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!

Nice Hat, Bitch.

Anyone who gets my humor would get this girl's humor. Just a brilliant excerpt from Hanly Banks' blog:

Nice Hat, Bitch.

Today I was walking down Bowery, just minding my own business, when a "street" kinda guy passed me and said very kindly "Hey nice hat, bitch." To which I replied "Thank you." To which he yelled back "Well you're welcome, and have a nice day."

And that is why I live in New York City.

Cho chote...

This is either Esther or Glory, one of the wadogo sana little kids we just put into school at Usa River this month. Please don’t give me any grief for not knowing her name. I’ll explain in a second.

What I want to point out first is how young this girl is. Young enough to suck her thumb for ten straight minutes and not respond to a word this strange Mzungu was saying to her, that I know for sure. But as for her age? Most Wabongo kids I ask don’t even know their own birthdays, let alone birth years.

“Sita!”

“What’d he say?”

“He said he was six.”

“That kid is six?? How 'bout two?”

“Una miaka mingapi tena?” I ask again, giving Joe Little Kid Tanzanian another chance.

“Saba!”

“Saba?”

“Apparently he just turned seven. He has no idea.”

I’ve had interchanges like that more times than ten.

I guess it’s like this in most extremely poor countries recovering from two decades of debilitating socialist economic policies, but every Mbongo mdogo is a potential Danny Almonte.

"I'm 12."

Until you see a legit birth certificate with your own eyes, you can never be 100 percent sure. But as for the little girl sucking her thumb? Esther … or Glory …. ? I’m not at home right now so I don’t have her application in front of me, but I think that both are about four.

Four-year-olds Esther and Glory are going to boarding school.

No wonder she was sucking her thumb! I remember 10-year-old Mzungu kids being homesick to the point of tears at summer camp, and that was only three weeks long. If I was a four-year-old about to be dropped off at Usa, away from everything that had provided me with all formative experiences up to that point, together with four other kids from my orphanage, but still feeling pretty alone, I’d be nervous/scared/sad/bewildered/paranoid, and every other synonym for “freaked out” that exists in the English language, too.

In all the focus on numbers, tests, transport, applications, school supplies, tuition payments and diplomacy, I forgot a basic fact of life: four-year-olds are really young. In fact, they’re pretty much babies. And I hold difference between the East African scale of social maturity and our own to blame.

Simply put: people grow up fast here. And not even in the, “I’m European, I can drink in parks and smoke joints when I’m 15, I hate George Bush, I’m so mature, and they even show nipples on basic television channels,” sense. I mean almost as soon as they can hold a bucket, they’re shaking hands with the harsh reality of poverty, wearing hole-riddled garments that used to be my own clothes, brand new when I was their age.

Baraka, for example.

He’s the third in a line of four brothers who Mwindaji and I have creatively coined “The Brothers.”

Baraka is chilling in this photo; he’s done his job. But his little bro Yohanas, No. 4 in The Brothers, is not chilling. See him down there in the bottom left corner of the shot? He’s having a hard time carrying up the hill his bundle of kuni, necessary for the daily cooking that, in villages such as mine, almost invariably takes place over an open flame in an outdoor jikoni. Baraka crushed his task, probably because he’s six now, a real man. Yohanas is finding the crazy steep climb difficult to accomplish, though. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that he’s got to do it while simultaneously balancing a huge bundle of firewood on his head. Or perhaps it’s because I’m forgetting that he’s just five.

Either way, it's funny for me to watch. Besides, it’s out of my hands to judge. I’ve heard there’s an extra verse in the Swahili translations of both the Bible and Koran that says, “Thou shall honor thy father and mother by gathering a tone of firewood every single day.” That is what kids do here when they’re not playing … or filling buckets with water, fetching the fresh evening milk from the dukani owner’s own personal cow, sweeping, mopping, peeling vegetables, caring for their baby brothers and sisters, feeding the chickens, or even chopping the firewood that they’ve just gathered.

Other than that, though, Tanzanian kids – (the ones who are getting enough to eat, at least) -- have amazing lives.

They CHILL.

Picture a world where you're ten years old again. In this world, it doesn't even matter what kind of grades you get at school, since regardless of whether or not you have an F average or a 4.0, you're advancing to the next grade (at a public school, because the government has no money thanks to rampant corruption; at a private school, I have no idea why. *Usa River is an exception, which was one of the most attractive things about the place. A 55 average is mandatory to pass. Still a pretty sweet life for a ten-year-old kid). Hell, if you don't want to go to school, you just don't. Tons of your peers in this world openly choose chilling in lieu of literacy.

Picture a world where you can roam the paths of your village like you're a kid patrolling the streets of your suburb in Baby Boomer America, coming home only when chores are to be done.

Picture a world where you don't have to shower but once or twice a week.

A world where, thanks to a lopsided demographic situation, you've got 50 percent of the population at your disposal for choosing playmates.

Pretty sweet world, huh? Pretty much the only thing you have to do is go to church on Sunday, or to the mosque on religious holidays. I had to do that myself my entire Hell-fearing Catholic childhood, and I lived.

We really don’t even need roosters as alarm clocks in Patandi, thanks to Baba Juma’s day care center next door. Meru Peak Day Care Center is my alarm clock.

Instead of a ring, a ding, or even a guitar-playing rooster yelling, “Heeeeey, yeeeaaaahhhhh, everybody wake up, it’s time to dance with meeeee!!” ,

Remember this guy??

... I get woken up by the screams, laughs and flash flood-sudden cries of Patandi’s pre-K’ers as they swing on tires and fly down a slide that is dangerously steep.

Graduation Day, Meru Peak, December 2007

But kids can be kids and still remain useful. Everything aside for alcoholic old men has a use of some kind here, young human beings being no exception. In that respect, there's no difference between a child and some empty paint tins (flower pots), or a heap of plastic bags (roll them together, fasten with a few rubber bands, and you've got yourself a soccer ball for the week), or some worn out tires (the sole provider of footwear for the local Maasai population). Children get the words "collecting firewood and whatever else adults feel like making them do" inside of their parentheses.

Getting back to the lives of our new students.

There are 34 of them in our scholarship program for the start of the 2008 school year. That puts the total figure of kids whose names I need to know, (as one of the people responsible for the welfare), at well above 60. All the original gangstas, all but two still enrolled at FK, I’ve had down pat for months now. But I also see them every day. I won’t have the luxury of such repetition with this new crop, since I don’t teach at Usa. Oy.

Well at least I will remember one name: Dickluck. What a name!

Tanzanians are all about using English nouns of virtue for their childrens’ names (see: Prosper, Goodluck, “Jifty” [Gift], Happiness, Glory, Angel), but I’d never heard Dickluck until I met the one and only. The first time I saw it written on our list, I just pumped my fist and nodded.

“Yes.”

I admit it: I can't even remember which one he is! Luckily, I snapped a photo of his box.

And it got better – turns out there was a Dickson of the same last name. Dickluck and Dickson are brothers. I don’t even want to know what a potential sister might be named.

In my defense with the ignorance of the names: I’m sorry, but it’s true that when almost every single kid – girl, boy, young, old – has the exact same hair color and hairstyle, it is hard to tell them apart from one another at first. I know, I know, that's "racist."

"Oh, what, they all look the same or something?"

Vialethi


Ombeni

Dickson Mdogo

Not sure. A girl.

I mean.... kind of?

Not after you get to know them, obviously. It has nothing to do with race, either -- I can't tell you how long it took me to tell Ashley Judd apart from Charlize Theron (sp?). And does anyone disagree that Tiki Barber looks like Shaun Alexander?

Shame on you for thinking two men of the same race can have similar appearances!

I think this new school is gonna be good. Perhaps I was a little biased from Day One, when I saw a pristine, almost shiny buffered concrete basketball court, with clear white lines painted and two solid backboards standing in between the boys’ and girls’ dormitories. But it's not just that -- the food is better, the organization is better, and it’s more expensive.

And it’s got a basketball court.

Oh my God, no joke, right as I was writing that I remembered the jersey I brought back with me from the States to wear at Soweto, because what a pun what a pun!

I bought it at Value Village years ago, and it’s faded and cracked, a real throwback, none of that Mitchell & Ness business. Navy blue Shawn Kemp, No. 7, one of the forgettable Dream Teams. No idea which one, but definitely not from this new generation of international losers we have representing the Stars and Stripes.

This the best photo I could come up with, but you know which letters are running across the chest?

USA! .... River!

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Just a few photos for the short of attention.

One jogoo, many chickens. Very nice.

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My neighbor Marium, Biti's older sister, chose this poster for her room.



If you look closely, you can see her photo taped in between Mzungu bombshell and the balding white man that looks like the "Before" picture on a Propecia ad (or, Hunter Flint).

The day of reckoning is near, Mwindaji.

I really don't know what to say about that poster.

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We've had rats, cockroaches, "January bugs" (the southern hemisphere equivalent of June bugs), mosquitoes and even asps.

Now we have Preying Mantises.

Karibu tena!

Welcome back... kind of.

My two weeks back home must have been a dream.

Just five minutes into my return to Tanzania, it was like they never even happened. Every single day there was so refreshing. It was like leaving my internal computer battery plugged in overnight ... and then taking the time to recharge my spare battery, too. After a family Christmas, some quality time spent with great friends and a "Roberto" New Year, I felt completely and utterly renewed. Like spring in January. That's how I felt.

And then ...

I got in the car.

Hunter had some bad news.

"Someone broke into our house while we were gone." Me in America, he in Zanzibar.

"What'd they take?"

Our stereo, our stove, our toaster oven, both of our hiking boots meant for Kili, all of Hunter's boxers, tons of our own personal cash, all our bootleg DVD's, my sheets (??), our business cards (???), the printer, a video camera, a Polaroid camera, and a TON of cash earmarked for the library we're building at school. But the illiterate thieves left all the books, had no interest in our Seinfeld or Curb DVD's, and even left an iPod which they had no way of knowing was broken. I guess that was our Christmas gift -- the stupidity of the thieves.

The first time this happened, it wasn't a break in. It was an 11-year-old punk neighbor who was stealing from under our noses, little by little, for about six weeks. He was caught; he was whipped with a rubber tire hose by his father; he was humiliated; he was chillin' by that afternoon. He never once apologized. The whole fiasco, coming less than two months into our time here, made a huge dent in my spirit -- it was my first exposure to the fact that trust is not a commodity for a white man in black Africa, and it laid some serious doubt in my mind about the universal character of human beings. I'll probably never be the same person as a result. I thought that was the lowest it could get.

Then, I got in the car.

I thought Ally had taken a lot from us. But his work seems like child's play in comparison to the Grinches who stole our entire house during Christmas. The little 11-year-old stole about 1/10 the amount of goods that these latest hustlas took. And what do ya know? Not a single neighbor heard a peep, despite the fact that our door was broken with a crow bar, and despite the fact that the thieves stole so much heavy stuff that two, maybe three trips were necessary to get all the booty out.

Didn't hear a thing. Yeah right.

What can we do in this situation? God knows we can't turn to the police -- I had to bribe an officer with $10 to get back the $160 that Ally stole from me initially. I can't afford bribes like that all the time. Nor can we rely on help from our friends in Patandi -- no matter how good we become at Swahili, no matter how hard we try to integrate ourselves into the community, we'll always be Wazungu at the end of the day. New kids. Not loke dogs. Why would they pick us over their real neighbors?

They wouldn't, and they aren't. We're alone in this. All we can do is go for the reverse of "Sticks and Stones" logic.




With Biti's help, we drafted this letter to the community, and taped it to our gate for three days.

Allow me to translate:

HAWATUWEZI

*(a popular hip hop song by Arusha group Nako2Nako is called "Hawatuwezi." Everyone in this part of Tanzania knows that song. It means, "they can't touch us," or "they can't f*** with us," basically. Completely unrelated is the word "wezi," which means "thieves." Get it? HawatuWEZI? Thieves can't touch us! Even in Swahili I'm making puns!)


Kabla hatujaanza, wacha tuseme Heri ya Mwaka Mpya! Tuwashukuru kwa kutembelea kwetu kipindi ambacho hatukuwepo. Ilikuwa vizuri kwenu kukagua kwetu kama hivyo. Asante sana.

Before we begin, allow us to say Happy New Year! We are very grateful to y'all for visiting our house while we weren't there. It was really nice of you to check up on us like that. Thankyou very much. *(Sarcasm is always funny!)


Vitu mlivyoiba sio vyetu. SISI tuko poa tu. Hamjatuumiza KABAISA kwa sababu mliiba kutoka shirika letu, sio sisi. Lakini, kufanya hivyo inamanisha kuiba kutoka kwa watoto yatima wa nchi yenu, ambao tumekuja kuwasaidia: watoto wa PATANDI na vijiji vingine pia.

The things which you stole aren't ours. WE are just fine. Y'all haven't hurt us AT ALL because you've stolen from our organization, not us. But to do that is to steal from the orphans of your country, whom we've come to help. Kids from PATANDI and other villages, too. *(I'm Catholic. Guilt always worked for me!)


Haitakula kwetu. Itakula KWENU. Mungu anapanga yote mwishoni.

It isn't going to eat at us. It'll eat at Y'ALL. God settles everything in the end. *(1: this is a shout out to other Nako2Nako lyrics, which will give us street cred. 2: In a country as religious as this one, but where there is zero faith in civic institutions, leaving judgment up to God is the TZ equivalent of saying, "I'll see your ass in court.")


Akupendaye,

Hatari na Mwidaji

Love,
Danger and Hunter


NB: Kofia ambayo mmeacha imetupendeza sana.

P.S. The hat y'all left looks good on us. *(I mean, what kind of RETARDS leave their Made In China, fake New York Yankees beanie when they're breaking into a house?)


NB: Asante kuacha gita pia. Wampumbavu NYIE WEZI.

P.S. Thanks for leaving the guitar, too. You stupid thieves.

Wouldn't you be scared, too? Hunter is wearing the hat, by the way...

Hunter and I are living in a Mzungu spaceship, and while we can communicate with the people we've plopped down in the middle of, we'll always be Martians from outer space in the eyes of the majority.

Which is why we've been informed that we now have to move out of Patandi. The word is out as to what the Martians have got inside their place, and we'll never be safe again living there.

This admission -- that we can't undo in six months a paradigm of Mzungu = money that has been in the making for centuries -- sucks, for lack of a better word.

It is an admission of reality. And reality bites.

Every morning, I have to force myself to adopt a positive attitude. There are a lot of mornings where I don't want to get out of bed and keep battling. But I do it anyway, because it's my job, and because I hate quitters. The craziest thing is that despite it all -- despite having to get into yelling matches over the price of a Coke, or the fair rate for a two-minute cab ride, or banging my head into a wall in the face of the rampant corruption among cops or immigration officers or whoever -- I'm not utterly miserable in Africa. I'm not. I actually kind of like it. So how would I feel if good things kept happening to us all the time? Scary to picture it. I'd probably love Africa, not just "kind of like it."

If you want to know the secret, though, the secret of how I'm able to force a positive attitude upon myself, I'll tell you.

These kids:

At least these kids love us.

Chillin' in this here pigskin town...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And proud of it.

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

The second one of the day!! Incredible.

Nice, Andre. Nice.

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

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

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

I love Texas.

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

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

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

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

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

Mom: "Yeah."

Me: "No you don't."

Mom: "Yes I do!"

Me: "Who?"

Mom: "The Patriots."

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

Me: "Yep."

Mom: "I got it?"

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

Mom: "See? I knew."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yeah," she said, playing dumb.

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

"Oh I KNOW you done did something bad!"

It happens to us all .... right?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I agree."

But that was before I saw Hallie.

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

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

Uhhhh, group picture anyone?

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

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

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

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

"Cool, what's up."

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

HA! Ha! Ha.... Ha?

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

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

"Yeah," I said.

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

Awkwaaaaard.

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

"All right, will do," he said.

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

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