Goodbye, Patandi.

Seven and a half months in, and just like that, Hunter and I are starting over.

Writing the obit to the backyard that periodically smells of poopy farty pants.

We moved out of our house in Patandi yesterday. Not to anywhere; just out of our village. These days, we're renting a room at an Usa River bed & breakfast run by a Tanzanian widow's group called SIAFU (an acronym that spells the word for "ant" in Swahili; coincidentally, I found about five ants crawling on my sheets this morning). Everything we own, everything that our organization owns, it's all stored in that room and in the back of our car. Homeless, the search for a new place continues on. One that will provide a sense of security. If such a thing even exists for a Mzungu, or even a relatively well off Mwafrika in Africa.

"Nimezungumza na Mwindaji," Ras Munir, telling me that he'd spoken with Hunter, said through the lingering smoke of his cigarette, "na anasikia vibaya sana kuondoka."

I just looked at our neighbor, a 27-year-old Zanzibari by birth, the rare msela that Hunter and I allow into our house, and nodded. This was the last conversation I was ever going to have in our little nyumbani. If you had told me on New Year's I'd be peeling the decal of our NGO off our dusty, black gate by just after Valentine's, I would have called you kichaa.

Crazy, perhaps. But, as it turned out, prophetic as well.

I looked away from Muniri. Our nyumbani, the place we used to mean when we said we were going "home," looked now just like a house, a nyumba. Practically empty, it was the first time I'd ever seen it look like this. It takes more than a leaky refrigerator, some stripped beds, a wobbly table and three pieces of shoddily made furniture -- the same style couches and arm chairs that we saw left out in the rain two days ago at a roadside furniture store -- to make a house into a home, after all.

Seven and a half months. Three times the length of my stay in Belgrade, a place I thought I knew so well when I left for good last April. Six weeks longer than my entire stay in the Balkans, if you really want a comparison to show how long I'd been living in this house. Just like Hunter, I too felt bad about leaving. I felt awful about leaving. How could I not?

"Mimi pia bwana," I told Muniri.

And to think, we were being chased out of town by some goddamn punk thieves.

"Sijui kesemaje kwa Kiswahili ... nanii ..." I looked for the words in my new language to describe how I really felt, but I just didn't have them; sometimes, Swahili is just too limited. So I went with English.

"It sucks, Ras Munir. SUCKS. Umeelewa?"

He understood just fine.

It sucks. No other way to put it. Hunter and I are basically starting over, almost two thirds of the way in. No matter where we go, we'll never build the same kind of relationships there as we were able to build in Patandi. And it's all finished because of those majambazi (a word I just learned the other day, which means "big thieves," as opposed to a group of wezi, just normal thieves. Majambazi just sounds way more menacing and evil; if you have Facebook, you'll note that my new residence, seeing as I don't really have one at the moment, is "Majambaziville, Tanzania").

I'm moving closer and closer to the attitude that volunteering to live in this part of Tanzania -- I know I always try to generalize for "East Africa," but in reality I have no idea if other parts are safer or not -- means taking on a certain level of risk. No matter who you are, you assume this risk. And here it is, clear as can be:

If you have possessions, some people will want to steal them. If you're white, those people will assume you have possessions.

It's 1 + 1 = 2 here, folks. And nothing short of the security detail President Bush is getting for his visit to my village tomorrow is going to change that.

(That's right, the same week we move out of Patandi, George W. Bush moves in. Him and his entourage are actually going to be going to my village and visiting the hospital there. Coincidentally, they fixed those annoying pot holes on the road leading up to it. Wonder if the maintenance and the presidential visit were related...)

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To tell the truth, though, yesterday's move had all the vibes of anticlimax. We'd known for weeks, since right after we returned from the holidays, that our move out of Patandi had been mandated by the powers that be. We hadn't even slept there since the night before I went to Dar, at the end of January, after the second attempt at a break in in 2008 alone. Asked not to broadcast any liquidation sales for would be majambazi looking for one last hit before the two Wazungu took all the booty out of town, we were forced to lie for weeks whenever we were posed awkward questions about where we'd been. Packing up was just like crossing the t's and dotting the i's.

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Besides, in my book, our time in Patandi ended when Biti, mchizi weeeeeetu, left.

"Hapa leo, kule kesho." Here today, there tomorrow. That's how I had life in Tanzania described to me yesterday by the director of one of the orphanages we work with.

And it is true. People here just disappear -- for weeks, for months, sometimes just for good. There is never any kind of warning. Just gone.

"Amis ameenda wapi?" I remember asking the first time I noticed one of my little homies from the village suddenly just not around anymore.

"Amis? Ameenda kuwasalimie familia," was the taped response. "He's gone to visit family."

That was in September. Amis ain't been back yet.

There isn't the same sense of "planning your life" in Tanzania, because you need to worry about tomorrow, not a five-year plan. In Tanzania, you just do.

Found a better job? You quit your old one by simply failing to show up any longer. Have enough cash for a bus fare to Morogoro to see your auntie? You're on the next one out of town, and you come back in four or five months.

It's exciting, in a way. Nothing is for sure. You've gotta hustle to survive. Nothing can be for sure. And life is more dynamic as a result.

Of course, the downside to this is when Biti switches schools, just like that. And all of the sudden, your best friend in the entire country -- the one whose visits are as a part of your day as the toilet seat -- just isn't there anymore.

I remember the night she came to say goodbye. Hunter and I weren't there, so she left a note with Julius, the Maasai askari we hired in response to the initial burglary. In all caps, she wrote on the outside of the folded scrap of paper, "Dear my gangsta's, Hatari na Mwindaji." I unfolded and began to read.

Here is the last part of what that letter said:

"I was really enjoying to be with you all the times, and things we do together and everything which you tought [sic] me, thanks for being so good and nice to me. I will realy [sic] going to miss you.

"There are so many people who come and go in our lives, a few touch us in ways that change us forever, making us feel better from knowing them. You have made a difference in my life, and for this I am grateful.

"Thanks for being you. And thanks for all good memories I have of you.

"Goodbye. Love, Biti."

This, from an 18-year-old Tanzanian girl from Patandi. In a language that is not her own, she brought tears to my eyes.

I grabbed my phone and sent her a text message telling her to come over and say goodbye in the morning, just so we could see her one more time. Five minutes later, I heard Julius opening the gate; Biti didn't want to wait until morning.




Biti cries about everything. And she cried big time that last night of chilling in our living room. But I still got her to laugh.

The next morning, she was gone. Two weeks later, so were we.

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When I heard someone knock yesterday, while Hunter and I were in the middle of packing everything up, the last person I expected to see was Biti.

I didn't even say anything, just opened up my arms for the bear hug.

"Nimetoroka," she said, smiling, standing on the other side of the gate as I moved towards her to wrap her up. She'd "escaped" from school, just for the afternoon, but just in time for one last goodbye.