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...