Hi again....
I forgot to tell you about our being invited the night before Peter left for Uganda, to the home of his uncle for dinner, Seanna, Sierra and I...for us mazungas...whites...an exceptionally honourable treat to be served in an African home and this was no exception..Bature and his wife live along a long and windy narrow path of packed down reddened mud about twenty minute's walk through tall grasses and homes constucted from local brick, dung, wood and metal from the busy main street of MTO...Peter's uncle is a pharmacist with his own little drugstore, one of ten children, the one, Peter tells me, who is most successful. His mother, Peter's grandmother, was moved last year from her village into this little red brick home with Bature and his wife, and the young assistant they have hired from Arusha to work in their shop; they have never had chidren of their own. Bebe, grandmother, is large and impressive, in her eighties, tall and proud, but crippled now with a painful form of toxemia in both legs, a sore back, unable to look after herself and her home anymore. Seanna and Sierra stay outside playing tag with nearby children, Peter welcoming me into the home. The front room is fairly large nd sparce, with a small three seater couch and chair and across the tiled room, a shelving unit with kitchen pots, photos, a calender. Propped up in the corner of the room stands the plastic branch of a Christmas tree decorated with tinsel, a few bright balls; otherwise the room is empty. Peter sleeps across this little couch when he is in Mto, all of his 6 foot something sprawing i am sure from one end to the next....his grandmother makes her way slowly into the room, with open arms and warm eyes she welcomes me...anyone who is a friend of her favourite mchuku, grandson, is a friend of hers...We sit down together these two bebes....(at first i thought they were calling me baby!! kind of fun..but bebe is a respectful term for grandmother...anyone over 50, here a highly valued member of the family...)She wants to see the picture first of me and Obama, taken during his campaign against Hilary in Indiana last May....I carry it with me here, this picture instantly invoking the greatest enthusiasm, a door opener and then pictures of my grandkids, the one of Finn sitting in my studio in diapers alone holdng a big long paintbrush globbed thickly with bright red paint, half of it blotted on the paper in front of him, the other half on his leg...a big hit, then Johnny, Seanna, Ted...Shauna, Sierra and LIndsey and Jim, she is studying each picture carefully with Peter at her side, translating and holding a flashlight in the waning light - who is this one, who is that? Suddenly with determination, she pulls herself up out of the couch and disappears through the cloth covered doorway, returning soon with a lifetime of photos and official papers, id cards and memories held tightly in one hand, she carefully lowers herself back down into the couch. One by one she goes throught them silently, treasures, shuffling back and forth, looking, searching for this one, that one, and bringing them to me slowly: Peter with his mama in a flowered dress at age four kneeling beside her in a big black chair....his mama standing in a long skirt and black blouse posing next to a fence of bursting red flowers, his mama with his papa at her wedding and finally, someone resting flowers on the grave of his mama, seven years ago.

Peter was orphaned by both parents at age sixteen by HIV AIDS...his dad went first, then his mother, leaving him in charge of two younger siblings , all three moving back into the home his grandmother and another uncle, relatives to look after them, now that his parents are gone. He loves this grandmother with all his heart - he washes her hands gently every night before eating, a special honour for him while he is in town, pouring warmed water from a kettle dripping down into a plastic bowl - a custom here every where you sit down to eat, before and after the meal your hands are cleaned. Dinner is served -rice, delicious soft chicken, the mixture of greens with sauce, but she waits till later for her meal, specially cooked for her without salt, to bring down the toxemia. The uncle is across the table asking questions about how to help her, about diet, exercise, raising her legs...a lantern at the side of the room, darkened now, the family closing in

Peter left the next morning on the early bus for Arusha, then up to Kampala Uganda for the last few months of his final year of high school. After his parent's death, he got a job up at the crater in a big safari lodge as a busboy, was spotted by a South Carolina couple drawn to his wide engaging smile, who sponsored him through four years of secondary school, and now two in high school. He gets top grades, speaks English perfectly and was elected as the head boy of the school by over one thousand students. I hope he doesn't read this, but this guy is a winner,in every way, and has helped me so much with decision making, translation, so knowledgeable of local customs, ideas...i adore him and always have to say but it's so sad that he is so ugly!! Visiting his uncle last year on a Christmas break, he met Charles and became a volunteer at ICA, facilitating workshops to local secondary students on HIV AIDS related issues, how to protect themselves,encouraging his peers to get out there to educate others. It is impossible to imagine he is only 23, bright, articulate, confident, compassionate - this guy is heading for major African leadership one day, for certain.

Peter was with me a year ago when Charles took us to the orphanage the first time, and now, together, with Charles, Elias from Pambazuko and the staff at Majengo one year later, i am 100% confident with this team. Bright, creative, smart and more important than anything, hand picked for the main thing that matters most, their absolute unequivical honesty. It is the ONLY issue for me. Corruption running rampantly through every industry and business, large or small, inside every political setup in every village, every town, every city across Africa - not only Africa: white collar, blue collar, red collar, purple collar, whatever, clean across the planet, corruption everywhere. No secret, but impossible to run a business, and this orphanage is a business, from a million miles across the sea, without complete transperancy and honesty.

We cannot do it.

Two months of searching, watching and weeding out each and every sign of discretion, any wiff of dishonesty. Viciously and ruthlessly, without compassion, I have to say. I simply don't care. We will not and cannot tolerate anyone who is here for any other reason but to love those children with all their hearts and to make their lives better..this is not a place for personal advancement, for putting money not earned into someone's pockets. We have spent two months setting up a monitoring system i believe now to be pretty tight, though not naive enough at this point not to expect variances down the road. But we have tried. The director from one year ago has gone, finally, after seven weeks of meetings, hearings, confessions, accusations, misunderstandings and declarations. The whole community in some form or other was involved. The village leaders took over and after a series of very long and quite painful all-day meetings, resolved the issue. Not pretty, not nice, but necessary, and actually a good start for this orphanage. An example of what will happen unless people are honest.

We now have two people, not one, heading up a staff of eight, Martha and Killo, whose resposibility is the all-round every-day running of the orpanage and pre school, inside and out - the care of the children, medical, education, food, the facility, upkeep, maintenance, gardens, cleanliness, the financial statements, the liaison between what's going on at Majengo and the village leaders, a hand picked Board of Directors, and finally to ICA and our donors.

This is all new to most of us. The fine line between organizing and running something as tenuous as this, and standing way back and watching the eventual customs and behaviours of local life taking over. Remember those well managed piles of age chosen clothing i so carefully set into place a week ago..the t shirts in one pile, the shorts, skirts, pants in others..well just this morning i passed by as Seanna and Sierra were teaching painting to the pre schoolers, to measure the windows in the bedrooms for curtains...huge mounds of clothing shoved helter skelter into the 'wrong' shelves....but hey, who cares, this is definately not my problem.

We ran out of flour and maize yesterday, just in time for Elias' day of budget making....ran up the mountain for another stab at the ATM and we're on board now, with huge bundles of bulk food stashed behind locked doors in our pantry....i love it....they have arrange for their daily run, the buying of milk and fresh green groceries..onions, cabbage, carrots, tomoatoes, bananas....avocados...you name it...to be bought from some of the neighbours who volunteered their services for free a year ago at this place.... giving business to those people who first acted as early founders, it is great...!!

Charles just called, back to Kiratu.....running..for another few days, and then home...next Friday.....wow!