Starting in Moshi

I am so excited. Today was day 2 in Moshi, and I was able to officially meet with Luka and Justas—our African contacts for the Orphans International Tanzania project. I have to admit, I came to Moshi rather clueless, but full of motivation and excitement to help what sounded like a “good idea” get started. Essentially, all I knew was that we had 2 African contacts who would help us reach out to 27 orphans living with “foster” families, and as the program expanded, we would eventually create a center that would provide services and support for these orphans and their families. I wasn’t even sure what had been accomplished already—as I understood things (and this may have just been poor-listening on my part), we hadn’t even confirmed the “orphan” status of these children, we didn’t have “headquarters,” and I had no idea who these Luka and Justas people were, other than kindered-spirits.

I was very pleasantly surprised. It turns out, Luka and Justas are far from “random” participants in this project—they have been unofficially running the Kilimanjaro Aid for AIDS Orphans (KAFAO) organization for the past two years, completely out of their own pockets. This is no small feat, as I quickly came to see. Their organization—which currently has seven volunteers—has been providing exercise books, food, soap and even clothing to these orphans and these families on a regular basis. Last year, they even managed to have a “social event,” where they welcomed the orphans and their families, in order to create a community for the participants in the program. When they went to officially register their program with the government last year, they realized they needed a headquarters; so, they began renting a two-room office in Majengo. It was in this office that they welcomed me this morning, where they shared story of KAFAO, and where the future of this organization—soon to become, officially, Orphans International Tanzania—began to take shape, and to seem so clear and possible and immediately exciting to me.

On one of the office walls, pictures of participating orphaned children smile down on those who sit opposite them. Throughout our meeting in the office, some of these children—who live, play or go to school in the neighborhood—managed to pop their heads into the office to say hi, to smile, or to shyly run away and stand, watching, behind the tree in the courtyard out front.

Luka and Justas presented me with a folder containing an official documentation of each child’s confirmed status as an “orphan”, signed and verified by the government. They began telling me about visiting these children and their families—each week—and it became clear to me that Orphans International will be supporting and enhancing a program that is already in motion—albeit precariously and continuously on the verge of running out of money. With each file, each document and every photo that they handed me, they smiled hopefully—at me, at each other—and the excitement in the room became palpable. These men’s vision to create a stable support-base for these orphans and the families that took them in is soon to become a reality.

First things first: we need to fill out “Family Needs Assessment” forms for each of the 27 participating families. This is good, explain Luka and Justas, because ever since they told the families that Orphans International would be sending interns, the families have been asking to meet us. But the questionnaires are in English? Luka and Justas proudly hand me their Swahili translation of this eight-page document. After making 27 copies of both the English and Swahili versions of these forms, we are ready to begin home-visits tomorrow morning. Justas estimates we will finish 10 per day (meaning we will finish by the end of the week… which seems reasonable to me), however, Luka makes a more ambitious estimation that maybe we could finish all 27 tomorrow. We will see! In any case, I have a feeling the next day(s) will be pretty intense.

I have been SO inspired by Luka and Justas’ commitment to these orphans and to their families, by their motivation to get things off the ground as SOON as possible, and by their obvious compassion and care for the well-being of these children and their community. I’ve been dedicated to this project since the first, rough-explanation I was given about it… but after meeting Luka and Justas, seeing their work, meeting some of the other participants (they called all of the volunteers to come meet me, but only some of them could make it), and meeting some of the orphans, I feel VERY motivated, and very positive about this project.