Version:1.0 StartHTML:0000000105 EndHTML:0000014858 StartFragment:0000002298 EndFragment:0000014822

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....