JANUARY 2012 visit to Tanzania...accomplished!!
Jambo!! Before our January trip, joint meeting in Buffalo with friends in Warren, Pennsylvania and Majengo Canada. We created a long list of things we hoped the team from Canada could accomplish to move us forward....

Huge thanks this time to Canadian team of Seanna and Sierra Connell-Snell, Susan Lee, Simon Lee Hamilton, Margie Zeidler...to Charles Luoga, our on ground project coordinator and our wonderful staff at ICA and Majengo!!!! A whirlwind three weeks...with everyone back home now, jet lagged, exhausted, and missing those kids at Majengo, terribly. Ah...but the memories..

Briefly....impossible to sumerize....but here i go!!
• Team thought kids are in really good shape....happy and settled in one huge Majengo family, staff too. It's been a year since 67 kids arrived at Majengo en masse, a year of huge adjustment for kids and staff plus a major budget explosion for ongoing costs here in North America. Well done to everyone out there who has been helping, both in Tanzania and on the ground here in Canada and the US. WE are in this for life!!! With 114 kids depending on us...what a challenge. And what a feat!! thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!

•Majengo Canada got our official charitable status from the Canadian government.... transitioning now into a legal and substantially verifiable organization, responsible for tax receipts, financial accountability and Board approval both here in Canada and in Tanzania. It has been a huge feat! And again i thank everyone on our board in both countries bearing with me especially ....I called it the Founder's Dilemna back in the spring, adjusting from the sponteneity of creative spirit toward growing a grounded, ongoing and successful organization.
A challenge, and I thank everyone for bearing with me through this process!!

JANUARY trip highlights and accomplishments:
•MAJENGO STAFF: Hired Spora Waziri: a nurse/matron with 40 years of government hospital experience in charge of the emotional/physical needs of the kids, diets, monthly reports, education. Welcome aboard! WE now have a staff of 16 local people overseen by Charles Luoga from local agent ICA Tanzania and local village leaders: Mayunga and Raymond, as follows:
-Killo and Martha, sec and treasurer who oversee daily operations, buying food, maintenance, bookeeping, health and well being of the children and staff...
-Grayson our fabulous pre school on site teacher assisted by
-Matilda and Eve, two Masai girls who we supported through 5 years of secondary school and Montessori teacher's college;
-Nuruana, Mariamu and Sauma: three cooks who manage to serve up over one hundred meals, three times a day, over an open fire within a small outdoor kitchen:
-Janet, Hildegarde, Hadija, Felister and Ameni: 5 cleaners who not only shower and keep 77 kids clean everyday, and wash hundreds of items of clothing everyday, but also keeping our three cottages clean and maintained.
-Maulid and Mhina, two watchmen, equipped with bows and arrows to protect the kids night and day...
- beginning the process of finding a great English teacher.
- updated staff salaries, reviewed and approved budget
- assisted 5 staff members with interest free loans to support their own children through secondary school.
-great visit with India and Peter, co-founders of Rift Valley Children's home ourside Kiratu, to research their children's home, for design ideas towards our new Majengo facility, which we hope to begin building this summer....pending on raising capital funding.
-Canadian architect Margie Zeidler volunteering her expertise with photos, sketches and great ideas, in the process of creating initial conceptual drawings for our new Majengo facility, collaborating with staff, ICA, local leaders and children.
- approval from Monduli District Council (like our provincial or state governmental body), of local Majengo government gift to Majengo of a 6+ acres of wide open windswept plot of land, 3 miles away from Majengo, for our new facility.
- Susan Lee and Charles interviewing local lawyers to draft contracts re ownership of buildings, land.
-initial discussions with Charles re ground supervisors and builders for new facility.
-took Majengo kids and staff on safari in nearby Manyara national park: delighted by giraffe, lions hanging and hissing overhead in a tree, zebra, flamingo, ostrich, wildebeast, buffalo, gizelle, elephants!!! all there, 15 minutes from Majengo! 3 vans filled with kids, one getting hugely stuck in three feet of sinking mud and water....
-trips to Kiratu for older and younger kids to playground, swings, slides, climbing walls....blast!
-daily English, jewellery making, craft and art classes...with Simone, Susan, Seanna and Sierra.
--organized and Olympic field meet, with three legged races, running, jumping games.
- Sponsorship Program: 11 children to date
- registered 26 kids (age 1-7), into Majengo pre school, 88 (age 7-14) into primary school, and 2 into secondary school,
-17 kids into nearby Mama Annas English Medium School, big thanks to sponsors Joseph Slepertas (England), Susan Lee, Ralph Hicks, Peg and Marion's Masai Girls Education fund. On Grayson and Charles recommendation of kids doing well, and/or working hard... English vastly improved with older kids teaching English to staff and little ones.
-Simone donated computer for Majengo, taught Killo, Grayson computer skills, which they now teach the children! Wait till we get our new facility, with computers and a library!!
-Registered 16 kids into Masai Girls Education Fund, secondary school program thanks to Peg and Marion.
-Visited 4 street kids in jail for stealing food, in process of getting them out and into govt boarding school, primary. Need sponsor.
-Margie Zeidler creating sponsorship for teacher Grayson into one year Early Childhood Development degree in Arusha. (Grayson preparing teachers Matilda and Eve in his absense.)
-huge staff meeting: with challenges, successes, bought new needed items; maintenance, etc.
-Created proposed policies on children’s rights, behaviour, staff, vision, mission, treatment of kids, properties. To be approved by Board.
-Dennis (govt. social worker) reviewing backgrounds of all kids, to determine vulnerability and need to meet Majengo criteria.
-Welcomed 2 more vulnerable kids into Majengo.
Currently supporting 114 kids: 76 children living in. 37 living out.
-Updated Staff and Children’s bios and pics, age, schools, charts.

And had a fabulous time doing it!!!
Decided to include this into my blog....a record of hard work and great fun...
NEXT STEPS:
-New Majengo facility: estimated cost: $250,000.
-Major fundraising efforts in the US and Canada planned. Anyone willing to help,
please EMAIL!!! In the US: majengo@majengo.com; In Canada: lynnconnell@sympatico.ca.
-Matt's visit June to review legals, set up process with Charles and staff re building new facility, on ground contractors, builders, construction drawings....
-begin building new facility.
-Jamie taking church mission over in Sept/Oct to assist building.
-Lynn back to Tanzania November....

Would love to hear from you...and welcome everyone to get involved....
Thank you to everyone out there helping...I only wish you could visit to see for yourself what your dollars are directly doing....thanks~!!

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TEAM JANUARY 2012 visit…a fabulous three weeks with Susan Lee and her daughter Simone, Toronto architect Margie Zeidler and my daughter Seanna and granddaughter Sierra..seems like we have been over here for months! In a way it is much harder to get things done in Africa for me, without Swahili which is no one’s fault but my own and my inability to remember! It’s a language which has absolutely no reference to English, French, Italian or Spanish. It’s here like grabbing a multitude of sounds out of the air, starting usually with MB, or MV, or Mn. M anyway and it goes on from there. Memorizing is the only way to beat it, and when your brain is wired for details, not sound, or images, colour, ideas, and not sound. Ain’t easy!

I’m sitting propped up on my bed at the Continental, which again is a bit of a stretch, Tuesday morning around 6:30, a rooster’s crow squawking a little above the incessant idling of a safari truck, parked, going no where but with the engine on, outside my window. It’s cool at this hour, the raging sun still at rest, the sky blue promising another great day here in the dusty village of Mto Wa Mbu.

When I was first coming, we did art classes and HIV AIDS workshops, but these days we do orphanage, day and night..

Since last December’s explosion of 67 new kids to Majengo, raising our numbers up to 114 kids to look after, with 77 living in, things have settled in beautifully. The kids are happy, calm, and finally in a place where they are safe, fed well, looked after medically and are loved, especially by our 17 staff: cooks who dole out 300 meals a day, cleaners who wash the kids, their clothing and the three cottages we rent, two night watchmen, one great teacher with 2 Masai girls who a great group of Canadian artists sponsored through Montessori, a couple of assistants and a mama and baba who look after keeping the whole thing together.

This trip has been about spending lots of time with the kids, Seanna and Sierra running art workshops every morning, Susan and Simone English classes, crafts, yesterday a full session with all 77 kids stringing beads and looping paper clips together creating magical necklaces and bracelets. Seanna brought in a couple of local jewellry makers last week to weave bracelets for the boys, necklaces for the girls- all decked out and looking great.

A group of sewers from a fabric shop in Minnesota sent over a huge bag of beautiful cotton dresses, gorgeous!! plus all the clothes donated by Simone’s friend Martha. Lots of pics to post when I get home.

We’re finally learning names….especially challenging with the little ones who all wear their hair closely shaven, with beautiful round little faces, Careen, Pauline, Jeska, Esther, Anna, Amina, Fausta.

NEW FACILITY: we’ve been renting three cottages over the last four years…leases up in 2013….77 living in, sometimes 2 to a bed, with a couple of mamas sleeping over. This trip, we’ve been visiting other orphanages, lodges, schools, houses, as research with planning a new facility which we hope to get started this summer!! Architect Margie Zeidler shot hundreds of photos: roof, window styles, size of rooms, furniture, shelving, colour, materials, wood, brick, concrete blocks, ventilation.. lots to think about, working with Charles who'se an engineer, the government inspectors, our staff, kids and village leaders as to what kind of children’s home they best want and what we can best create. Can’t wait to see what she comes up with!! Visits to Rift Valley Children’s home…a very well put together facility, small houses, each one with a mama and volunteer… loved the U shaped home founder India shares with 10 kids, a courtyard dancing with flowers and climbing vines surrounded by bedrooms, indoor bathrooms, and a huge living, balcony and dining area with bright blue chairs lined up aside a long table to seat everyone.

Recreation/gathering hall, big communal kitchens like the one we visited yesterday at Manyara Sec School with 4 huge brick stoves, built to conserve firewood, huge sunken pots of beans boiling and a guy with a paddle big enough to fire a canoe plunged in and circling around a massive pot of traditional ugali, a sort of crème of wheat national dish.

A great library with quiet space for homework, a line of computers, books, DVDs. We just got electricity hooked up in our office, with Simone's friend Amy donating a computer and teaching sec. Killo, our top teacher Grayson who we’re sponsoring to further his education with a year of Early Child Development in May, and Hamidu, our driver, computer skills. Education and learning is everything here. Great to see one of these guys surrounded by kids around his desk practicing, cut, copy, paste!

Infirmary, office, indoor and outdoor dining….sports field, and dreams of a big playground with swings, climbing apparatus, which could be nailed together by a handy volunteer showing up next year. It will happen, as the process of Majengo creates itself with the right person coming along at the right time. Susan Lee has been fabulous helping charles and I with budgets, financial statements, logistics, with a great sense of humour along the way….Margie with ecological sensitivities, her adherence to good community planning a la Jane Jacobs, and her architectural and building background…Simone with her camera and incredible connection with the children….Seanna and Sierra too with songs, art skills, fun, creativity, colour….

Me, I am trying to put it all together, harassing Charles daily for updates on legals, land surveys, budget details, staff salaries, comparison's with other orphanages, government minimum wages, numbers of kids, bios, pictures, registering Masai girls into education programs. Every day.

Charles is the glue that holds this whole thing together. Believe me. Not only does he have to deal with us 7 from Canada, driving us around, meals, safari trips with the kids, running up to karatu for the bank, government officials..there is a constant stream of people lined up on benches against turquoise walls, waiting in the ICA office. HIV testing, legal rights, land rights, abuse..there was a flood here in December, one woman had 6 huge bags of incredibly hard worked rice in her room which soaked, started to grow sprouts, losing all but the one on the top. Destitute now, she has to start over, and on it goes. January time to register secondary school aged kids, if you have the money,which no one does. Bits and pieces pulled together to keep their kids off the streets, into school, the most important goal of African parents here.

Charles knows all the stories, the woman waiting for her daughter out in the corridor, who'd been raped by her boss while cleaning his house, fast forward 14 years of supporting this girl, both she and the child with HIV, she waits with the hope of He gets it done, but on Charles time. Drives me crazy, sometime, but patience is something you have to learn to work well in Africa.

Working on legals…the local village of Majengo govt are giving us 8 acres of land down the road, a huge open flat grassy plot next to a half finished govt school which I envision we will help to run with the village, down the road. Most of our kids are either in our own Majengo on site pre school, or trudging down the dusty roads to one of 4 primary schools in the area, a couple of kids walking over 3 miles each way! Along with Mama Anna’s English medium school, a private school teaching all subjects in Engish, a short walk from Majengo.

Met this time Joseph Slepertas, a great young guy from England whose living full time now in Moshi, a town about 4 hours away. H stumbled across the GoodHope orphanage out on the safari route and sponsored two of their older kids a couple of years ago into Mama Annas…coming back this year he discovered it closed, shut down by the government for corrupt practices, the Good Hope kids now living over with us at Majengo. After a few visits he was blown away by what he saw at Majengo, with how much greater the kids were now, happy, safe and well fed…and began to sponsor more and more kids to Anna. We now, along with Susan Lee and Canadian sponsors Peg Graham and marion Burnett, have 14 kids at Mama Annas learning English.

For me it’s been a question of making sure the kids who aren’t going there, are okay. Along with teacher Grayson and Charles, we agreed to support the older kids at Mama Annas, heading into Secondary School in a few years, with only English taught there.

Without English, secondary school kids are completely lost here, as govt primary schools are taught in Swahili only. These older kids who get to go to Mama Annas can teach the younger kids, and staff what they are learning, each night. Last night, during bead threading, it is awesome to come across 11 year old Tatu yesterday with an English kid’s book on her lap, a circle of younger kids around, reading stories in English!! Incredible what Mama Anna has done in only a month for Tatu!!

Spent three weeks working on getting the land grant gifted by the local government, passed by the District Council….and just before leaving, we received a letter of approval. We are on our way!!! 8 beautiful acres of land….to build on, about 3 miles down the road from our current location. There’s a half built school on the property, which the govt plans to finish this year. Margie Zeidler is on her way home right now, armed with photos and drawings,…about to put it all together, after months of research.

WE’ve got our own lawyer, setting up a US/Can and Tanz Board of Trustees or NGO to own and have full control over new facility buildings hopefully to start building in August this year!

Back home Matt wrote that someone has donated $50,000 towards the new orphanage project!! Wonderful and thank you whomever you are!!!

I’m back end of this week..to start a great fundraising campaign up in Canada, now with full tax receipt ability, since October. Anyone out there who wants to help, with dinners, fundraising events, speaking engagements, let me know!!
Just got home...30 hours...Kili to Dar...Dar to Amsterdam..thank you Merit for coming out to meet me! 7 hour wait and on to Toronto, three films later, with the kind of jet lag you can't imagine...all that energy put out there for three weeks, and it's over. Over are the meals, endless of rice, bananas and beans!! Hopping in and out of safari trucks, getting stuck in the mud with 30 children atop the van waiting, looking out my window and way up just above the van, a lady lion perched on a swinging branch, barring her teeth, ready to pounce!! Filippo covers his head with canvas for protection, as we speed away.
I'm going to write more later, with lots of pics. Huge thanks to Margie Zeidler, Susan Lee and her daughter Simone, my daughter Seanna and Sierra for their incredible imput, everyday over at Majengo running classes with the children. Making bracelets, necklaces, teaching English, playing, drawing, dancing, singing...it was fabulous...
more later....

Tatu....oh....she breaks my heart...she is 14 years old, and came to us last December, one of the older girls from one of the corrupt orphanage, age 14, wary, hard, tough, one can only image what she has been threw...when i first met her in January. We didn't have electricity back then, it only came in April, after three years of begging..imagine putting 77 children to bed in the dark. But at the end of our visit, we threw a big welcoming party for all the kids, with great food: rice, ugali, greens, cobs of corn, beans, goat meat and beef, chicken, a real feast...set it all out under the stars, with tables and benches nearby when a huge storm blew open the skies, big rains poured down and we all raced with platters of food under shelter squished into one of our newly-renovated houses, the children sitting on the floor with paper plates filled..clumps of mud a buffet table outside quickly set up and laden with wet food, the generator on full blasting the joy of music in the dark with Matt holding a flashlight as kids poured out and started to dance; they knew all the music, the lyrics, the African beat, dancing, wild, excited. They get the rythm. In their blood.
Suddenly Tatu....so hard and tough and staying away only a few hours before, now dancing as with the wind in her soul, eyes flashing, she grabs my hand, Tatu exploding with life, with hope. We connected that night in the pouring rain, the music, the dance. And as I left the next day for Canada, once again saying goodbye, tears of once again losing, once again connecting and someone leaving, falling, hugging, and once again sadly pulling away from each other. We are, their mama, their baba, with a hug, a love and then, once again, leave...

Coming back a few months later in October, I look for Tatu and find her there. Watching. Outside, away from the others. Crowding around. Filippe, I have known him from the beginning 3 years back, with big ears that stick out and buck teeth, the boy who was nicknamed "fearless one", who had been left alone for over 24 hours by himself, both mama and step papa gone... asking for bicycles. Five of them. The last time he asked for a car or a bus to carry them to school, walking the two miles to and fro, he was pushing for help...but bikes, sure we could do that. And all the while Tatu is standing back behind the crowd watching.

We spend a morning in and out of the shops finding oil paint in colours of red, yellow, blue, green back and white...in little cans, we buy brushes and get the kids to draw animals with felt pens on paper, and buses, and children in front of houses with mamas and babas....I head over the next day with the images and draw big and huge on all four walls of our newly-built office outside the orphanage for guests to come and visit....and the next day invite the kids to come and paint. Wow, it was insane with everyone of them crying ME!! ME!! ME!!!.!!!! I am going crazy, i tell them they are driving me craxy. but....They did it...covered in oil paint which doesn't come off, Proud of their work, every one of them painting....you have to see it...
The day the bikes arrive...they are carreening around the grounds, all of them taking turns on all five bikes...swishing and wizzing about, like mad...jumping off, falling off, laughing...crazy...
Tatu comes to me and says. Holding my hand.
Quietly.
"No mama. No baba. I have a sister."
I say to her, great, wow...where is she?
She bows her head and shakes it back and forth. She doesn't know. With tears.
Until a bike becomes free.
And with her wild skirts flying, she takes off, free.

Tonight here back in Toronto on the first day of the year, after a few days at the River House in Dunedin..i am back in Africa...Tatu...Filippe....Amina...Godlisen, (as in God Listen, oh i love that little kid..he jumps from the top of the bunk beds from one to then next, breaking them...!!! He wants to be a policeman when he grows up....). I once taught them how to swim....

I haven't written for so long..
Once you start something like this...it gets bigger and bigger...
There are things you can't write about anymore..Like the nights you lie in bed and hope with all your heart and dear soul that everything is okay over there....
Funny...it all begins with seeing 52 kids on a mud floor...you, and why you? have to do something about it...i say now, the right person at the right place at the right time...that's about all it is...I was there. Charles brought me kicking and screaming. I'd just been bamboozled by a corrupt orphanage director who threw me out of his lucrative orphanage business on the safari route, luring in tourist money, cause i was the whistle blower. I wanted out. Out of Africa. Weeping, couldn't stop, that day in our office. I'm leaving. I'm heading up to Nairobi...
I want out. I want to go home.
So he takes me on the back of his big old red truck to see 52 kids on the mud floor and hey they are kids. He says you've learned so much about orphanages...so why not put what you've learned towards these kids. Kids are kids. Over there in Africa it doesn't really matter, there are so many kids, like 16 million orphaned out there by HIV AIDS...who cares, in Charles' opinion..if one thing doesn't work out, move your energies to another....so we founded Majengo.
That day. March 2008.
And here we are almost 4 years later...we've got 114 kids depending on us. So. How did this happen? This isn't a situation where you go over there, somewhere, anywhere...and build a school, or a dam. or whatever...you start and orphanage and you build a house and move 27 kids into it, and all of a sudden, three years later you have 77 kids, with 37 more living out that you are responsible for, and you can't sleep at night.
you can't be there full time...no. You have your own kids and grandkids back home..and you are an artist and have friends and a life in Toronto, and in Dunedin and you are running an art retreat for people who want to paint, but all of a sudden you have this huge responsibility a long way away, but so very close to your heart, to your home...
Till tonight, i have been writing, in a more business kind of way.
And i have been very stuck. Writing about catch-ups on visits, on new facilities..on what we have to do. On structure. On administration. This year i have learned much about charitable status, about boards, about structure. Structure. About how it has to be done. About the administrative ends of things.

So. When you donate, I race to my drawer, haul out my bank book and thank you cards, and tax receipts, and photographs of the kids, and get busy...boy am i paranoid of getting it wrong...I got my good friend who is an accountant, Brian who brought in a bookkeeper. My gawd. Believe me, everything i am doing is A one...and if it isn't, it is out of ignorance.

Marci my good friend called today. A friend of hers who wrote me a cheque for $150. asked her, how exactly does the money go "straight over to the kids at Majengo", and Marci said, well, "i don't really know. Knowing Lynn, she probably stuffs it into her bra and underpants!!".

So...I told her what we do, i have to sit down and write it all out, as it is.....

From you...into our MAJENGO CANADA..or in the US, the Warren Majengo Foundation, who have had their IRS status for the last two years or more...
Every month..our local NGO Tanzanian agents over there, ICA TANZANIA..through Charles, the guy i have been working with for over five years now..send us a requisition of how much money the orphanage needs for the next month.
Our budget is 1/3 lower than the two other orphanages we visited..we work every time we are over there, with Charles and with our Majengo staff..to correct and keep our budgets up to date.
So we get the requisition, check it with our agreed upon yearly budget, and wire the money into the bank accounts of ICA TANZANIA. They send the money down to Mto Wa Mbu, where Charles distributes it for food, clothing, medical needs, cleanliness needs, education, staff salaries, etc..with receipts for everything...He keeps the financial statements which we receive every month...and on it has gone....for the last almost three years...
Do I worry. Sure i worry.

There is corruption and deviences and discrepancies everywhere on the planet.
It is your money i am responsible for. That is a huge worry for me.
Now i am painting for Majengo.
All the proceeds of my paintings go toward the orphanage..
I asked tonight a great old friend of mine to give up her life in Canada to work over at the Orphanage, to be our liaison there......yes...Kathie.....yes...think about it. Do it!!!
I haven't written for a long time, and tonight...it feels good to be back into the sheer bones of what we are all doing here...hey..there are 77 little kids over there...and 37 more living out in the community who depend on us...none of whom have a mama and a baba who can look after them...and tonight on this first day of the new year...i thank you all for being such a huge important part of helping them find a way to be part of this world, to grow, into leaders, maybe, of the future....
thank you..x

Happy new year!!!!
It has been too long since i last wrote..so many wonderful things have happened this year with Majengo...they pile up and become overwhelming....thank you to everyone out there who has contributed to our ongoing operating costs of Majengo. Without you, this little orphanage that grew and continues to grow, would never be happening!
Summing up this year 2011....
January expansion of children: 114 children at Majengo now!!!
A couple of days before the chiming of last year's bells ringing in the new year, the Tanzanian government made a sweep of 5 corrupt orphanages along the safari route shutting all 5 down in and bringing 67 new children to Majengo. We weren't ready for this! Jamie and I'd gone over a few months before and renovated two new houses just behind our main Majengo house, so basically, and very basically! the beds were ready...but without warning, the buses pulled up and dropped off these new kids - scared, not knowing why or where they were going, without a single belonging to their name. Some of our staff were away on holiday, leaving the remaining 10 to cope with the onslaught! I could only imagine the chaos of feeding over 100 mouths at each meal, the new children stampeding the kitchen, our 27 original kids overwhelmed, and our cooks coping without knowing how much rice, cooking oil, vegetables to buy, always running out!! Peter from ICA leapt in and did an incredible job along with Hamidu our driver racing back and forth to town picking up groceries by the seat of their pants.

I called every morning, offering support - basically all i could do so far away.
The children were not in great shape. Desperate for food, and starving, they ate leaves off the trees, garbage from the street. Many of them sick, needing medical attention. On top of this, the former directors of the five orphanages rounded up the guardians of the children, and with lies of abduction and mistreatment, encouraged them to verge en mass into Majengo to take back their kids. The police were called in on behalf of the government. The guardians were interviewed, and those who could, who had the means, took back their children. The rest saw for themselves how, in just a few days, Majengo was treating their children, with a clean healthy environment and regular nutritious meals, three times a day - and backed off, thankfully.

January visit
Matt and I flew over a few weeks later, expecting total mayhem..but instead, amazingly, found the staff resting under a big old tree outside our open air kitchen, the children taking their afternoon nap- surreal, quiet! A short time later they crawled out of our three houses and flooded the grounds...it was a mob, but not unruly. Some played soccer in the neighboring Catholic Mission playgrounds..little groups of kids throwing stones into holes dug into the mud, some skipping, swinging, whirling about with spare tires circling their waists as hoola hoops. A little boy running a flip flop shoe up a mound of mud carrying a big stone, his version of a moving van...orderly, quiet...

Big staff meeting with 18 staff, our ICA team on ground, Matt and I, some village leaders, Raymond and Mayunga. The cooks, cleaners, night watchmen and teachers all telling their version of what happened when the new kids came, laughing, in retrospect.

Escalating budget!
Budget meetings: our annual operating budget skyrocketing from $50,000 USD to $80,000 now with 77 now living in, as opposed to 27!! 18 staff, up from 12....and another 37 children living out in homes in the community, but coming to Majengo by day, or being supported with medical and educational needs....WE are coping by the seat of our pants. But it is not good enough. 25 kids per house, not enough mamas to give them good emotional loving care.

We have to move the kids out into a much better environment.

Majengo Canada charitable status!!!
Warren Majengo, Matt with his family and friends, have generously covered most of the operating expenses over the last two years, about $6,000 a month!! Unbeliveably. Go on the website and check out Matt's Letter, in the Story of Majengo section, how he came on board. www.majengo.org. This truly a miracle.

But now with all these new kids, this additional $30,000 was simply too much!! I went back to Toronto, and applied for charitable status in Canada. Ten months later, with $7,000 in legal fees to ensure we were applying properly, I am thrilled to report that MAJENGO CANADA now has official charitable status, and can offer now anyone donating to Majengo from Canada, a tax receipt for their generosity. It has become extremely difficult in Canada now to be accepted.
Now, along with Warren Majengo's charitable IRS tax status...

We are on our way!!!

Our ICA agents on the ground....
Charles, our ICA project coordinator in Mto Wa Mbu on the ground, who co founded Majengo at the very beginning, is soley responsible for the logistics and financial operations of Majengo, moved his wife Grace along with preschoolers David and Derrick into nearby Arusha to be close to his family, currently applying for an online Masters degree in Public Health, will spend his time working at Majengo and in Arusha working on his degree. Doris and Joseph, directors of ICA visiting regularly, attending staff and budget meetings, keeping their eye on things and offering good local experience and advice.

October visits to other orphanages....
In October we visited 2 other well established orphanages: Rift Valley in nearby Kiratu and JBFC: just outside of Mwanza, a town on the banks of lake Victoria: INcredible was JBFC, run by Chris Gates, a tall, burly, sunburned wonder from Oklahoma who, at age 26 has accomplished a dreamof a lifetime for many. His JBFC houses 45 girls living in, in houses which support no more than 8 girls per house, with a permanent mama living in...a situation for which we strive. At this point we have 77 kids living in 3 houses....with two mamas per house, and certainly not the individual care we hope to achieve for our kids when we build our new facility....Chris's dream is to become self sustaining. He runs a primary school with 250 kids from outside the orphanage, each paying yearly fees to help keep the operating expenses of the orphanage intact. He has all kinds of animals: chickens, goats, cows, pigs, living on the land, and a great vegetable garden operated by the staff and kids themselves..a fabulous operation and one which we hope to emulate soon...WE learned so much. But especially the huge need to move our kids into smaller quarters of their own, small houses, with 8 kids per house..with their own mama to look after them...so important for their emotional health.....
With each facility, we realized the possible need to bring in a person from Canada or the US to work directly on site with our Tanzanian staff....communication has always been a challenge. I am believing the African adage that oral communication is where so many are most comfortable, whereas we in the west prefer emailing, a quick note, getting it down on paper, so easy for us to do, but also so alienating as well sometimes...In Africa..the spoken work, the handshake, the looking into each other's eye...the time to spend together, to learn, to seek, to quietly ask the questions, to discover along with each other... So keeping a regular stream of thought via the internet, via email, or skype, or the telephone with crazy electrical outages, blackouts, is a constant and often frustrating challenge...
It is only when i get over there, when Charles meets us at the airport, when we get settled into the van jammed packed with clothing and toys for the children and heading for Arusha, that the questions and answers begin their natural course to flow again, as if we have been together always.....without a few months of silence in between, it all begins to make sense.

Donation of land....
Our village leaders, Mayunga and Raymond, at a government meeting, local and district, presented us with 6 acres of land nearby to build our own orphanage facility. Already on the land is a half built primary school with 4 classrooms and office - a government project slated to be fully built by next year.

New Majengo facility:
With 77 children all living together in 3 houses..it has become increasingly urgent that we build our own facility. What we have now, has been totally make-shift, a place to house the unexpected but necessary expansion of kids last December, totally a temporary and urgent solution - a fly by the seat of our pants situation which solved a very crazy time. We had no choice.
But after visiting both established orphanages in the area in October we came away with some great ideas of the orphanage we hope to build, soon.

Our budget to get the children into better and smaller homes right off the bat is about $100,000. including a big communal kitchen with outdoor and indoor dining facilities and playground, next to the primary school the government has promised to complete by 2012. Once that is done, another $200,000 will afford us a proper volunteer house, library, computer room and recreation hall. A total of approximately $30o,000 to do the job well.


Buffalo meetings....
Great once-every-three-months meetings in Buffalo with Warren Majengo folks and Majengo Canada, keeping our eye on what is going on in Tanzania.. our 2013 new building group reporting back and keeping in touch with those two orphanages i mentioned above, arranging for Matt, Lauren, Rose and I to visit in October...pulling together the best ideas from both visits....organizing time lines and plans for our own new facility once we get our funding in place....our new website..thanks to Kym setting it up with people from McKissock in Warren, and to Maxine, Nancy and yours truly for pulling the writing and the pics together, it looks great...we're meeting Jan 07...a few days before I take off again for Africa...

BREAKING NEWS!!! MAJENGO CANADA, now an officially recognized Canadian charity, able to provide YOU with Canadian tax receipts!! And more about that later...

Back home a few days, jet lagged, tired but thrilled with our October visit, we have managed to accomplish so much!! Briefly....visited two wonderful established children's homes, as they prefer to call them, not orphanages, in Tanzania....one JBFC near Mwanza...the other Rift Valley Children's Home...near Karatu, a stone's throw from Majengo.

And we're in the beginning stages of building a brand new facility for MAJENGO!!!

We learned and saw so much! Great ideas to move forward ..the govt has approved giving us 6 acres of land, flat, wide open - a huge cry from our current site, where we look after 77 children living in or should i say squeezed into three houses!

It is insane, but totally understandable. One year ago we were flying by the seat of our pants, with the government shutting down corrupt orphanages on the safari route, last December, and bringing to us 67 new children, freaked out, badly abused, starving, not knowing where in earth they were heading...

No warning. All these kids arriving by bus over a two day period!
Our staff, half on holiday, scrambling to keep up, especially with the food, dinners, cooking, cleaning clothing and washing kids. Big challenge...but we did it...with huge credos to our staff who managed to pull it all together, beautifully infusing all these new children into our once calm, together, well organized and quiet facility.

And huge thanks to our friends in Warren, Pennsylvania.
Our budgets skyrocketed overnight, from $55,000 annually to $85,000 now...not bad considering the support of 114 children and 17 staff, but way more than they can handle.

So it's my turn now...
As they say on CNN: BREAKING NEWS!!!!
MAJENGO CANADA just got our official approval from the Canadian Government to become a registered Canadian charity. Thank you thank you thank you!! As a result we can offer tax receipts for the first time, to all our incredible donors out there who have been supporting us over the last 3 years! bravo!!

Off and running....stepping into a brand new phase, our goal to raise $300,000 over the next 6 months toward the new facility..the situation now is desperate. With 77 wonderful beautiful children squeezed into three small houses, with not a lot of land in between. We feed over 100 mouths, three times a day, with 4 cooks spinning their magic out of one, not that big, outdoor kitchen. Lines of laundry swinging from post to post throughout the site... cleaners and children alike, scrubbing madly to keep all those clothes and children clean, every single day.

It is a miracle. We have managed to pull it off.
But we need more space for those children!!
Our goal: to give them every opportunity in a safe loving environment, to grow and blossom into happy, responsible and self sufficient members of their community.

Starting, with our new facility....dreaming, but I know, within only a short period, it will become a reality: here's the picture: lots of wide open playground space for the children to run free, soccer field, great climbing jungle gym with slides and swings, buildings designed with solar, skylights, with wonderful smaller dormitories, each with their own living in mama, sitting areas, study areas, bathroom, a big open library, dining hall and kitchen, rec room, with a nearby fully equipped primary school, goats, vegetable garden...chickens....the ideas go on and on..
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I invite you to become a hands-on helping member of Majengo's TEAM CANADA!!

Revving up an exciting fundraising drive....with presentations, parties, sponsorship programs for every one of our 11 4 children, pictures, bios...raffles, paintings, exhibitions with all proceeds going straight towards this new facility. We need your help!!!

Please email me your ideas and suggestions for how you can help...lynnconnell@sympatico.ca
Lots of love, and huge thanks for everything, so far....xxLynn

Greetings from Addis, Ethiopia! 7 hours here waiting for a 2:45 am flight to London and then home! Crazy, but you just relax into it; there is a great little cafe wedged into the middle of souvenir shops, duty free, clothing, misc...mostly woven scarves, shoes, African jewellery and dresses for little kids, leather bags...I'm sitting on a stool in the cafe watching the stream of humanity glide by... huge muslim community here, men and women wearing white from head to foot, the men in long wrapped gauzy long dress, groups dressed alike, a team of men in green, emerald green tops and long pants passing by, some dressed in what we would call pajamas, the matching designed fabric of the loose pants and tops...not alot of North Americans here tonight, mainly African from every country...in the women's washroom, next to the women's prayer room, a low sink where muslim women slip off their shoes and wash their feet before entering to pray, water everywhere, another woman bent over a piped in speaker spewing out an African beat, she is rocking, moving her hips and swaying, mezmorized.

It was an incredible week...Rose, Lauren and Matt from Warren flying into Mwanza meeting me at the hotel, and off we went to spend the afternoon and dinner with a fabulous guy who has opened an orphanage school on 46 acres on the lake, beautiful setting, 40 kids living in, all girls and another 250 coming everyday to primary school. We're researching back home different places to see; heading into building a new facility for Majengo by 2013 when our leases run out. Between this centre, and another one up in Karatu it becomes evident what works best for the kids: small houses, with 8-12 kids per house, each one with a live in mama to cook and clean for just those kids, a big communal kitchen is great with an adjoining dining room where everyone can hang out together, continuing the feeling we have now of one big huge happy family. Both children's homes supported primary schools, either on site or nearby, offering good teachers, English, and welcomed an ongoing flow of volunteers, mainly women coming from Canada and the US, and staying for a month or two, each one paying $35. US a day for the priviledge of working there. It works! Very exciting, and great that our team back home did a great job finding these facilities for us to visit.

Visited the 6 acre plot the village leaders of Majengo have agreed to hand over to us to build our new facility, about 3 miles down the road from our current site, big open field with a quarter built primary school at one end, a project of the government,promising to have it finished by the time we start to build. We are working together, the best way to do things over here. If you get the backing of the local village leaders, and then on up to the Executive director of the entire district who reports directly to the president of Tanzania, you are on your way..and we are!

Meetings all week, sometimes three a day! Focussing on 2013, the new facility, our education plans for the children, budgets....a great few days for me painting animals and children on the outside of the new Majengo office, with the kids. Finally getting to know them a lot better this time around. Education: lots of talk about sending our kids to the English medium private school a good walk away from the orphanage, someday. Here all the subjects are taught in English, a great advantage from the government schools where kids learn everything in Swahili, until they hit Secondary school, where they plunge into English. Still talking... getting to know the director of that school, Mama Anna who i am totally enamored by. Her views for me on education, and what is important for the growth of the children, for now and into the future make sense to me. But it is costly, about $400 per child per year for this special education; we've decided to step back, take a good breath and wait...our budget has exploding with all our new kids since December last, the three houses we rent Tiger, Serengeti and Kilimanjaro on site bulging with 77 kids, a far cry from the spaciousness of those other orphanages we visited early on in the week.

A big staff meeting with all 17 of our staff.. each one expressing big thanks and good feelings about where we are going, along with the challenges...Four of our Masai girls sponsored through 4 years of secondary school have gone back home to their Masai bomas, pregnant.

ON Saturday after an incredible few hours roaming around the big monthly Masai market, which is almost indescribable, but if you can picture small grass huts with legs of goat roasting inside, we join Masai men and women wrapped in the bright red and blue checked sheets, lounging on plastic chairs, a Morani warrior bringing in the leg along with a long sharp knife, cutting the meat off the bone into chunks put into a big round bowl in the middle of the table, we all lean forward and chew and chew till your jaw hurts, delicious! Stuff sold outside, laid out on blankets, stuff, everything you can imagine, clothing of all kinds, shoes, underwear, sports jackets, shirts dresses, plus jewellery, kitchen good, hardware, everything, this is the way the Masai shop, moving along from blanket to blanket, a goat and cow auction going on at the far end, packed with Masai and us....and that same day on to visit the Chief of the Engaruga tribe to his boma, meeting once again his two wives, children, and greeting his 95 year old father who sits at the entrance of the boma, a cluster of cow dung and grass circular houses, surrounded by a fence made from thorn trees, we make sure we bring the requested bottle of Konyaki, bending over to pay our respects, the young women bowing low their heads for the old man to spit into their hair. It is all part of the experience and on to the goat yard where Chief introduces us once again to our goats which we have purchased, one or two every year, who have had babies. I now own 9 goats...!! Named for my family back home! This year two new white ones, twins, bought for Pyper and Finn!

Culminating with a wonderful last night at Majengo with the children, all lined up along four long tables on benches, receiving juice and goodies as a good bye treat...a show of dance, song, and acrobatics a first with these kids for us, mixed with laughter, and tears, so difficult to say goodbye. They have become our other family away from home, these children and for us, it is heartwarming, these visits, and heartbreaking to leave...

Got to run and catch this flight!

homeward bound!! talk soon!!!!

check out our new website: www.majengo.org...it is pretty wonderful!

Lynn

Update!! Jambo!! a great week....in Mto Wa Mbu...and today in Mwanza, a beautiful town built up on hills circling around the massive Lake Victoria on the west side of Tanzania - the second largest fresh water body in the world. I am hot, soaking hot, but happy at an internet waiting for Matt, Charles, Lauren and Rose to fly in from Kilimanjaro - flying in happy, dazed and exhausted last night. Me, i took a local bus all the way across the wild and rugged terrain of Tanzania bumping along from Arusha to have an adventure, leaving yesterday at 7am, on what they said would be a 10 hour ride, which turned into 15 hours on the slowest local bus anyone has ever ridden. Miles and miles of African villages, mud huts held together by sticks cow dung, busy markets filled with bananas, cooking oil, bright plastic kitchen attire, hardware, socks, bright coloured cotton and satin dresses hooked onto wire hangers and squeezed into small top frames expanding into huge voluptuous hips, swinging and sache-ing next to plumbing poles and women stooped bent in half stirring pots of freshly made ugali over open fires. Pulled in with wild lightening and thunder, mvua sana, much rainfall, me, tired and very cranky by 10:30 last night. Rasta...a friend of Dula, who regales me all the way from Arusha with stories of Rasta beliefs, meets us at the bus station. Goodbye to Colliette my good German friend who spends two months every October in Mto Wa Mbu, awesome, working by herself traveling into four primary schools gathering lists of children desperately needing uniforms, shoes, sweaters. She hits the local markets with Dula, her Rasta translator, to buy clothing for 200 kids in the area with money she raises back home all year. She visits Majengo laden with 120 single bedsheets and 70 pairs of Masai shoes made by a shoemaker in the corner stall of the Masai market, the money a gift from a German company interested in working with someone who uses his hands. Masai shoes are made from rubber pieces cut with a small sharp knife, away from old tires. Everywhere she takes pictures of children with the new sheets and masai shoes, to take home, a record of what a few Euros can do here in Mto Wa Mbu...

Last week a government inspector makes a surprise visit to Majengo, a program social workers are performing all over the country to all children's homes. For 7 hours she questioned our staff, and me: what do we do when a guardian shows up abusing a child? how many beds do we have for 77 children? are our kitchens clean? do we have fire escapes and extinguishers? what education do our staff have? what are we doing to help them? On and on with questions..and a visit around the orphanage, through our three houses, which just last week painted clean and fresh, across the grounds past outdoor toilets and showers, to the big open dining room area with the cement floor and high thatched roof, electricity now, with four tables lined with happy healthy children squeezed along benches eating a sort of beef stew, greens, and rice, a banana on the side. All is well.
On that day i interviewed Zack who came recommended by the private English medium school down the road. He stays with his sister next door at the Catholic Mission, from Kenya, having just completed his teacher's certificate to teach English. I am ecstatic. It is perfect. We have been trying to find a good full time English teacher to help our kids and staff learn English, since we started. Hopefully, Zack is the answer. He comes the next day to work with our staff and teachers setting up a schedule and began the monumental task of teaching everyone English by January 2012. Every day, 8 hours a day!
Visited the director Anna and her principal Mr. Thomas at the nearby private English medium school, where all primary classes are taught totally in English. The kids there can speak well after only a few months in class. We set out an idea where we hope to enrol all 51 primary kids into Anna's school, this January. It has to do with loaning her money to finish the building of three new classrooms, and for this, getting a year free for our children, and two more at half price. Matt comes today, we shall talk it over, he will visit Anna and her school and we will decide. For me it is a great idea. I have loaned money here, through my People Living with HIV AIDS program, where, after one year, all four HIV AIDS groups of 80 people, almost all women, paid me back interest free, in full - but in shillings, not dollars. USD can't be transferred back from shillings except at an exhorbitant (sp) rate, up to 25%. So how do i get my money back in dollars? Almost impossible. But if we can funnel the shillings back into great programs for our children, it will cut costs on the USD sent over each month in accordance with our budget.
Win win on every side.
Promised Charles i would paint animals, fruit, graffiti, children on the walls on the outside of the office, with the kids...but with great trepidation. He has the walls left white for this endeavour, but the day i showed up someone had painted them brown...ack! what to do? We had all the kids draw animals, buses, airplanes, birds, and children on paper, which with a highlight marker, two of the older boys and I drew huge on the walls, on day one. Then, with a lot of help from enthusiastic and impatient kids, painted those images white again - all 77 kids swarming me and the freshly painted images and coming away slathered in white oil paint indelibly stuck onto fingers, faces and hair. I am dreading the next day's job of colour.

I am trying to think of a way where only two boys brighten up the images with colour, but how to do that with all these kids, curious, enthusiastic, desperately wanting to paint! I give up and mix colours into lots of small plastic containers, hand out sponge brushes, and watch them go at it. Mimi, mimi. Me me...!!! ME! they are all shouting, stampeding, the colours, the brushes falling on the dusty ground, a mess! I am drawing as fast as I can now, leaves coming up from the bottom of the office up and onto brightly coloured animals, everything dripping wet with paint, with kids vying for pots of green, blue, brown, orange and red, splashing and splattering it, they make them come alive.

Hamisi, the night security guard at my hostel who has been painting the walls on the inside of our main house all week, appears with a can of black paint and finishes off the job by painting the ledge along the bottom, covering up the splatters and drips.

It looks incredible!! All painted entirely by the kids. A great day. I walked home well after dark alongside the long main road, past vast expanse of rice fields blackened by the night sky, sprinkling with stars, so dark you can see nothing but for the flash of bicycles coming into view just in time to jump aside safely.

I visit the children at the nearby Pambazuko children's home along the way last week, passing Colliette taking Tabia, the mama of those children to the market to pick up needed kitchen supplies, they wave, as i head over to their house. The kids racing out to meet me, one of the joys of each time i visit Africa, these kids I have known now for 5 years...coming from the very first orphanage i volunteered with back then, so long ago. I know them well, especially Elia, Sifuni, Jackson, Ruth, Zack, Justin, Melania and Fabiola...my daughter Seanna and Sierra coming to Africa two times laden with art supplies teaching these children. They are loved and blessed. Tabia and her husband Elias are their mama and baba, with my Swedish friends Kerstin and Berndt now in charge of supporting the 14 kids here at Pambazuko. It is truly a lovely small family, and a good example of how children coming from many tribes, orphaned mostly by HIV AIDS, can come together in one small house and become brothers and sisters together, with a mama and baba. We hope someday soon, at Majengo to emulate this example there, with the 77 children we look after, creating a new facility encompassing a number of small houses, each with up to 14 kids, overseen by a mama and baba, if our dreams can come true.
I set up my computer and roll back to 2006, when i first met those kids waving outside the rickety orphanage along the safari route, Home Comfort. Photos, hundreds of them, of us on safari with those kids, painting with them, drawing, and my teaching them how to swim at the nearby tourist campsite swimming pool, every Saturday afternoon for two years, until they raised the prices, and rules encouraging 'whites only', where we no longer go. Watching the photos, the kids crowding around the computer, entranced. Memories of images of them spanning the last five years, beginning as little kids, and now healthy, strong, and tall.

Today begins my final week in Africa...with Matt coming with Rose and Lauren, with Charles flying in from Kili to Mwanza, where we visit an orphanage set up by Jamie and our team back at home, to learn and see what they have done to make their children's home a success. Then back to Arusha tomorrow, to visit three more, and on to Mto Wa Mbu...a week set up of budget review, visits to Majengo with big staff meetings, time with the children and Doris, our ICA director, meetings with government officials and visiting possible plots for our new facility. Always a whirwind when Matt arrives, I look forward to his laughter and jokes, his enthusiasm, his positive energies and good sense. Catch up next week!
Have a great one....!! Lynn