Kwa heri, Arusha.

The end.

Today is my last day of work. I'm all packed up, sitting in my tie dye boxers while waiting to take a shower, expecting to hear Hunter and the Flint women pull into the driveway any minute to come and pick me up. I can't remember exactly, but I think this is the one year anniversary to the day of when I left Houston to fly to Charlotte -- the beginning of my year in Africa.

It's not over yet, "my year in Africa." It's actually going to come out to around 13 and a half months when it's all said and done -- I land back in NYC August 21. Until then, I'll be immersed in what very well could be the best seven weeks of my time on this continent: Mt. Kilimanjaro from July 5-10; Ethiopia from July 12-August 1; and Mt. Meru, our backyard mountain and the center of the universe according to Buddhist belief, as the kicker our last week.

Center of the Universe Blvd.

And something cool during the beginning of August. Rwanda? Uganda? Mwanza? Tutaona. All I know is that I'll finally be back on the road, where I need to be after so long camped in one spot.

Subtracting two weeks for Christmas, and three for our April tour around southern Tanzania, I spent a year in Arusha, a town-that-is-quickly-becoming-a-packed-and-dirty-African-city west of Kili, east of the Serengeti, and just south of the Kenyan border.

Traffic in Arusha: in this shot, you have accounted for motorcycles, bikes, dumptrucks, safari SUV's, Rav4 styled SUV's, and human traffic (kind of). Not pictured: daladala's, Maasai boys herding cattle on the sides of the road, Maasai women walking their donkeys, a dude carrying a pile of grass (for feeding livestock) the length of Yao Ming laying down. Driving here is an experience. It's like a video game.

The first six months we spent in a village about 20 km outside of town. The next six weeks were a sad story of homelessness and house hunting as we searched for a new home, once it became clear that it was just too dangerous to stay in Patandi. The remainder of our time has been spent in this sick new crib in Kijenge Chini, a neighborhood inside of Arusha itself. Warts and all, A-Town became my home. There were rough patches; a lot of them. And I had my fair share of F this place moments.

Sing it!

But whether you call it Arusha or A-Town Nightmares, it became my home. I spent too much time here, made too many friends for me to leave and say that I don't want to come back one day. I do. But Mungu tu knows when.

I kind of pushed all in in deciding to come to TZ. "You need to think first." That was all my dad had to say on the matter when I dropped the bombshell on him from Belgrade last February, during Month 9 of my trip. A good rule of thumb? When receiving a rare, unprompted long distance phone call from your 23-year-old son who's been traveling aimlessly for the past nine months since he finished college, never expect that the "good news" he supposedly has for you is going to outweigh the "and bad news" part.

"My time in the Balkans looks like it's gonna come to a close pretty soon. I'm coming home in mid April."

"That's great!"

"But I'm leaving for a year in Tanzania on July 1."

The orange country to the east of Italy to the red star in the blue country. Quite a random jump, wouldn't you say?

There were plenty of other words, of course, in my dad's reply, but he could have summed them up with just that one sentence. "You need to think first." He was not happy.

As I stood out on the balcony during that cold February night in Belgrade, just outside of my Balkan home sweet home, the Three Black Catz, I knew that I had done just the opposite of what I "needed" to do. I hadn't put any thought whatsoever into my decision to commit the next year of my life to a boss, organization, country and continent I knew next to nothing of. All I had was Hunter, my best friend from UVa, who I hadn't seen since July.

434 represent

And we were going to be chilling together in East Africa for a year, working, yes, but chilling together in East Africa for a year nonetheless. And I thought that was it was beautiful idea.

Maisha mazuri.

My dad, of course wasn't the only one that had plenty of skepticism about my decision making ability. Pretty much most of the mature adults I talked to reacted just the same. Can you blame them? It's the difference between 23 and 53, or even 33. I understood that. And I also knew that I was taking a big risk. That's the thing about grown ups' advice: it's usually right. I just didn't care. I had been loving life abroad up to that point; money was running low; I didn't want to move back to the US of A just yet. I was trying to live in Tanzania with my boy. Why? Why not?

It was ironic, then, when I found out the English translation of the school where our NGO has placed 32 students since its inception: "Think First Academy."

I love envisioning an Excel graph that charts the peaks and valleys of my emotional state since I got here to A-Town on the 4th of July, 2007. The header: How I Feel About Not Thinking First. First day in TZ -- high; second day -- low; second week -- high; first month -- low; up and down up and down up and down based on the day for the rest of the months until March, at which point the graph essentially plateaus into a consistent feeling of contented acceptance.

I hadn't thought of that phrase until it just flowed forth from my fingertips two seconds ago. I like that way of putting it. Contented acceptance. That's the difference between someone who comes here for eight months and someone who stays for 12. And it's what you need if you're going to be able to live in a place like Arusha, Tanzania.

It's accepting the reality of life in the third world, especially for a Mzungu living in Africa. But more than that, it's accepting reality while not letting it drive you into the depths of cynicism. It's laughing at stuff that others would want to draft UN conventions to address. Or blaming yourself for giving someone the opportunity to break your heart, when you know it's unfair to dangle a huge hunk of cheese over a mouse cage like that. You laugh, and you protect yourself. That's all you can do*.

Example of when to laugh: Africa Time.

The reason that it takes so long to reach this point is because strong principles can't be stripped away over night. They are worn down slowly, bit by bit, like a dull panga chopping away on an acacia. And when they finally realign themselves into this new, adapted mold, the initial period which follows often takes on a feeling of extreme apathy. Sort of a what's the use? mentality. It's incredibly disappointing to realize things about morality that you never thought you would come to agree with. But it's even more disappointing when you realize that this realization in and of itself still doesn't mean that anything is going to change.

Most white kids who come here have a sense of being "different" than the others back home, those who don't get why he or she would want to come to Africa. "They" are "corporate." "They" are "ignorant." Or "provincial," "all the same," "boring." Wanderers and habitual non-planners love these little self-inflaters designed to add some sort of uniqueness to their existence, to give them a higher purpose than those who took the easy route. Hunter and I thought we were different.

I mean, we really like reggae. And we're sooo gonna learn Swahili. And then, if we walk everywhere, and eat the same foods, and learn some slang from Nako2Nako songs, we'll totally be accepted into the community. We won't even need a security guard.

Riiiiight.

This is a dangerous idea to have in your mind if, when you set foot on African soil you are not open to at some point undergoing a drastic reassessment of the way you view the world. The foundation of this state of contented acceptance is the following fact: ukiwa Mzungu, wewe ni Mzungu mpaka la mwisho. If you're a white boy, you are a white boy until the end. And that will never change.

This year has been crazy intense. I learned things I never dreamed I'd learn (Swahili, how an African AIDS clinic smells, driving on the left hand side of the road, the best way to slaughter a goat); things I used to know and have been wanting to relearn (how to shoot a basketball, making grilled cheese sandwiches, the easiest ways to embarrass Hunter); and things I always wished I could learn (patience, understanding, forgiveness), which require daily reminding if they are to be maintained. I got to spend a year with Hunter, now named Mwindaji to me mpaka la mwisho, and hear him serenade me on the guitar all day every day. I got to keep growing my hair out, the longest it's ever been, making me look super suave. And I even got to meet George W. Bush.

All of these memories, all of these stories, and I'm still alive. And I'm still going, too. Maybe the reason I came to Africa in the first place, my job, is over, but the fun part is only now beginning. All of this without thinking first.

The Waswahili have a great saying that sort of sums it all up for me: Maisha ni kama maua, na sisi ni kama vipepeo. Life is like flowers, and we are like butterflies.

Maybe grown ups don't know so much after all.

Kwa heri, Tanzania. Nitakukumbuka sana.

(*For all you douche bag Tanzanian drivers out there who use your brights full time on the roads after sunset, I want to impress upon you the knowledge that temporary blindness given to an oncoming driver could well be fatal for you, too. If that's what you're gonna do, though, that's what you're gonna do. I've accepted it; but I will never, never, be contented in that category. It's like how I feel about people back home not giving the wave. I don't expect that here, but I will never back down in my mission to teach people here like you a lesson, one at a time. If you turn on your brights, I'm turning my brights on too, until you pass by me. Even if you turn yours off, I'm keeping mine on to show you the depths of my mercy: baby pool territory. If cars behind you have to suffer, I apologize to them in advance. Collateral damage is sometimes a necessary casualty of the pursuit of justice.)