Kosovo is ... Serbia?
Kosovo is ... Kosovo?
Kosovo is ... the match that will light the next Balkan war.

About the only thing the U.S./Kosovar and Serbian/Russian camps can agree on these days is the third statement in that list.

I've been living in Tanzania for almost eight months now; four months to go. I've put down some pretty solid roots in East Africa, temporary they might be, and I've become extremely comfortable here. But my heart is still in the Balkans.

And I always will.

I have a job, and thus a commitment, in Tanzania. But if I could go back right now, at this moment, I would. Without hesitation, I'd be on a plane to Belgrade. I want to be there. I want to watch history unfold in a place that has formed such a significant part of my life experiences. I'm here; O.G. is there. I'm here; Mladen is there. Dragana is there. Zivko. Ana. Ivana. All of my Serbian friends. They're all there, in the same city where a bunch of shabani are setting flame to the U.S. embassy, where people are looting the McDonalds', and the government is sponsoring 150,000 people to take to the streets of a place I used to call home, to protest the loss of a land that they used to call home.

I'm here, and they're all there. And the whole place looks like it could erupt at any moment.

The whole place as in, the entire Balkan Peninsula. Read your history, folks. Here we go again.

Kosovar independence was a long time coming. But it was almost like the speeding car you see approaching in your side mirrors on I-10, the one always driven by a guy with a fade: OBJECTS ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR. It always shocks you when that car catches up and just flies by you: "Hey, that object really was closer than it appeared."

It's the same with the Kosovar decision to declare its statehood last week, after months -- no, years -- of talking a talk that, until now, lacked the political support to come with a walk.

Well, look who's walkin' now.

With the support of the U.S. ("Greatest country in the world!!"), and a few notable EU states as well, the Kosovar Albanians have just upped the ante on what comes next in the former Yugoslavia. Russia is in no mood to get bitch slapped again, like they were the last time Kosovo was making the headlines with such ferocity, in 1999. That humiliation -- Russian concerns about the make up of a Balkan peacekeeping force were treated like a suggestion from the uncle that has dementia -- spelled the end of Boris Yeltsin's credibility; but Vladimir Putin, the new Czar, ain't going down like that. The Russians are back; we haven't gone anywhere; and the Balkans is where this new chapter in the game is going to unfold.

Tito has just officially rolled over in his grave for the 1,000,000th time since he died in 1980. His precious creation -- his dream of Yugoslav "Brotherhood & Unity" -- continues to rip itself apart, 13 years after Dayton, nine years after the NATO Bombing Spring, five years after the eruption of violence against Kosovar Serbs by the majority Albanian community of the former Serbian enclave known as the birthplace of the Serbian nation.

First comes Kosovar independence, and then what?

Definitely not this.

The Serb minority in Kosovo -- between five and 10 percent of the overall population, and almost entirely located in the north, abutting Serbia proper -- is talking partition. The crazy ass (think Gaza strip settler as opposed to a West Banker) Bosnian Serbs to the west -- the ones who form 49 percent of a country literally being held together by EU/NATO Band Aids, Bosnia-Hercegovina -- are talking secession; they'd be joining forces with their Orthodox brethren in Kosovo in breaking away from one country to join where they feel they really belong: in Greater Serbia.

First goes Kosovo, then goes the Serb enclave in Kosovo, then goes Republika Srpska in Bosnia. And then, my friends, we'll be watching history unfold all over again.

Let's all say a prayer.

"Where you from, boy?"
Texas proud.

If you had told me four years ago I'd get the opportunity to shake hands with the man I viewed as a symbol for all that was wrong in the world, I would have recoiled in disgust.

George "Yo, Blair" Bush?! The man who redefined the meaning of the word "axis"? The man who once said the problem with the French was that they didn't have a word for "entrepreneur" in their language? The man who actually used the word "crusade" in the early days of the global struggle against radical Islam? Guantanamo, what? "Mission Accomplished," what? Abu Ghraib, what? "Kenny Boy," what? And a RANGERS fan? WHAT?

Maybe I've sold out since college. Maybe I've just gotten soft in my old age. I know that my 20-year-old self would be disgusted with present day me. But I don't care. I got to meet George W. Bush on Monday, and I was damn excited about it.

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You could see the gears in motion behind those eyes, eyes that once looked into Vladimir Putin's own and "got a sense of his soul," but that I never dreamed would be fixed directly upon me from less than a foot away. But it wasn't me that was causing Bush's gears to get in motion; it was what I was wearing on my head. For almost as soon as we started shaking hands, W's gaze shifted upwards, coming to rest upon the words printed on the red, mesh trucker hat I deemed appropriate for a meeting with the leader of the free world.

With our state flag as a the backdrop, these words caught his attention:

TEXAS PROUD Sesquicentennial 1836-1986.

"I wore my special hat for you, sir," I said, knowing he was about to ask.

"Boy, I tell ya. Until I saw yer hat, I thought the word 'Sesquicentennial' was some kinda Indian chief from one of those John Wayne movies. That's good stuff, Bayless. Good stuff."

Those gears, they were a clickin' all right. Our handshake still going, he asked in that unmistakable good ole boy accent, "Where you from?"

All that was missing was the word "boy" at the end.

"Houston," I replied. My heart was racing. I couldn't help it.

"Really?" He kind of paused: the hat had worked. His eyebrows raised a bit: I was racking up points now.

"Yes, sir," I said, stupidly (read: maturely? wisely?) missing an opportunity that 20-year-old me would have been all over. If I'd really had a pair, I would have come back at him with a Borat voice: "Nooooot!"; then finished him with more Borat voice: "Premier Bush! Strong, like Stalin."

Apparently ole George approved, because he went from the handshake straight into the shoulder slap -- as in, the patented, George W. Bush shoulder slap. The one he gives to awkward, non-Texan dignitaries the world over. And for me, someone who also loves to dish out the shoulder slap myself, it was pretty cool. He still didn't call me "boy," which I wanted to hear more than you know, but we did get to see the "Bush Face" -- the one where he looks like he's trying to make the random three-year-old kid sitting four tables down laugh, while his/her parents have their backs turned to his distorted facial expressions that can only described as downright goofy. The Bush Face is kind of like how that judge once described pornography: you know it when you see it.

"Yes sir, my name is Bayless Parsley."

The Bob had sworn that if President Bush met a Houstonian with that name, it would just click. The Bayless family and the Bush family have roots that go way back to the days before George H. W. got into politics -- my grandmother still gets their Christmas card (my favorite was in December 2003, when George and Barbara wished "Peace on Earth, and Goodwill to All") if you want proof. But judging from Dubya's reaction, or non-reaction, to put it more accurately, it didn't appear as if anything had clicked at all. So I got more specific.

"You're friends with my uncle actually. Jim Bayless."

Still, nothing. But he did his best to pretend.

"Oh, well give him my best, will ya?"

I thought to myself how many people must "be friends with George Bush." I can't even remember the names of half my graduating class from Strake Jesuit, and that was about 165 people.

"Yes, sir."

My heart was still racing. It was hard to breathe, let alone make chit chat. Just take a peek into my thought process as this was all going down if you want to try and understand why: I can't believe George Bush just gave me the shoulder slap. I can't believe I'm excited to meet this joker. I can't believe George Bush just gave me the shoulder slap!! I can't believe I'm excited to meet this joker!!!

"Now my niece lives in town, and I want a nice, southern gentleman like yerself to look after her, ya hear? And no monkey business, either. I've got satellites watchin'.... oh I'm just kiddin'! Heh heh."

"Are you from Texas, too?" he asked Hunter, who was standing directly to my left.

"No, sir," Mwindaji said. "I'm fortunate enough to not be from there."

Even my 20-year-old self would have been shocked that Hunter could show so little respect to our Commander in Chief. Who does this kid think he is, Stephen Colbert? It's one thing to hate on Bush for turning "USA" into a four-letter word, but it's another thing to hate on Texas.

It's like making fun of my mom. I can; you can't.

I can criticize things about Texas, but Mr. Queen City can't.

Outsiders shouldn't Mess With Texas.

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When I fished the Texas Proud Sesquicentennial hat out from under a pile of other American hand me downs at the Tengeru sokoni last August, "face time with George Bush" was not one of the potential windfalls I had in mind.

Looking like a badass: that was on the list. Representing: also a consideration. You know I was keeping it real, that much is obvious, but what no one probably ever could have expected from that hat was getting President Bush's attention. That was an audible called out at the line of scrimmage just last week.

As part of his five-day, six-country Africa visit that ends today, President Bush had penciled in an appearance at the Emusoi Center for Pastoralist Girls during his pit stop in Arusha. We just happened to have sponsored a girl this past January from Emusoi, essentially a haven for teenage Maasai young ladies who prefer an education to forced marriage and domestic abuse. In this world, it's all about who you know. The White House knew about Emusoi, and we knew Sister Mary, the American born nun who runs Emusoi.




Man, am I glad we sponsored Agness.

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Our new friend "John," a rare Mzungu aid worker that Hunter and I actually click with, empathized with the inner conflict I underwent on Monday.

PHOTO UNAVAILABLE.

He reminds me a lot of my best friend from my travels in the Balkans, Stewy. Add seven years and a few gray hairs; subtract a little bit of Stewy's intensity on matters Bush, and you've really got a match. "John" even looks like Stewy, quite frankly. Even had a mohawk back in the day, and likes girls from Uganda. But what they've really got in common is the fact that they really, really dislike George Walker Bush.

They're both Cali boys, after all.

"Man, I can't believe I just shook his hand like that, like an idiot," he regretted over the not cold beers we had after it was all over. "If my friends at home saw me, they'd be like, 'Maaaaan, why weren't you out there protestin' that shit!'"

My friends at home, on the other hand, will probably be upset that I didn't get them an autograph. Not a very liberal bunch, the ole gang from high school.

Earlier in the day, while we were waiting in the shade for Bush to arrive, I'd explained my situation to "John" by saying, "I'd probably be this excited to meet Stalin, to be quite honest." Strong, like Premier Bush!

But "John" was just doing what he had to do to better the NGO that he co-founded, based outside Arusha.

PHOTO UNAVAILABLE

(note: In no way shape or form am I saying that Bush could hold Stalin's jock strap when it comes to the "What a dickhead" sweepstakes. But it is funny to hear Borat say it.)

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I could go on about the way I felt inside about meeting this man. It was tough. It was amazing. It made me feel like a freaking hypocrite. It made me feel incredibly special -- the President actually talked to me. About stuff.

But that was nothing, as it turned out.

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"Bayless? I'll see if I can find him," we heard the old man who had been sitting behind us say into his cell phone. Hunter and I were chilling with Peter in the back; Bush had disappeared behind the hedges into VIP land.

"Niko hapa!" I yelled. "I'm here!"

Turns out the guy didn't speak Swahili. "They wanna talk to you on the phone!" he hollered back across the 100 or so guests still sitting in the shade, all Tanzanian save for us three and this old man and his wife.

As I walked up to answer, all I could think was, "Oh. My. God."

"Hello?"

"Is this Bayless?"

"Yeah."

It was Bush's 24-year-old assistant, who just happens to be friends with one of my St. Vincent's buddies from back in the day. She said the President wanted my contact information.

Huh??????

I guess he DID know my uncle!

I gave her my home address, my email, my phone numbers, my everything. Everyone was watching me, Hunter said, in awe. Who is this guy? Is he dating one of Bush's daughters? And the like.

I cannot explain it. He never called. What a jerk. Just stood me up like that. Men.

But still.....

I feel like a 16-year-old girl on the set of the Ed Sullivan Show. George plays himself. He wanted my phone number!! OMG!

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And still, we have not come to the coolest part.

"Those Maasai dancer guys said they want a picture with you," Peter told me, the interpreter his Maasai buddy named Grosper (his parents misspelled "Prosper" at the hospital, and now, he's ... unique).

"Huh?"

"I don't know man. Not Hunter; not me; just you. I think they think you're big time or something."

Big time because I'm big time boys with George Bush I suppose!

Not me, the Mzungu tourist wanting a photo with the "wild African" Maasai. Oh no, it's the Maasai, most of whom in this picture don't even speak Swahili, they're that legit, wanting a picture with me! And they'll never even see the photo! Maybe they think this will bring them good medicine or something.

Of course, I obliged them. One even made me hold his Maasai beat stick to look more like one of them, or maybe to rub some of my power onto its handle. Presidential power.

This really isn't getting to my head, though.

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George Bush once looked into Vladimir Putin's eyes and "got a sense of his soul." I looked into George Bush's eyes and got confirmation that he is that guy who you just wanna sit down and have a beer with, the Lone Star Series on TV in the background. I have to admit, I really liked the guy. Personally.

"I really cannot spell the word 'Afghanistan' for the life of me! Can you? That 'h' after the 'g' always gets me."

Politically, though, he's a joke. Or an embarrassment. Or a failure.

But our 60 seconds of shmoozing convinced me that he really is the way the media portrays him to be: simple.

Maybe not the best of presidential material, but definitely the friend-of-your-dad type, a guy you know is going to buy a ton of raffle tickets or Little League candy if you're a 12-year-old with the balls to call him up and make your pitch. If September 11, 2001 had been just another day, had "compassionate conservatism" not given way to "Bring it on," I could honestly see myself saying, "I like George Bush."

But like The Bob always says, "If 'if's' and 'but's' were candies and nuts, we'd all be fat at Christmas."

We gotta come up with a better saying than that. How about, "If 'if's' and 'but's' were WMD's, we'd all be dead at Christmas."

That's more like it.

IF ANYONE READS THIS TODAY, CHECK OUT THE TODAY SHOW TOMORROW.

You might see me in the background of President Bush's interview that he's giving at the Emusoi Center for Maasai girls; Hunter and I scored invites to his appearance there.

Hunter said I had to shave. That's fine, but I'm not cutting my hair: I've already told someone that I refuse to let George Walker Bush play the Delilah to my Samson.

If I do get to meet W, though, I only want the answer to one question:

"Are you really planning to give Roger Clemens a pardon?"

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.

♫"Wake up and turn I loose.... (Ka-yaaaa! Ka-yaaaa!)"♫

I got to have (the Young clan) now...

I love people with cool names. Me, for example. I have a cool name. I'll admit it. And that's why I love myself. But it's why I love my parents some, too.

Robert Bayless Parsley? No offense to The Bob and his dad, but my name is Bayless. My middle name, technically, but my name, if you asked me. And I've answered to it since Day One, February 28th, 1984. My parents, who had already had a Christmas Day baby in Elizabeth, make one huge mistake by having me induced the day before Leap Day, (which would've been awesome), only to completely redeem themselves by calling me by my mom's badass maiden name. Seven years later, when my little sister accidentally showed up on the ultrasound screen, she too got a cool name. Garland.

Garland, Bayless ... and Elizabeth.




At least Eli's got the Christmas Day thing going for making her feel special. If getting like two thirds the combined amount of average presents for Jesus' birthday/your own birthday is even a good thing.

Our dogs, too, have always had cool names, the first one not included (my grandmother, an old friend of Senior Bush's, gave us a rambunctious Shnauzer named "George Bush"). That's because my mom has always named them after beers: Corona, Lone Star, Pacifico and Shiner.

My sweet baby Pacifico curled up on my mom's leg, and my dumbass, lovable Shiner looking all curious. Much to The Bob's chagrin, his wife welcomes them with open arms onto their bed.

My dad, always referred to as "The Bob" in anything written by me or my mother, has a definite article attached to the front of his name, for Christ's sake. How many people do you know with that distinction? It's so ingrained at this point, the definite article, that this past January, my mom and I decided to give him a birthday gift more forever than a diamond: brand new, Texas vanity license plates with just six letters that say it all: THE BOB. (He didn't really like the gift that much, but tough shit, you're putting them on your car until we take your keys away, Dad.)

So you see where it comes from, my love of people/animals with cool names. If I ever have kids of my own, which completely depends on how my little guys swim when they make it into the Olympic size pool, I've already got the first born son's birth certificate drawn up in my head:

Robert Nesta Parsley

Allow me to explain.

In the Parsley family, there is a budding tradition of naming the oldest boy "Robert [INSERT MIDDLE NAME HERE] Parsley." It started when my grandfather, "Foss," was born as Horace Parsley. After the war, not wanting to be confused with any black power forwards of the future, and feeling like he needed a more professional sounding name as a young lawyer trying to get established in his new town of Houston, Texas, he changed it to Robert Parsley. Horace got to stick around in the middle, an east Tennessee mountain kid's version of keepin' it real.

And that original Bob Parsley, not wanting a Junior, but really liking his new style, kept it going. His first born he named Robert Strake Parsley: "Bobby" throughout his childhood, "Bob" once he suddenly got too cool for school in college, and later, once he married an all-observing smart ass writer (who gave me my all-observing smart ass writer genes) coming to be known as The Bob. Anyone who knows The Bob -- Mr. Catholic -- knows he is never one to buck tradition. He named his first born son, and Foss' first born grandson, Robert, too. Robert Bayless Parsley. This guy.

Usipime, kwa sababu mindo HATARIIIIII

Unlike the first two Robert's, I'm not into the whole naming-your-kids-after-you thing. If it wasn't for this one little coincidence, I'd totally go with something fresher than that; give the kid a chance to forge his own identity, utterly and wholly. But then I think to myself...

... Bob Marley's full name was Robert Nesta Marley. And he went by Nesta as a kid.

Robert Nesta Marley --> Robert [INSERT MIDDLE NAME HERE] Parsley --> Robert Nesta Parsley.

And we'll call him Nesta. It's the natural progression: continue on with the "Robert" tradition, but give him a cool name. Just like what happened with me.

Sometimes I blow myself away with my brilliance. This kid is gonna be the man. He won't really have a choice, I'm afraid, unless he hates Bob Marley as much as Michael Bolton hates Michael Bolton in "Office Space."

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Which brings me to my young friend Kaia.

If you feel like you've heard this word, you might be Turkish. It means "rock," or "stone," or something between those two things and a hard place in your language, right? But the more likely explanation is that you've heard one of my favorite Nesta Marley songs, "Kaya," when he screams the name of Skeeter's baby over, and over, and over again.

Albeit, with a slightly different spelling, and with a completely different idea of what he's yelling about.

"Kaya man!"

In Jamaica, "kaya" means herb.

"Got to have kaya now. (Ka-yaaa! Ka-yaaaa!) Got to have KA-YAA now! (Ka-yaaa, Ka-yaaa!) Got to HAVE ka-yaa now! (Ka-yaaa, Ka-yaaaaa!) For the rain is falllllllin'!"

About eight months ago, a couple of Houstonians did have Kaia. Their names are J.J. and Skeeter.

So happy, so young, so in love ... so unaware of the future meaning of their baby's name

Just for the story I'm about to tell, the six months I had put into learning Swahili when I ran into Skeeter over Christmas became suddenly worth it.

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"Who's this?" I heard from a hand full of people milling around our house during our annual Christmas Eve Mass. It used to be called "Midnight Mass," but now we do it at 6 p.m.

"Oh, I brought her home from Tanzania with me," I'd deadpan each time, as if I hadn't been rehearsing the line in my head from the moment it came to me, when I first held Kaia in my arms.

(Cue the semi-uncomfortable laugh, either because a] people don't know if they're supposed to laugh at such obviously funny yet politically incorrect jokes, or b] because they're thinking "What if?")

In reality, though, I was walking around with the newest member of one of my favorite families on the planet. The Young family.




Ivory Young, the short little guy on my left, was my junior high basketball coach, back when I was the short little guy to his left, the sixth man on a bench that got more PT than any other bench in the league. At St. Vincent DePaul, we were that good. And it was all because of Ivory.

Back in those days -- when Puff Daddy was king, when MJ was still good, when Adidas snap down pants were all I wanted for Christmas -- Ivory's son Trey (also named Ivory, but unlike me, a Junior's Junior) used to be the really little guy to my left. As in, way down on the end of the bench, our three-year old, human good luck charm dribbling his miniature basketball and getting down anytime he heard the words, "I'm! (duhhhh, duh, duh-duh) I'm comiiiiiiin'! (duhhh, duh, duh-duh) Out!"

And the rest of the Young family? There wasn't much room for all of them on the bench, but ... let's just say they made their collective presence felt. At every game. We averaged about five Young's a game. Sometimes it was less, other times it was more. But they were a constant. Never was there a time when not a single one showed up. Mamas, aunties, boyfriends, kids, cousins, wives, sisters, friends ... they were all the same to me. It was the Young family.

They were the best fans in the league outside of the crazy home court advantage we always faced at St. Peter's, a small gym in the Third Ward with fans just as intimidating as the Crazies at Cameron Indoor. It should come as no surprise, then, that the Young's had a history at St. Peter's. Ivory made the jump to the head job at St. Vincent's from his spot as the seventh grade coach there -- the Houston Catholic school equivalent of Johnny Dawkins taking the job at UNC. It was a switch that changed the course of my life.

The Young's were loud, they knew their basketball, and they were passionate. And I am not bashful in boasting that I was their favorite. Could've been due to some sort of "David vs. Goliath"/"Let's root for the underdog shrimp who can barely ride the rides at Six Flags" psychological deal, but I was their favorite.

Man, how I wish I had a picture of myself from that eighth grade team. What a great team -- 28-2, beat St. Peter's for the first time ever, then beat them twice more, won the championship, and just dominated (everyone, that is, except for St. Michael's, who beat us in two close heartbreakers -- something Matt Cavanaugh has still not let me forget about). On a team full of great, athletic, all-around players, I was known simply as "the shooter." That was about all Coach Young let me do. ("Don't you ever drive, Bayluss," he'd always say. "Just shoot the ball.") I was five-feet nothing with no hops, no handles, and no speed. But I could shoot. For that one year and one year alone, man, could I shoot the basketball.

Whenever I drained one, or even if it bricked, for that matter, you'd always hear Ivory's cousin Bruce bellow the word, "BOOM!!!" from the rafters. Catch, pump fake, one dribble, feet planted, release .... "BOOOOM!!!!" I don't think the guy from "The Green Mile" could say it in a deeper pitch. When Big Ole Bruce spoke, Richter Scales listened. "BOOOOOM!!!!"

And you know I didn't forget about Mama. She was great to have around for the times when Ivory wasn't putting me into the game early enough. You could be sure Coach Young would hear about it from his mother if I languished on that cold, hard metal chair for too long. I was the fan favorite, after all. And when I did my little dance that I loved to do after hitting a three, with a "BOOOM!" still reverberating around the gym, Mama Young always went wild. Kind of like how the ladies in Cleveland reacted to Jack Parkman's "shimmy" before he got traded to the White Sox in "Major League 2."

Goddamn. It seems like years ago. And it was. I graduated from St. Vincent's with the Class of '98. It's been almost an entire decade since I last put on that gold No. 12 Tigers jersey. Ivory hasn't had a team like ours since; and I never had another coach that could even hold his jockstrap. That's why he's the only coach I've ever kept in touch with. Him, and his clan, of course. The Young clan.

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You may have heard of a famous Houston athlete with the same last name before. His first name is Vince. But back when I first heard about him, all the papers called him "Vincent."




Once this current NFL star started to become a local celebrity as a senior at Madison High, Ivory made no secret of the fact that Vince was his cousin.

"Wait, VINCENT YOUNG is your COUSIN?!"

"Yeah," he'd say, pretending to think it wasn't a big deal. "Vince Young my cousin."

"As in VINCE Young. The No. 1 rated high school quarterback in the country, who is my age, who you never brought to any of our games at St. Vincent's. HE is your cousin."

"Yeah."

It was a revelation. I already knew Ivory was boys with Steve McNair; they were roommates at Alcorn St. back when Steve, the star quarterback, was making the cover of Sports Illustrated, and Ivory, a point guard on the basketball team, was not.




And now I was finding out that he was cousins with Vince Young. It made sense. Vince was a regular at Ivory's house; he had the same last name; and when he signed with Texas, Ivory all of the sudden forgot that it was possible to wear clothes not colored burnt orange.




It was only later that I found out they weren't actually related, Ivory and Vince. I'm a white boy, remember? When I say the word "cousin," it means the child of one of my aunt's or uncle's, not "really good friend." You'll have to excuse me for being such a square.

But still, I did get to meet Vince -- cousin or no cousin -- one night as a result, on Christmas Eve, the day before he left for Pasadena to rip up the Wolverines in his first Rose Bowl. It was the "slap/hug" from me that propelled VY to those five touchdowns, and to that Rose Bowl trophy, the first of two that Vince took "OWL the way back to OW-STIN TEH-XAS, BAAAAAAY-BEEEE!"

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But I digress. I just wanted to show off that I met VY 'Til Ya Die in my parents' driveway back in the day.

I was talking about cool names. I was talking about Skeeter's baby Kaia. And I was talking about Swahili.

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Skeeter was sitting on the couch in our living room, her baby on her knee, flanked by the rest of the Young clan that has been making annual appearances at our Christmas Eve mass since we started inviting them back in the late 90's. I always make time to catch up with them at those things. The rest of the people who come, I get to see way more often than the Young's. So we were chilling, talking, reminiscing. I was showing off my Swahili rapping skills, too, which brought nothing but smiles and laughter.

"So you speak Swahili, now, huh?" Skeeter asked. "I gave my baby a Swahili name, but I don't know what it means. Maybe you can tell me."

"Really? What is it?"

"Kaya," she said.

I did a double take.

"Excuse me?"

"Her name is Kaya."

"Kaya as in, K-A-Y-A? Kaya?"

"I actually changed the spelling. There's an 'i' instead of the 'y,' but yeah, it's the same name. Do you know what it means?"

Yes, I did know what it meant. But I didn't quite know how to break it to her.

"Skeeter," I said, not knowing whether I was bracing her or myself. "You really named your baby 'Kaia'?"

"Yeah, why? What's it mean?"

"It means..." how do I put this? "... weed."

All of the Young's went crazy.

"You named your baby WEEDY?!" someone yelled.

"Hey Weedy!" another chimed in. "Weedy!"

"Hahahahahaha!" came the background music.

"Wow," I said. "Sorry."

"It really means that?" Skeeter clearly was expecting something more like "flower," or "serenity," or "blessing." Anything but bhangi.

"Yeah," I said. "It really means that."

I almost felt bad for answering truthfully, but what could I do? Lie to her?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

About a month later, I got a comment on a story I posted on this blog. It was from Payton Young's mom, Chandra. Here was the p.s.:

The talk of the family is what Kaia's name means. Skeeter really out did herself with that one.

Well, Skeeter, I've got good news for you: I found out an alternate meaning of Kaia's name.

With the masela I've learned most of my Swahili from, (Kiswahili cha mtaa, or "street Swahili," the Tanzanian equivalent of Ebonics), the word kaya means bhangi: the proper term for stuff we in America call weed, herb, chronic, grass, dank, pot, green, whatever. But if you learn Swahili in school (Kiswahili kizuri, "good Swahili"), the word kaya means "clan."

"Kitu kati ya 'familia' na 'kabila,'" as I had it explained to me by a local Arusha hustla named Prince Paradise. "Something in between a family and a tribe." "Kwa Kiingereza, inaitwa ... something like 'clan,' nafikirii."

It took me about a week to finally get a straight answer out of someone, but it was Prince Paradise who finally came through. Some people kept telling me kaya really meant "village." Others would say "family." Others knew no other meaning besides "weed." But Prince Paradise, he knew.

Kaya means "clan," basi.

Which makes me happy. Because now, Skeeter's kid Kaia won't have to listen to all her cousins, even Vince, call her "Weedy" for the rest of her life. They can just call her "Clan." As in the Young Clan. One of my favorite families on the planet.

Hell has frozen over.

"Manning rules! Manning rules!"

I am in Africa. But this is the Super Bowl. The World Champs, remember? Thanks to the thieves that drove us out of our house, Hunter and I were parked in a sick ass resort called Rivertrees the day of THE game. And you didn't think sleep would outrank THE game in importance, did you?

Either way, history was in the making. New England wins, it's history. New York wins ... well that is downright historic. A running diary was a must. A la Bill Simmons. Sorry, Bill.

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2:28 a.m. – Well, I’m up at least. You never know what could happen when you take a "nap" that starts at midnight. Hunter thinks it’s kosher to tell me to “Chill!” for finally ordering that he get up after trying my hand in the asking game.

“I’m just layin’ here, dude, chill!”

Who are you, Wes Petticrew? I'm just trying to help you!

2:31 – “And Super Bowl 42 is under way!”

Here's what I want polled as a break from the overkill on the Road to the White House media bonanza: what percentage of Americans knew the Roman numerals for 40 before the Pittsburgh-Seattle Super Bowl, and what percentage has learned since?

Me, I've learned since.

"I don't even know the Roman numerals for 50," Hunter, who did wake up after all in time for kick off, deadpanned in the quiet of the Rivertrees lounge.

(But deductive reasoning would lead us to say Super Bowl L, right? Or wrong...?)

2:32 - Why is Adelius Thomas wearing designer shades with his jersey in the intro shot? And do you think Belichick just gave his parents hell as a kid when they tried to make him dress up in his Sunday best?

2:34 - Was that Giants fullback I just saw on the screen named ‘Hugecock’???????? What a name!

2:35 - ‘Gay’ is probably the toughest mofo on the field for the Patriots. You'd have to be, growing up with that kind of name. Probably not the same set of psychological issues Hugecock was having to deal with as a kid.

Just saw that Steve Smith from USC plays for the Giants now. I've been out of the loop kabisa for the past two NFL seasons, since I was traveling all last year and have been in Africa since. But I mean, honestly, what is the deal with Steve Smith's? How many professional athletes/sports personalities can have this name? At least 'Jason Williams' can be spelled in a variety of ways: see 'Jayson,' and the shortened form, 'Jay.' Stephen A. Smith is an exception. I motion, though, that we use the name 'Steve Smith' to be a sort of sports-centric 'John Doe.'

Think about it. Instead of "one of the Giants defenders," we'll say "Steve Smith makes the tackle for New York." Instead of, "the ball was last touched by a Laker," we'll say, "Steve Smith deflected the Steve Nash pass." Juuuust, think about it.

But I'm calling the Giants' Steve Smith 'John Doe' from now on.

2:38 – Gay is already coming off the field. Maybe he’s not so tough.

(*Joke! I'm not insinuating homosexuals are any less tough. Mike Piazza, anyone?)

On a completely unrelated note -- well, it's related in that it was a realization also made at 2:38 in the morning in East Africa -- I HATE when announcers start sentences with, “This is a guy that…” It's the sports broadcasting version of saying "like" or "Ya know what I mean?" It's a space filler for those who sucked at vocab quizzes in middle school.

2:40 – HOW GREAT WAS THAT FIRST CLIP OF PEYTON IN THE BOX?? Eight plays into the game, you can be sure that wasn’t the last we’ve seen of him. He was slumped against the wall like the older brother jealous that the younger one can even come close to trying to imitate him. Wow. This could get really entertaining if the game goes south.

2:41 - NYG 3rd-and-7. Wait … did I fall asleep, or has NE still not gotten the ball?

In line with our previous talk about saying, "This is a guy that...", stop saying “football game” instead of just “game.” It doesn't make you sound smarter, Sterling Sharpe.

2:42 – NYG first down inside the 20? NE still no ball? 6:53 left in the first quarter?

Huh?

2:43 – Wow, Eli. You decide to throw to a double-covered Plaxico in the end zone… You lucky motherfu...

2:45 – NYG 3, NE 0.

"You are not going to beat the New England Patriots kicking field goals," says the still anonymous NFL Network announcer we expats get instead of Joe Buck. I agree, but with 5:01 in the first quarter, the Giants 3, Pats nothin', I think we could call that opening drive a success. Maybe we could hire Tom Coughlin to run counter-insurgency operations in the Northwest Tribal Frontier Provinces. A field goal at a time...time of possession...bleed 'em dry... these are all things I feel he wouldn't have a hard time converting into military wisdom.

2:48 – Maroney’s 43-yard return not a good sign for Giants fans leading up to the Pats' first drive.

The Super Bowl just ain't the same without the commercials. Just as we get NFL Network instead of Fox, we also get shit Super Bowl ads in Tanzania. It was the same when I watched the Colts-Bears game in Belgrade last year. Only this time, instead of the standard, budget Serbian spots (I cannot count how many Serbian "Big Brother" commercials I watched in those days), we get these little inspirational nuggets produced by ESPN International. Various ex-athletes imparting their words of wisdom. Marvin Hagler was great: "Work hard, kids."

This blows.

2:54 – How do you stop New England? Honestly. Welker just picks up a first down on the New York 27. Heeeeeere, they come.

2:55 – Kevin Faulk just a shoelace away from breaking one, first down Patriots. "The most unselfish player on the team is Kevin Faulk.” Troy Brown, did you hear that??

2:56 – I love Randy Moss’ smile in his team mugshot. I guess he's got lots of practice posing for those kinds of cameras. He is such a countrified ghetto "Dirty South" homeboy.

2:58 – Pass interference on Watson in the end zone. Just give NE the TD, already. First and and goal inside the five is as sure a thing as a line on Free Cone Day at Ben & Jerry's.

2:59 – END OF FIRST QUARTER.

3:02 – Lawrence Maroney gives the Pats their rightful place: in the lead. 14:57 left in the second quarter. Let the festivities begin. PATS 7, NYG 3.

3:15 – We're back. Did we miss anything?

(First image on the replay is of John Doe dropping the pass in NE territory that led to a Patriots interception. Bet you wish you could remain anonymous right about now, huh John?)

3:16 - “Every receiver coach in the country will tell you, knock it down if you’re not gonna catch it…” - Sterling Sharpe.

What?? John Doe was TRYING TO CATCH IT, Sterling!

3:17 - “Let me tell you something”; “He is definitely in this football game.” Sterling...

How does NE not score after picking up the ball so close following that Eli pick? They're going to the running game?
3:18 – Mark Spitz is now the inspirational speaker on our bunk ass ESPN Super Bowl commercials. It's even got that music we all remember from those science videos produced in the 80's that we used to watch whenever we had a sub in 9th grade biology. Mark just doesn’t look nearly as badass without the Vietnam era ‘stache.

Wladimir Klitchzklmclazmo...however you spell it, was actually pretty entertaining, though. Here's what this Ukrainian (I think?) boxer had to say to America's youth: “No matter what you do, in the sports, in the life, you have a lot of to do … through the walls … through the difficult's (as music fades in).”

Who needs Super Bowl commercials at a billion dollars a pop when you have priceless inspiration like this?

3:21 – There is no way the chapter in Blink about subconscious racism, i.e. a white man being more scared in a dark alley of a black man than a fellow W.A.S.P., applies to NFL quarterbacks. Have you ever thought about this?

3:28 – With New England still up four, “I’m just glad to see that the Giants are making the Pats work for it,” Hunter says. A sign of just how much of a chance people are giving New York in “this football game.”

3:29 – How many times do we have to watch these SAME old soccer highlights? They're no longer from "this week" as ESPN would have us believe. I know. I've been watching this channel since Week 4.

YES! A "This is Sportscenter" commercial to remind me of home. I haven't ever seen this one. I love Richard Simmons: "Type those stories, type those stories! Check those sources, check those sources!" And then, "Give me energy! ENERGYYYYY! Da da da! Da da da! Yes!”

3:31 – We finally agree with the announcer on something, that New York's body language is fresher than New England's. They seem to be playing with an entirely different sense of urgency. On the Patriots' 42, with a turnover in the books, NY is still only down four with just over five minutes left in the half.

3:33 – Brandon Jacobs first down. Nice, Kevin Gilbride! On the NE 30, first down... ya never know…

3:35 – JOHN DOE PICKS UP THE HUGE FIRST DOWN!!!!!!!!!! WHAT IN THE WORLD! I HAVE NEVER SEEN THIS! “Is that batting the ball, or was he trying to recover it? (Announcers really confused. Long pause.) What is the call on this play?”

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

(Replay gives ball back to the Patriots.)

Damn. I am really confused. Batting on Bradshaw? That would have been crazy. Boston just collectively exhaled.

From a would be first down on the NE 20 to Eli being lucky to not get picked by Gay on a dangerous 3rd-and-18 pass. Giants. Come on.

3:40 – Pamela Lee shown in the crowd. After the main commentator remarks on all the craziness surrounding the Super Bowl scene, and talks about the Hollywood aspect of it all, Sterling Sharpe takes this as his cue to say something stupid: "But its even crazier that when these Hollywood stars come to the Super Bowl ‘just to be seen,’ that we show them, doin’ all that… (awkward pause) ... But its nice to see, Hollywood and the NFL, hand in hand. That’s nice to see.”

Huh??

“I don’t think these are the real announcers," Hunter says.

3:42 – 1:47 left in the half, and NE has only gotten 33 total yards. THIRTY THREE TOTAL YARDS FOR THE NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS.

3:45 – What a huge play by Stallworth. Eighteen yards to the 27 on a 3^rd-and-13. That was a real crisis moment for NE; even though they’re up four it feels like they're down by ten. They’d had two three-and-outs in a row and were looking at a punt from the back of their end zone with around a minute and a half to go till halftime.

How is this happening? The giants have a turnover in crucial territory, NE just gets its first penalty at 0:59, the Pats are playing like SHIT, and yet they’re still winning. The answer? It's the Patriots.
3:49 – “Did you see how big those two dudes are who just smacked Wes Welker?” I ask aloud.

(See my earlier comment at 3:21 a.m.: "There is no way the chapter in Blink about subconscious racism, i.e. a white man being more scared in a dark alley of a black man than a fellow W.A.S.P., applies to NFL quarterbacks. Have you ever thought about this?") Ditto Wes Welker.

3:50 – “And it is CAUGHT BY RANDY MOSS, his first catch of the game!” Randy gets out of bounds for the first down on the NY 45.

3:51 - Umenyiora with the fumble recovery at 10 seconds left!!!!! As The Bob would say, "Holy Moses!" Brady really has been “bewildered." That slow mo shot of Tuck stripping him was like watching the protagonist of a medieval war movie getting killed in a sword fight during the climax.

3:54 – Stat flashed across the screen: The last 12 teams to lead at halftime have gone on to win?!?!?!?!?! That’s every Super Bowl since I was ten! It feels like NY is winning this game, even though the score disagrees.

HALFTIME – I mean, why do they even have the fans down there on the field? You don’t think we can see all that green space?

Also, Alicia, word of advice: the white skin head dressed in all black looks a tad awkward in your ensemble. Alicia Keys, however, is always sexy, even if she currently looks like a cheap Vegas cocktail waitress.

Alicia keys has the definition of a wowowo (street Swahili for "fat ass").

Starts singing "No One." I love this song!!! Yes, Super Bowl!

Did you see the red head in the crowd? Such a genetically awkward bunch.

Not too impressed with her dance coach.
“And all I know, is everything’s gonna be aaaallllllll riiiiiiiiiight!” New England fans, are you listening?

See, this shit I’d much rather see than gross ass Janet Jackson’s weird, sun god nipple ring thing.

“I am in love," Hunter says about Alicia.




"I am in love with that woman.”

Halftime stats:
NYG - 139 yards
NE - 81 yards (fewest in first half all season)

Turnovers: both have one.

Time of possession:

NYG: 19:27
NE: 10:33

Isn’t it funny when sports announcers are asked to hype up things like TV shows on their network, or musicians for halftime?

"Well, ladies and gentleman, the Super Bowl has seen lots of amazing performances over the years: the Rolling Stones, u2, Paul McCartney, and No Doubt. (notice the glaring omission of "Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson.") And now, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. It’s very exciting..”

"Shit, I don’t think it’s that exciting.” – Hunter

"Well I won’t back down, I’m a stand my ground, and I won’t back down..." Tom sings.

“I’d love to be a Patriot in the tunnel right now and listening to this.” - Hunter.

"And I’m freeeeeee, free faaaaallin!"

“I would not wanna be a patriot in the tunnel listening to this.” - me.

"Runnin, down the dream…" I will forever associate this song with baseball tonight from like 2004 era. Not sure which exactly. You know peter gammons had something to do with that.

4:15 – BOOB ALERT! BOOB ALERT! Thanks, camera guy, for such an impartial decision on who to zoom in on.

No. 6 on NFC’s top plays highlights ESPN shows us: “McQuarters INT is McAwesome.” Really?

4:25- Second half.

NY just keeps on Brady. Another NE punt.

4:32 – Tony Romo "This is Sportscenter" commercial. Another good one. We're dying here.

4:34 - What other coach besides Belichick would challenge a 12 men on the field call like that? He just seems so crafty. Something about those hoodies with short sleeves.

Wladimir and Vitali are now on the “In their own words” commercial together. Great stuff from Vitali: “Our mother say, ‘Never never never fight with one nother.’ And it was important words, because we don’t want to break our mother heart.”

4:37 – This ref’s explanation of Bellichick’s successful challenge needed like five semicolons to write. It was more brutal than the response to Billy Madison when he said, “I could have done with a simple ‘no,’ but…”

4:40 – NICE, Kevin Faulk on the long 3^rd down! All yards after catch.

“He wants it more than the giants on that play,” says Sterling.

...Or, he just made a good fake.

4:43 - Strahan’s sack on 3rd-and-7 = NE should go for it on 4th-and-13? Not even close. The Giants are really hyped right now. I cannot believe they are still losing. What is going on?? Ya can’t make a 47 yard field goal, Bill? I bet with Adam Vinitieri you kick in that situation...

4:47 - I’m sorry, but I am still just really confused about how you go for it on 4^th-and-13 when it’s a 47 yard field goal attempt. Ya get SO lucky on that 12 men on the field challenge, and then that?

4:50 – What a deflection by Asante Samuel. THERE’S ANOTHER SWAHILI NAME! Asante means "thank you." How did I never think of that before? Well, all of New England should be THANKING this guy for saving a Burress touchdown catch. That was all Samuel. Asante.

4:51 – “Those are the plays you need to make if you wanna knock off the 18-0 New England Patriots.” True. Burress, you gotta make that grab on third down; it hit you in the chest, I don’t care if Gay had his hand in there or not. 3:04 left in the third quarter, still a four-point New England lead.

4:54 – Burress only has a catch for 14 yards; Moss? Just one for 18. With 3:04 left in the third quarter. Hmm..

“Brady hasn’t looked good all game." RIGHT after I say that, Brady almost gets sacked in the end zone, and is almost picked off inside the ten. NY IS ALL OVER HIM. HOW ARE THERE THREE PATRIOT LINEMEN GOING TO THE PRO BOWL?

4:56 – Wes Welker is setting himself up to be Super Bowl MVP. What a freaking grab on 2nd-and-15 out of their own end zone for the first down.

4:58 – Welker to midfield. He reminds me of the badass high school all purpose back who has a full beard but is 5'7" and bangs the hottest chicks in school.

5 a.m. – “Have you seen Tom Brady look more frustrated before than he is in this game?” – not Sterling Sharpe.

“The Giants defense is dominating the game … but, they trail. That has been the story here." - two in a row from not Sterling Sharpe.

5:02 - Again, Richard Simmons "This is Sportscenter" commercial. "Read those scores, read those scores!" Never gets old.

AFTER THREE QUARTERS, THIS IS THE SECOND LOWEST SCORING SB OF ALL TIME (SB 9 HAD 9 POINTS AFTER 3)

5:07 – Kevin Boss, 45 yards, nice for the tight end. Shockey broke his leg in week 14...

Only the second Peyton sighting. He's looking STRESSED. "I hate that pretty boy Brady," I'm sure he's thinking. "Manning rules!"

WHY IS SHOCKEY UP IN THE BOX DRINKING BEERS AND NOT DOWN ON THE GODDAMN SIDELINE??

5:09 – John Doe picks up the first down on a 17 yard catch to the 12. New York is definitely gonna score a TD. For sure.

5:11 – Touchdown David Tyree!! Only four CATCHES in the regular season. Four CATCHES. With 11:05 left in the game, suddenly it’s New York in the lead, 10-7...

From first to second half: 8/16 to 5/7, both tallies to the tune of 85 yds, one turnover, one TD for Eli.

5:17 – Realization that Jared Lorentzen is the third string QB for New England! He can’t be the back up, after all. What a doughboy. The Oliver Miller of the NFL. Please get hurt Eli, please.

5:19 – Brady is getting pressured every, single, time. There’s less than ten minutes left, and Hansen punts once again. With 9:20 left in the game, this is a dangerous time for the Patriots. A NY touchdown here could be the end.

5:23 – Correction. The Giants fullback is named "Hedgecock," not "Hugecock." Damn.

5:28 - NE Since the Maroney touchdown: punt, punt, fumble, downs, punt, punt.

“The Patriots haven’t had the ball beyond their own 21 in their last five possessions.”

Bad announcers like Sterling also tend to say “the National Football League” instead of just “the NFL.”

Brady looking more nervous than I remember having seen him look in a long time.

5:32 - Welker is such a badass ... 11^th catch ties a Super Bowl record.

“If the patriots win, Wes Welker is going to be getting a lot of votes for MVP,” the announcer says. “Oh, don’t worry, I’ve already written that,” I respond.

Moss short first down catch; he hates getting hit like that, you can tell. Just 3:30 left, clock ticking, first down the New York 18...

FAULK ANOTHER FIRST DOWN INSIDE TEN YARD LINE! Here they come. Finally.

5:34 - First and goal at the NY 7. Brady 7-for-8 on this drive for 65 yards. 3:12 remains. Is this the last chance?

5:36 – MOSS WAS WIDE F'ING OPEN. BRADY JUST MISSED HIM. NO EXCUSE.

Second and goal from the 7. Incomplete to a double covered Welker. Brings up third down with 2:45 remaining in “the football game.” My heart is started to beat a little faster. Serious chance of defeat for New England. If they are forced to kick, NY can win with just a kick of their own.

ALL THREE NEW NE SUPER BOWL TITLES HAVE BEEN BY JUST THREE POINTS??? Eerie. They’re about to lose by 3.

5:39 – GOOSE BUMPS. “Caught by Randy Moss!” Caught by Randy Moss!!!!!! If I wasn’t in a hotel at this hour of the morning, I’d scream.

5:41 – Moss does a fake Soulja Boy in the direction of the NY defense. Yes. But, Hunter and I just saw Bruschi and Seau hugging each other: “YOO! YOO! GO TIME!”

“Those guys are BOYS,” Hunter says. "It's over. New England is gonna win."

2:42 remaining. 14-10 pats. Giants starting from their own 17 with three timeouts remaining.

“Here comes Eli Manning…”

“He still looks like a scared little boy.” – Hunter.

NO WAY THE GIANTS WIN THIS GAME. NO WAY.

5:46 - “This could be a story of resounding history in NFL annals.” – the "good" announcer. Does that even make sense? No, really. I have no idea.

5:47 – 4^th and a little less than a yard. The game...

... is not over. First down Brandon Jacobs. 1:28 remaining. “And it seems apparent that the giants will continue on offense.”

5:51- Samuel, how do you not pick that pass to win the Super Bowl?? Asante, from New York.

5:52 - WHAT! A! CATCH! WHAT! A! CATCH! WHAT! A! CATCH! WHAT A CATCH! OH MY GOD! ELI MANNING! HOW DO YOU NOT GET SACKED! HOW DOES DAVID TYREE CATCH THAT PASS! ON HIS HELMET! HARRISON ON HIS BACK!

WOW! WOW! WOW! WOW! WOW! WOW! I LOVE SPORTS!!!

59 seconds left. NY has one timeout remaining. Adrenaline flowing. My adrenaline. I'm not even a Giants fan! What a PLAY by manning. Oh my God. Oh my God. On the NE 24 now, and rolling. Oh my god. New York still needs a TD. Field goals won't help.

5:53 – This time, Eli gets run down from behind. He's not Houdini, I guess. NY takes its third and final timeout. 51 seconds left. NE defense is tired. You can see it. Seymour's on a knee. But this is the Super Bowl.

Eli looking alive in the huddle. Looking ready to take them there.

5:55 - WHOA! Another dangerous pass on 2nd-and-11. Brings up 3rd-and-11 with 45 seconds to go.

John Doe gets the big first down and gets out of bounds. 39 seconds left. Giants inside NE’s 15….

PLAXICO BURRESS! BURRESS! WIDE OPEN! HOW WAS HE WIDE OPEN! GOOSE BUMPS!

Giants 17, NE 14, 35 seconds remaining!!! WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE!

5:58 - New England has 29 seconds and three timeouts. Even a field goal would do it. Adam? Adam? You around?

“Does this bring up any memories?” I ask. Hunter, a Panthers fan, pretends not to get it.

Pats on their own 25.

5:59 - First down: incomplete.

6 a.m. - Rivertrees is starting to open up. I've been up forever. Jesus. Second down: BIG SACK! BIG JAY ALFORD! Rookie from Penn State givin' Brady the ole Big 10 hello. Brady hasn't been sacked this many times all year. It was amazing he didn’t drop the ball on that one. This is it for the Patriots. The Patriots are going to lose the game.

6:01 - 19 seconds remain. Brady’s been sacked five times tonight. Only 21 times all year previous.

WHAT A PLAY BY CORY WEBSTER; Moss was downfield and dangerous. They’re not gonna let Randy do the same thing now that he did in game 16.

“I don’t have a play for fourth and forever in the Super Bowl, Dick.” – Sterling.

6:02 - This is so surreal. Ten seconds left. Of course, the '72 dolphins shit comes on now. You know they’re about to party. Brady and his boys just couldn’t do it. They have no chance at this point. It is over.

6:04 - Even Sterling Sharpe is speechless.

It’s almost like the Giants are sure that Belichick can challenge the 1 second thing and they’re scared to take their helmets off. But they've won. The Giants have beaten the New England Patriots.

Tiki Barber is pissed somewhere.

I cannot believe this. I feel like I must have fallen asleep during the second half at some point. I'm dreaming, right?

When Eli Manning made that play on the scramble, all I could think about was Steve McNair’s scramble on the second to last play of the Super Bowl against the rams. If Kevin Dyson gets into the end zone, that McNair scramble goes down in history as the greatest scramble in Super Bowl history. Instead, they lost, and we forgot. Eli Manning is a legend now. A legend.

Poor Bill Simmons. Actually, wait: the Sox have two World Series titles in four years, the Celts are back, and the Pats are gonna be right back there next season.

Or are they?

Sports. How can ya not love them? This was one of the most historic nights in the history of football. In my lifetime, I can think of no bigger upset that has ever occurred. Maybe '86 Villanova, but I don’t remember that. The New York Giants beat Dallas at home; they beat Green Bay at home; and they beat the New England Patriots in the 19^th game of the year, coming back from a seemingly back breaking Randy Moss touchdown catch in the last drive of the game, pulling off one of the great all time scrambles to pick up a huge 35 yards in the run up to Burress’ Super Bowl winning touchdown catch. This is how legends are made. I feel privileged to have been able to stay up and watch it live from East Africa. What a night. What a game. What a sport.

Ya just never know, do ya?

6:14- But I am kind of surprised that all the Giants championship merchandise wasn’t preshipped to Africa.

I guess it could be worse for Tom. Quite a consolation prize.

Toa nyumbani, Weka nyumbani.
The final chapter in the saga of our time in Patandi.

Martina, the owner of our temporary new home, and her adopted kid Zawadi.

Never a dull moment, my friends. Never, a dull, moment. Nipo Tanzania, umekumbuka?

I guess what I should really be saying is ... thanks? I guess? It's such a messed up thing to be thankful for, this sad and crazy turn of events ... but so is Iraq for the board of Halliburton and KBR. All that matters in this world is the bottom line, after all. And the bottom line is this: I am thankful to these kuma's for trying to punk us, again.

I don't think they can read. Illiteracy is pretty common in Tanzania, what, with no sit down toilets to encourage reading habits, and grouping our thief friends into that category would explain a lot. For example: why they didn't steal a single one of our books when they had the chance just a few weeks back. For example: why they came back to our house for a second time in less than a month, after it was blatantly obvious that we'd gotten a Maasai askari to somewhat guard the place, and despite what we warned them about right around the new year.




Hawatuwezi was a play on words. That's the name of our favorite Nako2Nako song, a street Swahili phrase that basically means, "they can't f*** with us." The pun comes in when you learn the meaning of the word wezi. By itself, it's the plural form of "thief."

Hawatuwezi; Hawatuwezi: "thieves can't f*** with us." Get it? Of course you do; you've got a toilet you can sit on; you're literate.

Hunter and I both thought that when taping that Hawatuwezi sign to our gate, as an open letter of admonishment to all those who'd played a part of ripping our organization off for thousands of dollars, a printer, our stove, our shoes, Hunter's boxers, and the movie "Office Space," to name a few items, would have somewhat of an effect. Like, maybe we'd get a two month reprieve on attempts at a break in. It had a really nice zing to it, after all -- we closed it off with Mungu anapanga yote mwishoni ("God settles everything in the end") -- but illiterates don't really understand zings in the written form. And they therefore didn't put the pieces together: the next words in that Nako2Nako song go like this: itakuwa ngumuuuu, kutushikia chiniiiiii!

"It's gonna be hard to hold us down."

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Can you blame them? Can you? Word gets around in African villages, after all. People hear about stuff.

"Aisee, umesikia kwamba wale masela wakaiba pesa NYINGI sana kutoka nyumbani kwao hawa Wazungu wawili? Shillingi ELFU NNE mwanangu!"

"Elfu nne! Ah!"

"Ni kweli, jamaa."

"Ah!"

Something like that.

It was enough for the average Tanzanian to live off for three, maybe four years, what was initially taken during Christmas. Chump change according to American standards, even the standards of recession, but a king's ransom for hustlas my age living in the banana groves of East Africa. Of course you can't blame them for coming back. It was the prudent thing to do, trying again.

And apparently lots of the masela in Patandi saw it in that exact same light.

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Why do things like this happen every time I leave?

Two nights before I returned from the States at the beginning of January was hit No. 1. The night before I came home from a trip to Dar es Salaam at the end of January was hit No. 2. It must be because they hear Hatari ain't there. My name in the village, Hatari, means "danger," after all. There's no other explanation for such impeccable timing.

Sitting on the bus in the Dar station, about to depart for the ten-hour ride back to Arusha, my phone beeped. I thought maybe it was Becky saying goodbye, safari njema, see you when I see you. Instead, I saw the name "Hunter TZ." I clicked "read message:"

Wezi walikuja tena jana usiku. Tuko poa lakini f***in a that was bold. ("Thieves came again last night. We're cool but ... no translation needed for the last part.")

Bold is an understatement.

They knew there was a guard -- and if they didn't, they are worse at reconnaissance than the CIA agents who scoped out the scene in the lead up to the Bay of Pigs. They knew one of us was there -- symbolized by the presence of our black Subaru Forrester parked inside the gate. They knew we've got some serious locks on our doors -- the last wezi had to go to town on the front door with a crowbar, something that only works when the house is empty. And yet they still try to break in.

Julius, our Maasai askari, heard the guy land in our back yard; he had scaled the back wall and used our water tank's helicopter sized landing pad as a lily pad to make the six foot drop into our lot. Doing exactly what we hired him to do, Julius took off after the guy, darting through the little alley connecting our front and back courtyards -- the same alley used as an entry point by the first group of thieves. Shaken out of the stupor that sitting for long periods of time inevitably brings on, our askari sprinted through the pitch black opening as fast as he could. He banged his knee on an exposed water pipe; the intruder heard it; and a chase was in the making.

This is the part of the story that gets hazy. I speak pretty good Swahili at this point, but Julius' frantic recount of events, spat out at a semi-automatic clip without any regard to my mere seven months of experience with the language, left me wanting for more. I needed details that I could actually understand. The story I've pieced together, then, comes from a combination of reports I got from Julius in Swahili, Hunter in English, and Baba Juma in both.

Julius ran three quarters of the way around our house, pursuing the suspect around the other side and out the unlocked door on our gate. What he found waiting for him there was a pack of accomplices lurking in the dark, ready for the signal from the lily pad hopper to make their move. I've heard a range of conflicting numbers: five, ten, 15 dudes. Nobody is sure. What they know is that all of them were holding flashlights, ready to be shined in the eyes of anyone who might recognize their faces. Hunter, who uses ear plugs to fall asleep in the absence of the hypnotic hum of a fan, slept through most of this part of the fiasco. When he did wake up, as he'll tell you, he just stayed in his room, pretending to be asleep so he wouldn't have to risk being martyred for an obscure NGO in East Africa. I don't know what I would have done in the situation: I'm simultaneously a hot head and a scaredy cat. But I'm glad I wasn't there to find out -- ending up dead or exposed as a kuma; neither option sounds very good to me.

During all the commotion, Julius had called out for Baba Juma to come help. He's our next door neighbor; a real village kiongozi. Everyone knows and respects Baba Juma. It's almost his duty to deal with situations such as these.

Together, he and Julius took off down the dark dirt road in pursuit of the group. Why the pack of wezi would run when they outnumbered the Maasai and their 60-year-old neighbor by so much is beyond me. What Hunter says is that someone started yelling in Swahili, "Shoot him! Shoot him!" when Julius ran out there. An explosion went off. Some say it was a gun; some say it was just a firework meant to sound like a gun. No one got hurt. And everyone got away.

Except for one poor man, who found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time.

In the heat of the moment like that, mistakes are made. Tempers flare; reason is overcome by instinct. Anyone who has read Blink by Malcolm Gladwell will remember that the lead up to the Rodney King beating was a high speed chase that got the blood pumping in the veins of all those LAPD officers. Tension like that doesn't dissolve; it erupts. And that's what happened when the pursuit party ran into a lone drunk who was stumbling home at 2 in the morning, zig-zagging across the dirt path next to Baba Juma's and our homes. Wrong place at the wrong time. With the wrong people on the prowl for some criminals.

Let's just say he's lucky to be alive. Usually, if a mwizi gets caught in the act of stealing, he gets dealt with in the Tanzanian way: beaten, neck ringed with a tire full of gasoline, and then lit on fire. It's already happened once in my village since we've been here. Eyes for an eye; teeth for a tooth. Let God sort 'em out. Mungu anapanga yote mwishoni.

"All of the sudden, I heard what sounded like 30 people outside our gate, screaming about something," Hunter described later. "And I would hear this constant cycle of a man crying, and then getting beat. Crying, and getting beat. I could hear Baba Juma and Marium (Baba Juma's daughter, Biti's older sister) out there, so I figured it had something to do with them. I was like, 'No way I'm goin' out there. I'm not tryin' to get in the middle of some beef that draws 30 people out of their beds and out to our gate at 2 a.m.' No way."

But it turns out that it wasn't "some beef." It was our own.

Remember Abdulli? The older brother of the little punk Ally, Baba Juma's 11-year-old, the one who ripped us off to the grand tune of $500 worth of money and other stuff waaaay back in the day? Abdulli was the one who sold the iPod Ally took from me, then lied about it, then beat Ally and his friend Musa for snitching. He beat them in front of my very eyes, smacking them as hard as he could, with both hands, right on the ears, over and over again. Abdulli is not a good guy. But he sure thinks it's his job to administer our justice.

"And guess who was the one beating the dude?" Hunter asked rhetorically.

"Abdulli."

"Ehhhh-xactly."

And it wasn't 30 people crowding around to watch at 2 in the morning. It was 50. One of whom is damn lucky to still be breathing.

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I sure did have a great time on my little trip to the coast. Not in the city so much as at Mikadi Beach, where I spent two nights sleeping in a banda just 15 feet away from high tide.

Room with a view.

Just a short dala dala-ferry-dala dala commute from downtown Dar, Mikadi Beach is where it's at. Every day of the week, if I had to pick, clearly I'd go with life in small town feeling Arusha over life in the four million strong humidor, (or, "the oven," as Becky calls it), a place you feel the essence of in the form of wet clothes pressed against damp skin. The so called capital city of Tanzania (Trivial Pursuit fact: it's not actually the capital) has got more traffic, more crime, more hustling, more cement, more heat, more everything that's bad (except for white tourists) ... but what Dar's got that Arusha can't touch is access to the beach. A quick getaway that makes you forget all about the harshness of life in a concrete jungle such as Dar es Salaam, Arabic for "Abode of Peace," is priceless. It took me ten hours to get there on a bus. It took ten hours to get back. But it was worth every moment.




I owe a debt of gratitude to Beka for inviting me. She's a loke dog in that part of Tanzania. I thought I was a badass back when I studied abroad in exotic Geneva, Switzerland during my junior year of college. Becky, a five-foot tall white chick from Minnesota, studied abroad in Dar. I learned a few words of French in between air-conditioned bus rides from the United Nations building to one of the beautiful green spots situated next to Lake Geneva. She became nearly fluent in Kiswahili in between getting mugged in the backs of dala dala's and carrying buckets of water up seven flights of stairs during week-long shortages from the tap. When Becky, who came back to Tanzania for a month to see old friends and volunteer at an Arusha area orphanage, vouches for a spot being cool in Dar es Salaam, I don't argue. I just go to check it out for myself.

There is nothing like the beach. I'm a beach guy. Mountains -- those are great. Rivers -- ditto. Freshwater lakes -- love 'em. But the beach is just so soothing. And I can't get enough of playing with the wet sand. Who doesn't love throwing clumps of that stuff in the air and watching it change shape as gravity works its magic? And sleeping beside it -- waking up in the middle of the night, slightly dazed and confused, wondering for a moment, Where am I?, and then hearing the answer of the waves: at the beach, you idiot -- well that's all I really need in life. For now, though, two nights will have to suffice.

But if break ins are going to become an automatic reaction to Hatari being hayupo, I'm not sure I can risk many more trips out to the coast.

I knew I should have read into Becky's kanga more deeply.

Pretty much all Tanzanian women dress in kanga and vitenge, locally produced (except for the increasingly available cheap Chinese made alternative) textiles that are fashioned into skirts, shirts, dresses and head wraps, turning the dusty streets of my hood into an organic easel of every color you can imagine. If you can understand the Swahili messages printed on every kanga, it means you are fluent kabisa. The most obscure synonyms for "blessing," "faith," "God" and the like adorns each and every one. Wabongo, after all, are a deeply devout people, whether that be Muslim or Christian. I've been losing my religion like Michael Stype for a few years now, but Becky, who converted to Catholicism as a way of rebelling against her parents as a kid -- (I know, I know. Converting TO Catholicism making someone a rebel, not seen since Jesus pulled a fast one on the Pharisees) -- makes a good fit for most kanga.




This particular one is less about any one specific religion than it is about universal human nature.

MANENO MANENO YAVUNJA MOYO

"Too much talking breaks the heart."

In other words, the opposite of the "sticks and stones" logic we are all taught as kids in America. I got a weird feeling when I was translating it with Becky, but I had no idea of what was about to go down back at my house in Patandi. Maneno maneno...

It wasn't talking that broke our hearts, it turns out. No one ever said a kanga was as infallible as the pope sitting ex cathedra and speaking on matters of faith and morality. Even textile producers can be wrong from time to time, I suppose.

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I didn't want to leave Dar. It was too much fun. I had too amazing of a time. I was on cloud nine when I got on that bus to go home, feeling the same sense of refreshment that I felt when I got on that plane in Houston not even a month before. How much had changed in our lives in Patandi since then. And how much more was to change in just one moment.

beep beep! beep beep!

The text message from Hunter.

Here is the craziest part: the words in that text message did not phase me at all. It was like going to a surprise party and seeing the cars of all your friends parked down the street. That is the point I have reached in my life in Tanzania. Every messed up thing that happens to us is like a ruined surprise party. Hunter, too. Neither of us were shocked in the least bit that our house is becoming a free-for-all for any pack of shit heads able to get their hands on some flashlights. We had already been given the word to search for another house, an order from the very top borne out of concern for our safety after the first burglary. And we had been looking. But it's not like there's a Martha Turner sign out in people's front yards in Tanzania. There ain't no Colliers International signs on roadside billboards: 713-222-2111. It's hard to find a house that will suit our needs. But that search has just been moved up to "priority number one," in the words of our boss.

You fool me once, we get a Maasai askari. You fool me twice ... we move out immediately. You fool me three times ... well there won't be anything left to steal, but have at it.

Which brings me back to why I'm saying "thanks."

Asante sana, wezi. You thieves are directly responsible for putting me where I sit right now, as I put the finishing touches on this opus with a fresh cup of (good) coffee simmering on the table. Birds are chirping, crickets are wheezing out their last attempts at song before the sun rises too high in the early morning sky, and the flowers smell as fresh as anything I've smelled in a long time. Our boss has temporarily put us up at a practical oasis called Rivertrees, by far my favorite of all the Wazungu tourist resorts that pepper the landscape of the Nairobi-Moshi Rd., a two lane asphault highway that leads to the base of Mount Kilimanjaro, a street paved with the money of foreign guests. Since Thursday night, Hunter and I have been chilling at Rivertrees.

Asante, wezi!

... with wireless Internet, no less!

Where am I again? Oh, that's right. Africa. This is exactly how I pictured it would be...

And it's all because of the wezi.

We have basically moved out of Patandi at this point. We're never going back. Our boss has said she doesn't want us to sleep there ever again. I'm sure my dad will be relieved. Today is our last morning at the oasis, sadly, but I was very thankful to be able to watch the Super Bowl on live TV last night/this morning in the lobby.

It's a pretty messed up thing to be thankful for, though, isn't it? To trade in all vestiges of faith I had in my neighbors for a chance to see the greatest Super Bowl of my short life. Faith in neighbors, David Tyree. Faith in neighbors, Ice Cold Eli...

Eh, it's an even draw. It's not like I didn't already know the truth: we are white boys; we will never be totally accepted in a village setting like that; but even so, HAWATUWEZI.

That's probably what Swahili namesake Amani Toomer is saying to fellow Swahili namesake Asante Samuel right now. "Peace" is telling "Thankyou" that the Pats can't f*** with the G-Men. And as it turned out to be hard for New England to try and hold down New York (err, New Jersey) down...

Itakuwa ngumuuuu (SANA) kutushikia chiniiiiii!