WINTER 2010!!!
And almost, ready to go!! my 4th year back to Africa...and this time, as with every time it is differnt, but this year, with a new goal, a new purpose...very exciting..
Catchup first...sorry i can't write about Africa while living in Toronto, it doesn't work for me - outside, the weather cold, clear and cold, not so much snow for us this year, yet not hot, sweet, humid with the lovely smell of bananas floating through dusty mud streets, a rooster crowing not so far away....
It's not until I can feel myself back that i can begin to write..

Someone asked recently how it is coming home...My first year was terrible, mid Feb. in Canada, but more so the isolation of the streets, with people hurrying by, too cold to look up to say hello Jambo! to smile, to ask of the family, the time of day..
Over there life on the streets, clusters of fires burning in the black night, cooking rice, beans at the side of the road, the children dressed in tattered clothing playing by, happily, singing...the women crouched down, stooped, stirring and talking amongst themselves. It is a life on the street, with everyone knowing what everyone else is doing. The homes are mostly dark, many in mud huts made of cow dung and grass, pieces of wood, or with sheets of corregated tin, or plywood, or cardboard hung and tied together without privacy, without electricity, without water, small, with mamas and babas and children, bibis and granddads, friends all living, sleeping together - they are drawn out into the outer world.

Two worlds..back in 2007, coming home, so sad, after four months, to by flying out and away from Africa, I look out my window, and have a terrible sense of feeling that this continent is closing in away from me with all and everything it is - its povery, disease and pain, and yet its incredible song, its joy, its colour, its laughter, its smells, its sounds, its great resilience - its community, so filled with life. So terribly sad to be leaving, and not knowing if i will ever come back.

That year, i came home and began to make speaches about what I had seen, experienced. NOt at all the difinitive view, but my view, one person who had been there. I couldn't stop talking about it, with anyone who would listen. These speeches brought me back there. The art workshops in vast concrete community centres with people who had never seen paint before, who had never held a brush, and yet who experienced that huge rush of pride that they could do it! Many with HIV AIDS - groups of woman with sick, hungry, tired, with children hanging off their sides, their bellys and backs, pushed out into the streets abandoned by families, repulsed and confused, the shutting out, pushing away stigma of the disease, these women, sick and ill, who once held good jobs, now alone, hungry with no means of feeding their families, no where to go. Coming together in our ICA TANZANIAN offices, working and sharing with each other, learning about the disease, how to prevent it, how to care for themselves, with new hope, a place to come, a safe place from husbands irrate with their wive's diagnosis. Who refuse testing. Who went back out and got more women pregnant. This is how it spreads mainly. Unless the woman is reduced to prostitution, to feed her family. I learned so much that first year. Working outside of big cities in rural villages, hamlets, traveling down dirt gutted roads, into Masai tribal villages bumping along in Charles old red truck - it broke down this year. We gave HIV AIDS workshops, on prevention, volunteer testing, care, condoms. We visited sick, poor - I saw these people coming together, with new hope, compassion, understanding. Healing.
I began to raise money at these talks back home...and made up my mind to go back. To take that money and try to make a bit of a difference. And it has grown from there.

Fast forward...year four, a quick summary. WE have opened two orphanages: Majengo with 40 little kids, all orphaned by HIV AIDS...between age 2 and 8, a staff of 8, this newly renovated bright shiny yellow home with sun pouring in, three good meals a day of rice, beans, tomato, green and some days chicken, fish, a little beef, this project set up, owned and operated fully by local people, by the village elected leaders, by ICA TANZANIA. Our job over here is to raise funds and awareness, and for me, to go back every year to experience the changes, what is working, what isn't,review budgets, and to monitor for corruption. Corruption there isn't like white collar corruption here, the pilfering million of dollars - driven by greed. Over there, its driven by need. Stark desperate need. Which doesn't make it right, but for me, it is important to understand, that's all.

Except when things get out of hand. Like in the first orphanage I worked in four years ago, set up strategically just outside of town along the busy and very wealthy safari routes snaking up to the Ngora Crater. The director packed them tightly with small, beautiful children, many, but not all, orphaned by HIV AIDS and kept systematically hungry with poor food, some with HIV AIDS untreated, with open soars and liasons dripping with puss from the disease, all jammed into filthy untended quarters in tattered rags - to lure in the booming safari tourist trade.
And it worked.
Safari drivers were paid well to bring in their clients, as were government officials, store owner, shop keepers and churches. Everyone knew what he was doing, but he got away with it and still is. I got sucked in, as well anyone who came near this place, Americans, Canadian, Europeans, Australians, Israelis - people from around the world. WE all became part of the problem. I told everyone I met about this place. They HAD to drop by, they HAD to help out. I can be very persistent, and it worked. We had meetings, we played and taught the children. WE got to know those kids and loved them as we would our own. WE brought over little bags of bananas, samosas, rice...we built beds, tables, desks and shelving, benches. We tried to raise money to build a new facility, we found outside sponsors for each kid, for education, medicine.
Until we realized what was going on.
It was shattering. It was a betrayal unlike any other i have experienced. ONce i learned what ws happening, there was nothing i could do, but to back away, to leave those kids i loved so much. Those kids who i had visited everyday, taught English, taught swimming, taken on safari - for almost two years. Finished. Done. Once i found out, i wasn't allowed back there. I was no longer of use to him.
I almost left Africa for good that time.
I went back to my office and cried and cried and cried.
I told Charles, my project coordinator, that i was out of here. That I was going straight up to Nairobi for a few days, and then flying home, early. I was done.
He listened, all the while packing his truck for a workshop out in the middle of no where. He forced me to come. He made me stand up and make a speech to those people out there. I can't remember what i could have said. I was shattered.
He wouldn't let me go.
He said, look at all the things you have learned about orphanages, about those children, about their needs, about how to run one of these places...WEll, he insisted, take that knowledge and put it somewhere else. There are 14 million orphans in Africa. Don't let one little place force you away. This guy is so wise.
Balking and resisting, the very next day he took me into an agricultural community, far away from the safari trade, to a small mud foyer, where 52 little kids were bunched in together, sitting on the floor, singing a song for our arrival. Little ones barely able to walk, older children, some smiling, laughing, open, others holding back warily.
52 little kids in a mud foyer.
Community neighbours had gathered them up out of desperation, some wandering down roads, naked, with no family, no relatives, no one to look after them, and brought them to this place. There was no furniture, no tables, chairs, no desks, no paper, books, pens, crayons, nothing. No food but for whatever was brought in my farmers in the area. But there were two teachers in the front of the room, and a few women out back amongst the wandering chickens and goats, cooking over a small fire, volunteering their lives for these kids. They had nothing, but they did have each other. This place had a leaking roof, dirt floor, was dark with one little window, unfit for official orphanage registration - but yet a place where kids could come. Most slept out somewhere,with relatives, with neighbours, but 10 without anywhere to go, slept in one room, five to a bed widthwise -
Despite my insistance within a few hours, i was drawn back in.
That was March of 08...I had two weeks to go.
We committed ourselves to trying to help this very legitimate situation.
and this is where MAJENGO ORPHANAGE began!!!!!

What a great place to leave off!!
Seanna has just arrived....more from Amsterdam...!!
enjoy!!