jamba!" I yelled as soon as I made the realization. He's eating shit!

Picture over ten Tanzanians, already laughing about the monkey guy eating poop, hearing some mzungu tourist who clearly doesn't speak fluent Kiswahili scream "Anakula jamba!" then procee dto take about eight pictures.

I mean, look at the little guy.

"Is that a hair in my shit? Gross!"

Talk about monkey business! Bahahahaha!!

"Eh, whatever. It's free."

"happy biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiirthday bayless!"

There were 40 wall posts when it was all said and done, "it" being my Fake out Facebook Birthday, the inaugural event held in celebration of the day my life began, August 6, 1945. From the lead off batter -- a lone August 5 early bird -- to the hand full of August 7 belated's, it was a very successful joke. Almost everyone, whether from the sincere majority or the sarcastic few, showed their support for me by writing "Happy Birthday" in some shape or form. Of course, there were the radicals -- they tried to blow my spot with the truth: that my "real" birthday is February 28. But they were simply loose cannons, making little noise and largely ineffective.

The beginning came like the Christmas Eve present you get from your aunt right before she's leaving to go home -- you are stoked because you get to open something the night before. Late on August 5, before my Fake Out Facebook Birthday had even officially begun, Allison was that aunt. Hours before I turned 62, she led it off:

happy birthday. have a good one.

Nice, simple, non-offensive. A solid opening sample in the social experiment.

The girl who came next reminded me of a PETA activist, out to ruin a photo op with a bucket of red paint. Lauren, one of my oldest friends and someone who has somewhat of an actual clue of when my birthday is, wasn't holding punches:

first of all yer birthday isnt on august 6th- so stop beggin for attention..... -- and then, as if I had forgotten she was Jewish -- shalom chaver xxx.

Whatever that means. Would Lauren torpedo the whole operation with one strike? Hit No. 3, courtesy of Mikey Benji, didn't help matters much:

Happy Birthday Hiroshima. I'm guessing Allison is the first of many ... rookies.

Ben would be referring to the fact that August 6, 1945, my Fake Out Facebook Birthday, just happens to also be the day that Japan first got hit with an atomic bomb. I don't know why I chose that date out of all the random possibilities -- I was a history major, I guess -- but it is funny to see evidence of which events more fully captivate the attention spans of my generation: important historical anniversaries, or the daily, "One of your electronic friends was born today" alerts that come at you from the right side of the Facebook home page?

God, I just can't relate to people my own age. My peers are so immature.

One, put a hole in the box...

Especially this guy. What is he, a Justin Timberlake wannabe?

.... or is that me, at my "real" birthday party last winter in Belgrade, when three of my Black Catz brates and I co-hosted a shindig with a "Dick in a Box" theme at our home, where all of my friends from Belgrade converged for the first time? This, one of the greatest birthday parties of my life, was all a tribute to that YouTube SNL clip which got about 1,000,024 hits from the Three Black Catz Hostel's wireless connection alone. That thing (click here) forever transformed Timberlake from "that guy in N'SYNC" to "the man."

And the "Dick in a Box" party wasn't confined just to the small rooms of the Black Catz. In fact, the guy who wrote the fourth comment on my Fake Out Facebook Birthday wall, Stewy, generously donated the blue-and-black fleece I wore to play late night box football once he had passed out.

Two, putcha junk in that baahhhhhhhx!

There was no way the guy on the left in the Partizan hoodie had forgotten when my birthday was, even if he did get owned by Ana's homemade šlivovica that night.

Three, make New Zoka open the box, and that's how you know Stewy isn't forgetting this night in Belgrade last February!

When I saw on my email that Stewy had left a message so early into the big day, I knew he had tried to ruin things. He always called me "The Hero" when we were traveling around the Balkans, after all, because as he alleges, I always come out on top in the stories I write. A chance to make "Hero" look bad on his own turf would be sweet revenge for Stewy in more tangible way as well -- he never did fully forgive me for losing his sweet ass, Michael Jackson "Thriller" era shades in the snow in Kusek, Montenegro shortly before "Dick in a Box" party.

I was sure payback was coming. But when I checked, I discovered that instead, my brate had just played dumb. He even added a little Serbian into his gift:

happy birthday you lucky f***er
poochie coolotz

"Poochie coolotz" was how Stewy used to mispronounce Jovan Serbian's go-to phrase, "puši kurac" (pooh-shee koo-rots), which I am not going to translate on this blog. Very niiiiiiice. Avo my retard brother Stewy is gonna help me out.

No. 5 was a landmark because it signified the first member of my family to go down. My cousin Stephen:

happy birthday cuz. hope you're having a good time in Tanzania.

Another well wish after that for No. 6, and then bam! -- a second cousin, Jennifer, who raised the tally to seven:

happy birthday B!:) ... hope you get to celebrate some...

I tried to celebrate, but Hunter wouldn't throw a party for me. He just responded over and over with that annoying blank stare, the one he always gives me when I propose an idea that is a little outside of the box.

"It's not your birthday," Hunter says.

"Yes it is."

"No," -- pause -- "it's not," he reiterates.

Jennifer also claimed in her message to have been keeping up with my stories. If that means the blog, then she'll be pretty mad by the time she reaches this paragraph.

Eight and nine were great because it led off with the pitcher, Tener ...:

your birthday's no longer in february? nice posts though

.... who was batted in by Allison, who, if you remember, started the game in the lead off spot:

just realized it's not your bday. i take that back...

The de-happy birthday debo. That stings. It's like Tabasco on a paper cut.

A big smile came to my face shortly thereafter, though, when my former roommate in Patandi, Mandy, dropped me a line:

I'm wishing you a happy birthday only to humor you

Mandy lived with Hunter and I for our first month in this village. She had to digest a lot of my theories and ideas for jokes, obviously -- we don't have a TV, and there's not much else to do. So not only is she now aware of www.NewCollegeIdentities.com, Team Halloween, boxer briefs being the best, and how words like "rafts" and "shifts" should be restructured to "raftes," "shiftes," etc., she's also known alllllllll about my Fake Out Facebook birthday for quite some time now. Her words have definitely brought me humor.

Next was another cousin, the third, bringing the tally to 11. Anna K., No. 12, tried to push my buttons with "hey what's up!" -- didn't work. Five genuine's popped up in a row after Anna's entry, and then another from the "I know that you know that I know you're full of s**t, and we'll leave it at that" category. From Emily, the neighbor I used to dominate in one-on-one:

you are a sad, strange little man. HAPPY BIRTHDAY BAYLESS! :0)

I really did appreciate the all caps effort.

As far as adults are concerned, I ended up with not one but two messages on my wall from Strake Jesuit administrators, including the president. I would have gotten some interesting posts from my parents, who surely know my real birthday, had I not rejected all four of their recent, and creepy, requests to become one of their 23-year-old son's Facebook friends.

Then you add in your assorted trail mix of friends. From my summer in Austin, from Garland's St. Agnes class, from St. Vincent's days/Strake glory days/UVa double glory days, or to Southside Ringaleevio games, studying abroad, traveling last year, whatever. These are the core of what I earlier referred to as the "sincere majority." Meat and potatoes. Individually, none are as funny as outbursts like "poochie coolotz," but when read back-to-back-to-back, it is a time to sit back, smile, and slowly pump my fist in the air.

Even funnier, though, were the continuous attempts by those late-arriving, PETA activist types trying to mess with my chi. Scattered throughout The Wall, like a couple of stray curly fries that have found their way into your paper sack of regular style, were the would be spoilers.

From Gundy:

It's not your birthday...

And Kelly:

you should be ashamed of yourself for all this birthday business :)

Then, from the little sister of a former girlfriend of mine ... who I haven't seen since I was 16:

You are lying its not your birthday Bay Bay. But we miss you at the Vaughan household.

Comments like those had the potential to ruin the whole prank. But instead, pretty much all of the statements from this category fell upon deaf ears. Their attempts to blow my spot, smothered into irrelevance -- usually, there were two big pieces of "Happy Birthday!!" bread to sandwich those statements into mundaneness.

And therein lies the entire humor of the Fake Out Facebook Birthday joke: you can see my generation, the A.D.D. Generation, in all its glory, and you can use the symbol of that generation, Facebook, as the instrument to highlight this absurd humor: that the most shared trait of the A.D.D. Generation is that we just don't notice a lot of stuff.

Except, of course, when it's someone's birthday on Facebook.

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p.s. (Note: This will only be funny for people who know Jamaar, my friend from Humphreys First Left, who is the actual nephew of Uncle Phil, a.k.a. James Avery, from "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.")

I thought your birthday was in February. it is funny seeing people wishing you a happy birthday on your wall though. all the best.

Jamaar can't look people in the eyes when he talks, and he's even shy on Facebook. Big ups to Humphreys 1L, 730, where you at from Never BP