Chillin' in this here pigskin town...

Don't be fooled by the intermittent periods of success enjoyed by both the Houston Rockets in the mid-90's or my beloved Astros in the middle part of this decade. Houston, Texas is a football town. It's always been a football town. And nothing -- not Bud Adams, not the absence of Vince Young or Reggie Bush, not the memory of David Carr -- is ever going to change that fact.

Personally, I'll take Major League Baseball, college basketball and college football over the NFL any day. And if I'm ever living in Charlottesville again, I'll take college baseball over pro football, too. That being said, going to the Texans' game is always the shit. Even if an 8-8 record in our sixth season as a franchise marks the best year yet.

I mean, come on, we're in the AFC South. Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Tennessee ... us. Three out of the four are going to the playoffs. We were in the "cellar," and still finished at .500. It's one of the two toughest divisions in the league. I never expect a playoff berth with the Texans. All that matters for me is that we win whenever I'm actually at the game.

Coming home these two weeks has been amazing. I have never had this much fun being back in H-Town, since it officially stopped being my home in August 2002, my freshman year at Virginia. Every, single, day has been great. Not a single boring hour. And with high speed Internet temporarily at my disposal, I feel like posting as many pictures from a single trip to Reliant Stadium as I post in two months from the banana groves of East Africa. Enjoy.

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My idea: to buy a No. 10 Texans jersey with the customized last name, "V. YOUNG". No offense to my boy Schaub, who I love (WAHOO WA!!!!), but Vince is my dawg. I still cry about passing on VY 'Til Ya Die sometimes before I go to bed.

Even though my little sister Garland tells me at least once a day how unattractive I am for a myriad of reasons (skinny, bad fashion sense, girl hair), I actually think she's pretty. And she's available both for rent and for purchase, provided you pass a background check and have a solid credit rating. Email me at billyparsley@gmail.com to place your bid today!

And proud of it.

I always contend that the ones who were so impatient that they couldn't wait until we actually had a roster before buying one of those, "HOUSTON 32" or "TEXANS 02" jerseys back when the logo had been first released are the ones regretting it right now. For example, this kid. Dude's dad is rocking a Mario Williams jersey, dude's kid brother looks fly in his Dunta Robinson threads, and even the mom is looking good in her Andre Johnson jersey. Meanwhile, homeboy oldest child looks like a dork in his "HOUSTON 32" shirt. Nice helmet, too. What are you, like 12? Shouldn't the LITTLE brother be wearing the plastic "Do Not Use as Protective Device" helmet?

The second one of the day!! Incredible.

Nice, Andre. Nice.

Predicted female response: "AWWWWW!!!!!!!!" (Okay, I admit it, I am "awwww'ing" right now, too. Even Jeffery Dahmer would "awww" at this. It's so cute!)

Just get off me if you're going to try and front that your state flag is better than ours. Get, off of me.

My new friend I made at the game. I love kids. He told me that "he already knew" the Texans were going to win in the third quarter. And he did. The kid knew. He wasn't kidding. That's what I love about kids. They know stuff. Life hasn't had time to throw their minds through the spin cycle yet. (P.S. we did win, 42-28).

I love Texas.

I repeat: I love Texas. "FIRST DOOOOOWN!"

So my mom, whose mother really is friends with Bush Sr., and whose father actually worked for 41 as the finance chairman for his failed U.S. senate race back in the day, told me the Bush's would know her if she said hi. I told her to prove it. When we walked by them, my mom waived, and they waived back. But it wasn't the wave of an "I know you"; it was the wave of "Hello, my fellow Americans!" Nice try, Mom.

"Cowboy taaaaaaaake me awaaaayy [from my boring life as a desperate housewife, now that I am no longer writing my Examiner column]! Fly this girl as HIGH as you can, into the .... [I admit it those are all the words I know to that song]!"

*Quick side note on my mom: the scene is me in the shower before leaving that morning, and her standing outside of it.

Me: "Mom, do you even know who we're playing?"

Mom: "Yeah."

Me: "No you don't."

Mom: "Yes I do!"

Me: "Who?"

Mom: "The Patriots."

(Note: This is the day after my dad and I openly agonized over having to miss the Pats-Giants game while at dinner with my mom's mom -- the one who George Bush actually would recognize. I mean, I must have rehashed what happened in that game for ten minutes that night when I came home. The whole story about driving around looking for a sports bar after leaving the restaurant, giving up, listening to the game on the radio in my car, alone in a parking lot full of nothing but asphalt and dark buildings, and going crazy on the Brady-Moss record setting TD pass. And she answers with, "The Patriots.")

Me: "Yep."

Mom: "I got it?"

Me: "Yeah, we're playing the Patriots. You got it."

Mom: "See? I knew."

And I went on showering, laughing until all the soap had been washed off my body.

Well, on the way to the game, my dad made another comment about the Patriots-Giants game. And here was what ole Louise had to say:

Mom: "Wait, the Patriots played last night and they're playing today?"

This is why I never sit next to my mom at sporting events.

Okay, little No. 8 is a badass because he thinks just like me. Where the word "CARR" used to rest (let us never speak of him again), he duct taped over it and wrote in marker, "SCHAUB." Nice one, kid. We should collaborate.

Oh, p.s. (this story is gross so please stop reading if you are one of those girls who gets grossed out).

So I'm in the bathroom between the third and fourth quarters. I pee, I wash my hands, I dry them. While when I entered there were only a couple of other guys in there, by the time I was done the line was at least 15 deep. That was when I farted.

Only, it wasn't a fart. I mean, it was, just not exclusively. It was a little wet. It happens, right?

Clearly, my instinct was to go right for the stall and assess the damage. But I would have to wait in line for that, and how strange would it look for the people already waiting to see this guy leave a urinal, wash, dry, make a face that says "Uh oh..." and hop right back in the line. I think it would've been pretty obvious what had just transpired, don't you?

That, and the game was about to start back up. I wasn't left with too many options, man. It wasn't gross to the point of me worrying that the people around me would start sniffing and making "I have no idea" faces to their friends, so I decided just to live with it and return to my seat next to The Bob. Of course, when I returned, first thing I did was whisper what had happened to Garland, who proceeded to erupt with laughter, to my parents' semi-annoyed amusement/confusion/desire to remain ignorant.

I checked my (white, of course) brand new boxers first thing when I got home (well, after I played a pick up basketball game with my neighbors, I checked it), and let me tell you: my fears were warranted.

This morning, Sallie, our housekeeper, beat me to the punch in grabbing the boxers off the ground. I saw that this had happened, and winced for her sake.

"Sallie, did you, uhhhh, find some.... white boxers on the floor of my bathroom?" I asked as soon as I had woken up.

"Yeah," she said, playing dumb.

"Yeah, well, uhhh, sorry about that."

"Oh I KNOW you done did something bad!"

It happens to us all .... right?

Life Lesson No. 5,674: When you see the son of a man who has cupped your balls on more than one occasion, it's always good for an awkward comment.

"Abel!" He kind of turned his head around to see where it was coming from. "Yo, Abel!" I said again, trying not to yell, just to get his attention over the din of a Village bar on a Saturday night. It worked the second time around -- we made eye contact, I nodded, he gave the "Who, me?" look and made his way forward.

"It's Abel, right?" I'd only just met the kid and wasn't 100 percent sure about the first name. The last name, now that I was positive on.

"Yeah," he said, intrigued as to why I'd called him over.

The girl I was with at the bar had only introduced us about an hour earlier, and it came as no surprise to me that our meeting had made far less of an impact on him than it had on me. To Abel, I was just some random kid with long hair that happened to know his friend Hanly. In other words, I was just a face with a name tag that said, "Hi, my name is: FORGETTABLE." Thus, the "Who, me?" look. But to me, Abel was the son of the only doctor I've ever visited for check ups. His dad is Dr. Jay, the one man I've ever allowed to cup my balls.

Hanly doesn't have balls, but if she did, she'd be in the same boat as me. Dr. Jay was her childhood doctor as well. Kind of a different sense of awkwardness for her to look into the eyes of a kid whose face so resembles his father's, and perhaps even more awkward, but she totally got where I was coming from, and why I found it so amusing.

"I thought about being like, 'Hi, your dad has cupped my balls,' when we met," I told Hanly as we sat squeezed in like sardines on the bench down the table a bit from the kid. "But then, I thought to myself of what his reaction might be: 'Congratulations, you're the 1,000th person that has said that to me in my life.' I decided against it."

All I'd said instead was, "You're dad was my doctor as a kid." Boring, but safe. Unmemorable, but non-offensive. Like laying up for par when you need a birdie to avoid the playoff.

"Probably a wise move," she said. "He probably gets that a lot."

"I agree."

But that was before I saw Hallie.

Hallie's dad, Dr. Hablinski, a.k.a. "Dr. H," was also a doctor of mine as a youth, albeit one that has much less intimate knowledge of my special areas. Dr. H was my orthodontist -- which makes Hallie the daughter of the man responsible for the fact that I will forever have a piece of metal glued to the back of my lower teeth, and by extension, the daughter of the man responsible for killing any small percentage chance I ever had of becoming a regular flosser. It's hard to get that special floss through the gaps to reach my bottom gums. Really hard.

So what are the odds? I mean really, what are the odds? The son of my pediatrician (that actually reminded me that I'm getting just a little too old to visit a doctor who has Lego's instead of Time Magazine in the waiting room), and the daughter of my orthodontist, sitting about five feet from one another, at the same bar, at the same time.

Uhhhh, group picture anyone?

Didn't have my camera, plus, I didn't feel like making small talk with a girl I really don't even know (I was better friends with her older sister, who is my age) when she was sitting at a table with a lot of people. Group picture idea was D.O.A.

But I still thought it would be appropriate -- for some reason -- to tell Abel about my aborted plans. Because as I stated in the title of this story, Life Lesson No. 5,674 is that when you see the son of a man who has cupped your balls on more than one occasion, it's always good for an awkward comment.

Which brings me back to the "Who, me?" look. Abel is now standing right in front of me.

"What's up man," I said in this, what was then our second introduction. "My name's Bayless."

"Cool, what's up."

"So it's funny because after I met you, I saw the daughter of my orthodontist," I explained as I grabbed his arm to make my point -- ask Jeep about me subconsciously grabbing people's arms when I'm trying to make a point. "I thought about getting y'all together for a group picture, with you pretending to be cupping my balls and her pretending to be checking my teeth, but I decided against it."

HA! Ha! Ha.... Ha?

I thought he would laugh. But he didn't.

"So..." Abel said skipping over an implied, "let me get this straight." "What, was my dad like your doctor or something??" That's all he came back with. The kid was clearly really confused as to why I would say something like this to him.

"Yeah," I said.

"Oh," he said, international code language for, "Your joke just failed."

Awkwaaaaard.

"Yeah, well, cool man. Tell your dad Bayless Parsley said hi. Just remember the vegetable if you can't remember my name."

"All right, will do," he said.

I looked at Hanly. "Well, that didn't go as I had planned."

But at least I amused myself. It's like I always say: "If you can't amuse yourself, who's gonna do it for you?" Words to live by, my friends. Words to live by.

There are two ways to get from here to my village in Tanzania.  One is to go U.S.-London-Nairobi with British Airways, and then take a bus to Arusha, a dala dala to Tengeru.  That's what I did the first time I went, back in July.

The other way -- which I am doing the second time around, when I leave Houston on the 2nd -- is to fly direct to Amsterdam, direct to Kilimanjaro Airport, then take a kosta to Tengeru.

Let's just say that right about now, all issues with BA's baggage handling BS aside, I'm REALLY glad to be bypassing Kenya.

Here is why.

Usually jet lag coming back to the ole Western Hemisphere is a one or two day headache, tops. I sit here writing for you at 6:15 on Christmas morning because mine has been with me since Friday. So please, let me be the one to even outflank the East Coast majority on this, what I wish for everyone to be a very merry Christmas. (I hate writing things like "Merry Christmas" in lieu of the spoken word because I feel like it is mired in Punctuation Limbo Land. Do you really go with the exclamation? I think it sounds a little ... loud. "Merry Christmas! HAPPY NEW YEAR! AHHHH!!)

It has certainly been a merry one for me. No one expected to see me for at least a year when I left for Tanzania last July, and I went to Africa fully anticipating to be decorating a banana tree come December. It was to be the second year in a row that I'd be gone for the holidays. Last year, I spent this day with my friend Živko in a small, snow-covered Serbian mountain town called Nova Varoš -- and since Serbia is an Orthodox country, which has a calendar two weeks off from our own, the only one celebrating Christmas on December 25 for hundreds of miles was this guy. Missing Christmas sucks, to put it bluntly, so to hear my mom offer to buy me a round trip ticket to come all the way home from East Africa -- just for these two weeks -- sent a tingle up my spine. I hate being away from my family during the holidays. I wanted to go home.

But there was a problem: Hunter. He's my best friend, and we honestly haven't spent more than a few hours apart from one another since I landed in Charlotte en route to Tanzania. I wasn't going to leave him alone in Zanzibar on the one day of the year that no one, religious or not, should be alone. I told my mom that while I'd love to take her up on the offer, it would totally depend on whether or not I could convince our friend Bino, who is living in Ethiopia for the time being, to come down and take my place in keeping Mwindaji company. When Bino found out I was only pumping up a Zanzibar Christmas so that I could hand him the baton and dip back to the U.S., he feigned like he might not come -- after all, he is a little bit closer to me than he is to Hunter, seeing as we were actually roomates for a year, and that we visited one another two times during my trip in the Balkans last year. But like they always do, Bino caved. After all, he needs me to transport those camera lenses he ordered on Amazon back to Africa for him. Nothing like a Jew without encumbering Christmas family responsibilities to come through in the clutch for you in a situation like that.

I owe Bino perhaps the biggest Christmas thanks of all, because it was he who made it possible for me to give the biggest Chistmas gift of all to the few people who missed me: a surprise trip home for Christmas and New Year's.

Excluding a few people who wouldn't be in town, it was a surprise to everyone but my mother, the one who bought the ticket; Miguel and Andrew, who I asked to pick me up; and Pig, who actually did pick me up, after a 28-hour, Kilimanjaro-to-Dar Es Salaam-to-Amsterdam-to-a five hour wait-to-Houston marathon. I got about two hours of sleep throughout, an amazing feat considering the overwhelming allure of the Amsterdam airport's open "meditation center" and its No Cell Phone, black leather La-Z-Boy chair lounge, situated right next to one another for your cure to a stressful delay. When we finally rolled into IAH, like Jerry after a few nights of living through the red glare of Roger's "Bad" Chicken in Kramer's apartment, I was "on no sleep."

(May I add something? I love coming back to America from abroad because of the presidential portrait hanging in every customs line. I am absolutely certain that they haven't switched this photo of W since the day he was awarded the Florida ballots. I feel like when it finally comes down next year to make way for the shot of the next Huge Embarrassing Failure [Hillary or another G.O.P.?], there will be a rectangle of slightly different shaded white paint showing where the frame around Bush's smiling mug used to chill. Every time I'm greeted by this portrait, I smile and I sigh. So young, hair so devoid of gray and even white, wrinkles few and far between, eyes ready to conquer the world, with plenty of time for leisure on the side. So many things I want to warn him about, "and yet tragically, I cannot," in the words of Jim Halpert. Oh, George. George, George, George.)

"My dad's frend Mr. Baker trad to warn me about some 'forn' pallcy' thang er somethin', but I was too busy watchin' that Frank Catala...not....Catala.....not goin' be able to pronounce his name, whoever he is, up to bat for the Rangers."

I subsequently went out to make revelry with my friends every night after that. I was feeling the holiday spirit, what can I say? Late nights that lasted until the early hours of four, six and 5:30, respectively, are why my body pretty much just never left Africa Time. But at least I finally saw the Soulja Boy YouTube video, got to rock the Houston Oilers Starter (Apex, actually) jacket in Houston for once, and blatantly (yet unintentionally) insulted my good friend Will's new girlfriend by telling her how disgusting girls with lower back tattoos were, only to find out three seconds later that "Yes," she herself had a lower back tattoo, and "No," I could not "see it," which thereby eliminated any hope of an "Oh, well that one is fine," escape route.

Eat, drink and be merry? More than I could have ever asked for. Having been running on fumes since arriving, I conked out in my dad's leather chair last night right after the last Christmas Eve mass guest left our house. No one in my loving family felt the need to wake me up from a position that would have left me in need of a Jewish chiropractor on Christmas morning, but that wouldn't be hard to find, I'm sure. At around 10 p.m., groggily coming to, and realizing that I better get myself up the stairs and into bed if I didn't want to be spending time with Dr. My Eight Day Holiday Was Two Weeks Ago the next day, I conked out for the night.

Then, I woke up at 5 a.m. For good.

I am my father's son. Both of us love those hours of the day or night when the rest of the city is asleep. We find peace in the stillness, and we both do our best work in its midst. For The Bob, it's bills, bills, and taxes. For me, it's writing. I do my best writing in the stillness. The quiet allows me the peace to gather my thoughts, and the clarity to let them flow effortlessly through the tips of my fingers.

That's why, after opening the "Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars" DVD I got for my friend John Stewart (not that Jon Stewart, no) intending to watch myself while my family slept, I thought to check if maybe my dad had left his computer docked in overnight. He usually takes it downstairs into his room, but not today. It was sitting there waiting for me, asking me to write something. I could watch the DVD some other time, I decided. Because, and I'll let Robert Nesta take it from here, "I've got so much things to say right now, I've got so much things to saaaaay."

Christmas morning used to be something entirely different for me. That's because it was all about me. Will I get the right size Barkley's? Will my dad ease my oppression and get me that North Face backpack that I need so urgently? And Jesus, will you finally send one of those miracles my way and get my mom to cave into buying me a race car bed? I'm actually still openly voicing that last question, but at the ripe old age of 23 and 10 months, I've come to a different stage in my life. Christmas is no longer really about the gifts -- all I asked for were some basketball shoes and a green Kevin Garnett jersey, but that's just because I need to play the part of "B Show" when I go back to ball at Soweto. Christmas has turned into something bigger than the greed for material things.

And if you thought I was going to go into a religious theme in this paragraph, I apologize for laughing.

Christmas is all about feeling thankful for what I have in this world. My eyes are welling up with tears as I write that. How can I ever fully express gratitude like this? After the things I have seen in the last five and a half months in a village in northern Tanzania, and in six months in Yugoslavia before that, I know I don't deserve any of the things I was born into. How do I explain to my friends from Strake, most of whom have never even been outside of America, and who aren't exactly visiting our own poverty stricken areas on a regular basis, just how lucky we all really are? Before I started traveling, I knew that cerebrally. But after learning all the stuff I've learned since June 2006, I now know it viscerally. And it fills me with guilt.

Everything I'm looking at in this room is something my neighbors in Patandi could never afford. The computer, the Sharper Image desk lamp, the Intercom phone, the digital picture frame, the big screen TV, the leather computer chair, the pictures on the shelves displaying scenes from sailing trips to the Bahamas, fishing trips to Guatemala, debutante balls at the Houston Country Club and graduation days from out-of-state universities. I did nothing to deserve any of it. Some of my neighbors in Tanzania don't have shoes. And yet here I sit, a child of fortune, trying to come to terms with why I am so blessed.

Who do I express this gratitude to? A baby in a manger? I find it hard to do that when I have seen so much suffering and inequality in the world. The meek shall inherit the earth, eh? Kinda clashes with "God Bless America," but we'll see. It is ironic, though. Even though organized religion has had its run with me, and I don't know if I'll ever be back, I still completely buy into the same basic messages Christianity is all about: love, respect, humility in the face of something greater than yourself, forgiveness, but most of all, gratitude. And there is just something about the Christmas season that evokes a sort of self-administered attitude check.

Family comes to the forefront, first and foremost. Sentimentality and a ton of stored numbers hikes up my cell phone bill. Hugs are doled out liberally by the most conservative of friends. Those basic messages that not just Christianity, but every faith promotes as the end all be all of human existence seem to increase in importance as well. It makes me realize what a bad person I am, but then again, we're all guilty of the same vices to a certain extent, so at least I'm not alone. I mean come on, even Jesus sinned! (We don't even need Dan Brown to send the entire Christian belief in a sinless Jesus tumbling down; let's look right in the Bible! Matthew 21:12 doesn't sound like the kind of guy I'd necessarily call the Prince of Peace. I mean, yeah, you definitely should not be selling doves and screwing tourists over on the exchange rate right in front of the Temple, but flipping their tables over and driving them away because of it? Where does this guy think he his, his father's house or something?)

Love thy enemy, shmove thy enemy

But I digress. Christmas, originally a pagan celebration of the sun god, only to be transformed into a celebration of the birth of Jesus, has once again been transformed into a celebration of a different kind by modern day civilization. For little kids, it's all about consumerism -- molding young Americans into good, capitalistic citizens of the future. But for old men like me and my dad, it's about family, plain and simple. For some, it's still about baby Jesus, and hell, maybe there even still some pagans out there worshipping the sun god. But family is what it represents for the masses.

The Bob, who has nine younger brothers and sisters and who is a bigger sucker for family moments than Danny Tanner, would surely agree with me. And to tell you the truth, it was coming home to see him that meant the most to me, just as I knew it would mean more to him than to anyone else in my family for me to come home. The Prodigal Son has returned, after all, even if it is just for two weeks before he goes back off into the banana trees of East Africa. As I polished and edited my story this morning, the sun having already risen and the stillness starting to turn into the first stirrings of the new day, Christmas day, The Bob came upstairs to find me sitting at his desk. It's the same desk he sits at every night, wishing his family were all together, looking at photos of past moments spent with them, wondering if his only son will ever come home again for another Christmas. I could tell he felt an immense sense of contentment at that moment, when he ran his hands through my hair and struggled to get out the most basic of sentences.

"I'm happy to have you home," he said, trying to force a smile that only served to mask the buildup of emotion. "For me, Christmas is having everyone..." he took a moment to compose himself before getting out just one last word. "Together."

Now it was my turn to fight back tears. I couldn't look at him if I was going to succeed in doing so, so I just stared off into the distance for a few seconds.

"Me too." That was all I could muster. That was all that needed to be said.

Merry Christmas everyone.

AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR! EXCLAMATION!! AHHHHH!!

A witch doctor?!

So I take back what I said about getting eaten alive by a pack of guard dogs being the worst way to die. The other side of the story involving the other night's incident outside Mama Lema's house has come to the surface.

"He was already dead when they dropped him there," Ras Munir told us today. "They cut off the ears, the nose, the mboo," he said, using the Swahili word for the worst thing a man could lose. "There was no way a dog could have bitten like that. It was a witch doctor."

Not a dog. A WITCH DOCTOR was responsible for this lifeless corpse being dumped D.O.A. outside of Mama Lema's gate sometime during that night, minus all the features on his face and his D.

And to think, I used to be scared of getting mugged. At least machete-wielding thieves don't demand that you give them your genitals.

KUNA MBWA MKALI

Originally, Hunter and I were going to be living in a house in Arusha, replete with a gate, a gardener and an askari, the Swahili word for "security guard who sleeps all night and doesn't really protect you." Plans fell through when our boss was told she was getting a major Mzungu price, and out the window went my dreams of being able to say, "I have a gardener."

House shopping was on the top of our list when the three of us arrived in Tanzania on the 4th of July. When we finally picked a place, we were no longer going to be staying in town, but up the road in Tengeru -- but it didn't come with a gardener, and no askari, either.

Not that we've even needed one so far -- no askari could have saved us from the schemes of the 11-year-old next door neighbor punk who ripped us off for $500, and all instances of trouble with machete-wielding thugs have been restricted to someone else's problem (but we have gotten to witness someone else's problem as it unfolded in the form of him getting beaten with the blade of a panga). But you never know when someone else's problem will become your own. It may be cute and all to hear two Wazungu speaking Swahili and meshing with the community, but we've got bull's eyes painted on our backs that wouldn't come off in a monsoon of turpentine.

No matter what we do, Hunter and I will always be two Wazungu standing out like sore thumbs in a community of people who feel as if we owe them something. So we take measures to prevent those types of misunderstandings. When we go get beers at Jerusalem Garden, Hunter carries a machete of his own. When I have to make the short trip down the path to get some Cokes at night, I shove three keys into the gaps between my fingers, ready to remove someone's eyeball with one quick jab if they get frisky. Any time we're walking at night, town or home, we're ready to rumble.

Envision something for me. Picture Erin Spelling moving to South Central Los Angeles and building a billion square foot home with a big gate and lots of expensive gadgets inside ... but failing to put an ADT sign in the front yard. He also decides not to put any pit bulls or German shepherds around the property, either. That's a pretty good analogy to our situation.

We've got locks, and we've got our street cred to protect us, and that is about it. We are eating, breathing sore thumbs because of our skin color and because of where we live: "the Mzungu Spaceship." This brick-walled, metal-roofed structure, replete with local luxuries such as electricity, non-dirt floors and running water, seems as if it fell from the heavens and just plopped right down in Patandi. It has a gate, and it's got a few broken bottles cemented on top of the wall that people would likely hop over if they wanted to break in, and it's got us and all our valuables.

Because I'm sure Murray is having a heart attack right now on account of our security situation, let me explain why this seemingly dangerous situation is actually the best option.

Why I don't like the idea of an askari:

• because I trust very few people in Africa as it is -- a random dude we pay to guard us is just as likely to unlock our gate for would be robbers, if they cut him in on the booty
• because many of them are wasted every time I see them
• because I don't trust men who wear ski masks in 70 degree weather (Africans make me look like an ice fisherman with their aversion to the cold)
• because, like I said, the word askari actually means "security guard who sleeps all night and doesn't really protect you."

Why, until two days ago, I was so enamored with the idea of getting a couple of dogs to protect us:

• because Mama Lema, the owner of the school we teach at, has a pack of them that will attack even her own son, Abel (but like every other Tanzanian I've ever met, Abel brought it upon himself by treating dogs like his own personal punching/kickboxing bag)
• because Baba Juma's two dogs go ballistic at least two times every night, barking so ferociously that I can actually feel the foam building up at the corners of their mouths, as I wonder what poor guy might possibly be in danger of getting flat out mauled at the doorstep of the Mzungu Spaceship
• because I love dogs!

Why I am no longer a proponent of guard dogs:

• because of what happened two nights ago.

"Baba Juma just sent me a text and said that Mama Lema's dogs killed somebody last night outside of her house," Hunter said as I was still rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, standing there in my boxers about to take a bucket shower. "They need people to help identify the body."

"WHAT??" And I'm awake.

The same Mama Lema who owns our school had a dog that killed a man. The same Mama Lema who has that wild pack of dogs keeping watch over her even bigger spaceship, also plopped right in the middle of our village, but not owned by Wazungu. Mama Lema's dogs killed someone two nights ago, just a stone's throw from our house, and no one really seems to be that concerned about it.

"Was he trying to steal something? Was he breaking in?" I had a thousand questions for Biti that morning, and if I wasn't already late (thanks, empty water tank), I would have asked them all. "What was he doing??"

"Alikuwa akipita tu," she said, filling in the blanks of my first two queries with a "No," and answering the final question completely: He was just passing by.

"He was just passing by?! And the dogs killed him?"

"Ndiyo," Biti replied, not seeming to be as upset by this fact as I would have expected. "They say the dogs bit off his eyes," she touched her right eyebrow and winced, "his ears," a hand to her ear lobe, "his lips," she touched her mouth, "and his..." Biti looked around before she demonstrated the final piece -- or missing piece -- of the puzzle. "They even ate ... pumbu," she finally managed to squeak out, pointing towards her private parts.

Chalk it up for THE WORST way to die: Mauled by a pack of guard dogs and losing your balls in the process.

In America, Mama Lema would go to prison. In Tanzania, she had to deal with an annoyance. Such is life for the rich in Tanzania. I wonder if the poor guy's family can even afford a funeral.

Serenity Now.

It's fitting that the episode of "Seinfeld" that I watched right before leaving my house to walk over to this Internet cafe was the one about George, Step 9 and Rage-aholics Anonymous. The little "problem" that so often left my parents ashamed, embarrassed, or both throughout the course of my childhood has apparently still not managed to work its way out of my system.

It's sports. My demons reside in the effects they have upon me. Sports are my anti-Prozac, my anti-Zoloft, taking me either sky high or Danakil Depression low, depending on who's winning and how many outs to go. In a way, it's an emotional see saw that is actually quite poignant. I've been told that I go heavy on the superlatives, all shades of gray being morphed into either "the best" or "the worst," so it's cute that my relationship with sports (a.k.a. the only thing that keeps me sane in an increasingly insane world) forms a perfect parallel to my rather intense personality as a whole.

For the purposes of this story, though, we're going with the low end of the see saw -- where the demons come into play.

When I was five years old, my favorite "game" pushing Weel Brasseux around in the backyard. By ten, I'd moved onto baseball, but the No. 1 memory that comes to mind when I recall that dreadful 4-12 season with the Jaguars was when the head coach yelled "Foul!" at the top of his lungs just before a rope I'd sent down the third baseline skidded from fair territory into the corner of the outfield. In the time it took me to run to first, stop, casually jog back to the plate, pick up the bat, hear the umpire say "That ball was fair, son," and run back to second, I could've rounded the bases twice. But instead of getting my first career home run, I was left stranded, and I didn't talk to my coach for the rest of the day. The coach was my dad. By the age of 15, I'd retired from baseball, but I kept playing soccer, only to become the yellow card king of the West University club circuit. My pent up aggression could probably be attributed to some type of Freudianesque frustration -- I was a "late bloomer" coming into my own around that time -- but my behavior on the field was still embarrassing to my teammates, coaches and parents. Don't ask The Bob to bring up the time I yelled something in the middle of the game when I snapped my right arm in half -- it may have also started with 'F,' but it wasn't the word "foul." And I didn't scream it just once.

Since high school, I've really missed that rush of adrenaline that only competitive sports could provide. For example, even though it's been five years since I last played a lacrosse game, I'd give anything to take just one crushing blow from a jacked up defenseman right now -- nothing used to get my heart pumping like that, especially if I made a pass or a shot right as I got sent flying.

College was four years of bingers and inactivity, and my seven months in the Balkans and Turkey could be summed up as one big cigarette smoke filled room. A "five year sabbatical" from exercise, as I like to call it, has left me looking and feeling like a week old banana. That Freudianesque frustration I mentioned feeling as a 15-year-old full of hormones? Same sensation now, but more like when you've been sitting on an airplane forever and you are battling that uncontrollable urge to get up and do a Russian high step dance. Before my five year sabbatical, I could release my pent up energy through violent acts of aggression on the lacrosse field; during my retirement, I found myself resorting to picking fights with a 70-year-old man who unsuccessfully snubbed my attempt at a peace-making high five during Game 3 of the 2005 World Series.

It was far overdue that I start being physically active again when I came to Africa. It was like four New Year's resolutions overdue. Just like I hate taking showers until I'm actually in the shower, at which point I never want to stop, I find it difficult to gather the critical mass that is going to get me off my ass and into the ready position. But once I'm ready, I'm ready to go. And since I don't have the attention span for jogging, naturally I envisioned the village soccer field as the site of my African fitness redemption to come.

Never did I prepare for the possibility of a place like the Soweto basketball court.

Soweto isn't close. We live in Patandi, a smaller village within a larger village called Tengeru, and from there it's about a half hour commute to get to town. To save money and time, Hunter and I hitch rides -- they're called "lifties" around these parts -- every afternoon on the way to the court. Games last until sunset; we don't waste our time trying to flag down lifties on the way home. Instead, we pack into one of the thousands of public transport Hiace vans, known colloquially as dala dala's in Tanzania, and matatu's in Kenya, and hope to get a seat.

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Quick dala dala side note

Rare is the dala dala that doesn't come with a tacky decal -- think of those dudes in America who find it stylish to slap a huge Nike Swoosh or a No Fear sticker on their back windshield, and you've got the genre down pat. While half of the dala dala's go with pop culture decorative themes, though, the other half go with religious motifs:

You've got your Muslim dala dala's.

Inshaallah, "God Willing" in Arabic, taken into the East African Waislamu vocabulary over the years. A very popular dala dala selection.

You've got your Jewish dala dala. (*Notice I went with the singular there, since there are zero Jews in Tanzania, and I don't know quite how they decided upon this one).

"Shalom y'all"?!?!

And you've got the ubiquitous Christian dala dala's, who provide a divine alternative to seat belts for safety on the roads.

So... does that mean Tanzanian Muslims are freeloaders?? They should pay at least 25 percent more than the fare for those of us who've been saved.

Not being particularly religious, though, I prefer the dala dala's that really speak to me.

Your variations of Bob Marley/Rastafari dala dala's.

My favorite Marley song ...

And the destination of the Zion Train, finding refuge in the one who shall break every chain (the term Rastas use for the same dude whose blood protects me on more traditionally religious dala dala's).

There's also the free dala dala that takes us to school.

Maybe not the most appropriate decal for a school bus

And the dala dala's that I outright boycott, for obvious reasons.

Visions of a sweep...

...everywhere I turn!!!!

But at least I have some positive reminders of championship sweeps, too.

Clutch City.

Enough about getting to and from basketball. Let's talk about actually playing. (Sorry, no pictures yet).

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The only people "allowed" to play at Soweto are the regulars; Bariki Mkubwa will either kick you off or give you a tryout of sorts on your first day, depending on how you look when you're shooting around. But of the ones not told to scram after layup drills, you can break them down into three categories: the guys who come every day (Rahim and Bariki Mkubwa), the ones who come at least a few days a week (me and Hunter, Mehmet, Mr. Dennis, Bariki Mdogo and Robert), and the ones who go through spurts of coming either a lot or not at all for weeks at a time (Ice Pee, Abdallah, "Yao Ming," Elia, Mohammed). Hunter and I fall in the middle category; we play about three or four days a week.

Ramadan sucked -- most of the players are Muslim, and we never had enough for a full court game throughout their Festival of Laziness, which is understandable seeing as you're not allowed to eat or drink from sunrise to sunset the entire month. But other than that, the games are usually pretty competitive. Absolutely no D, and fast breaks galore. It's like going to training camp with the Suns, only no one can dunk and the guy with long hair (me) is not named Steve Nash.

No, my name is not Steve Nash. It's Hatari Parsley, and like George, I may be a Rage-aholic.

"Wapi? HAPA?!" Where? HERE?! That's what I wanted to know after I got whistled for my fourth foul of the game last Saturday when Hunter and I were making our debut for the Kings. The first two, okay, they were fouls. But the third, definitely not. And the fourth ... I mean, the ref was standing less than two feet away. Abdallah went up, he came down, and simply due to that fact, I got whistled for the push. It was total bullshit.

"Ndiyo, foul," the ref muttered back indifferently.

"Kweli? KWELI! Sitanii, bwana, umeita foul?" I just wanted to make sure he wasn't kidding, that he really thought looking at someone's follow through was a foul.

He said nothing. The ole' silent treatment, kind of like the one I imposed upon The Bob after the foul ball debacle.

I started to walk off the court; Hunter was waiting to sub in. But I was steaming.

"KIPOFO KABISA!" I screamed to whoever was listening, calling the ref completely blind.

That's about a normal day for me when having to deal with these ref's. It's got to be quite the sight for the dozens of spectators who come to chill and watch us play, not because they know anything about basketball, but because they've got nothing else to do. A Mzungu who is not only playing, and not only speaking Swahili, but talking shit to the ref in Swahili -- and loudly.

"Dude," you're probably saying to your monitor, "it's just pickup basketball. Chill."

That's what I'm saying to my monitor, too, trust me. But I don't know how to chill when it comes to sports, don't you see? I've never known how. It was okay when I could chalk it up to being young and immature. But I'm two months away from my 24th birthday, and I'm still dealing with the same temper problem Weel Brasseux had to bear the brunt of when I was two months away from my fourth birthday. I'm starting to worry that I'm going to become "one of those dads" who takes his children's Little League games just a little too seriously.

It's one thing to get into little tiff's here and there when you're playing against players who need to get smacked around -- like the ones who complain in English that I play "too hard" just because they don't like the sensation of me ramming my ass into them (within the rules) to box out on the boards. I don't feel bad about getting in those guys faces when they start pouting and walking up the court, muttering to the people on the sidelines that I think I "push, sana," and that I'm "B Show."

Forget those dudes. No pity. Who I do need to lay off of, though, are the ref's. I know that .... but ...... I just ................ can't. I can't!

I've got nothing against a ref; it's just that I think it's stupid to have one if he's not gonna run up and down to court to make sure that he can actually get himself into a position to make the right call. Handing some random African dude a whistle and telling him how to blow it doesn't mean he knows about basketball; it just means that he blows. I'd rather have the honor system govern fouls if that's the case.

Especially whenever Saluum gets the whistle.

"Foul, B Show!"

Saluum always calls fouls on me when he gets the chance, and he always calls me "B Show" -- it's his way of getting payback for months of hard box outs and taunting volleys (Saluum is the king of crying over my "rough play," despite the fact that he's the biggest dude out there).

"Kwa nini??" Why?

"Foul."

"Hujui basketi bwana!" I yell back, as the ball is being inbounded, letting him know that he doesn't know the rules of basketball.

"Wendo B Show kabisa," he throws back; I'm playing D on the blocks, but I'm still trading insults.

"Saluum, HUJUI SHERIA YA BASKETI," I insist, still keeping my eyes out for backdoor cuts. "Unaweza kumsukuma mtu ukitumia mkundu peke yake!" You're allowed to push someone if you use just your ass!

"Foul, B Show. Foul."

As I take the ball upcourt, I'm still jabbing. "Hujui, hujui kitu kuhusu basketi, Saluum."

It's gonna give me an early heart attack, my sports rage. But I think "Seinfeld" may have taught me the perfect solution.

SERENITY NOW!!!

Meet Fau.

Now, meet Deriki.

Together, they make up the Fau & Deriki Show...

... playing every day at an African village near me.

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For any other child in Patandi, I wouldn't be able to say. But when it's either Fau or Deriki crying in the distance, I can tell you without hesitation, no matter how faint the noise. It's a constant background hum that I've gotten as used to as I have the early morning roosters next door. These kids have practically become my own.

"The Fau and Deriki Show" is how I've labeled the separate folder in My Pictures set aside just for all the "awww, cuuuuute!" shots I've gotten of these two neighbors.

Fau, short for Fauzia, is Baba Juma's granddaughter. He spoils her rotten. Whether it's giving her hamsini (50 shillings) to go buy a piece of candy from the dukani down the path, or showering her with a level of affection that I've never seen him give to any of his own children, or spending time with her in the classroom of the daycare center run on his property, teaching her how to count to ten in English, Baba Juma lets Fau know that she is No. 1 in his heart.




(Except for when he tries to force her to hold onto a dead rat he found laying in their yard).

Deriki, on the other hand, is just a neighbor of Baba Juma's. But he is No. 1 on Fau's list of people she bitches around. Remember how I mentioned that I've come to know them so well that I know their cries from a mile away? Most of the time I hear Deriki crying, I can tell you who pushed him to that point: Fau.

Like the time Fau was messing with poor Deriki at our house when they came over to make tie dye shirts.

Deriki pointing fingers; Fau looking like "Who, me?"

But no matter how much Fau screws with her boy toy Deriki, they always kiss and make up.

"Fau! Mbusu Deriki!"

Usually because we force them to.

"Deriki! Mbusu Fau!"

And thus, I learned the command form of the word "to kiss," all because I love to screw with these two future lovebirds so much.

Maybe it's just because she's a few months older than Deriki. Or, maybe it's like Baba Juma says: "Girls mature faster than boys." I don't know how the precedent was initially set. What I do know is that Fau runs shit in this relationship.

She is constantly telling Deriki what to do, and he is constantly obeying. Normally, I say no chick is worth being humiliated for, but maybe Deriki thinks otherwise. Maybe Fau is just that fine on the two to three-year-old circuit in Patandi, and Deriki doesn't want to lose hold of his tenuous grip on her. She does have earrings already, after all -- and you should see that girl move on the dance floor.




And if that's the case, then Deriki is like me; he understands the importance of laying the foundation of your game early on. I tried that with Heather Siegfried back when we were eating mud together on Bluebonnet, and it didn't work. By the time I was five, she'd moved on to J.P. But that doesn't mean Deriki's plan will fail.

But he better realize soon that if he keeps calling Hunter by my name, Hatari, he may not live long enough to taste the fruit of the seedling he has planted in Fau's heart.

"I think he's just f****** with me," Hunter says every time he hears Deriki yell my name at him. "Every time I tell him, 'Sema Mwindaji,' he says, 'Hatari!' and laughs. The other day I swear he said 'Mwindaji,' but then he just went right back to 'Hatari.'"

"You think he's that sophisticated to be able to pull off the kind of humor?"

"I think Deriki may be smarter than we give him credit for."




Can't be that smart. As you can see, Deriki thinks he can hide from the wrath of Hunter M. Flint. Well, he's got another thing coming if that's the case. Not even his girl can save him from Mwindaji.




See?

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?"