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Wait for the look he gives me when his little up rolls out of frame.

I’ve uploaded a few of my African photos to Flickr. You can check them out here - http://www.flickr.com/photos/philhollands/

This morning I prepared to leave Tanzania by saying farewell to all the folk at the mission base and the staff at the clinic. There were a number of people that I had to express my heartfelt gratitude for their wonderful friendship and hospitality, so the process of saying goodbye took a little more time than planned.

During the morning I was fortunate enough to meet a German man named Daniel, who operates an orphanage close to the mission base. Daniel, a charismatic, solidly built man with a handshake to match provided me with much encouragement for the vision I have for the infants of Africa. Due to time constraints we really didn’t have opportunity to go into great depths regarding the set up and management of a children’s home in Tanzania but he wrote out his email address on a crumpled piece of paper lying on the dashboard of his dusty four-by-four for future contact. He’s been in the country for quite a number of years doing this work and it sounds like he knows how to steer around the politics and red-tape. I was really glad to meet him.

Unfortunately my morning at the base and clinic had gone. It had raced away faster than my wild taxi ride to the airport. Before I had time to catch my breath I was already aboard my Air Uganda flight, bound for Entebbe. I was initially apprehensive about flying Air Uganda for various reasons but to their credit I have to say it was certainly the best flight I’ve had on this trip and close to one of the best flights I’ve had in my short time flying around the world. The aircraft was comfortable and spacious and the hosts were on their game. As the plane seamlessly glided over Lake Victoria and into Entebbe my heart gasped with joy. I was back.

My flight had arrived just moments before the daily Emirates flight, so the usually sleepy Entebbe airport was a hive of activity. Due to the recent bombing in Kampala, airport security was ramped up. Security insisted on screening every traveller leaving the airport, and with only one x-ray gate the bottleneck could only be compared to someone trying to pass a watermelon through the eye of a needle.

After leaving the arrival terminal (and ageing a couple of years in the process) I was greeted by Manzi, who is a friend of the Ward family in Kabale. He had come to collect me and drive me back to his family’s home where I would stay overnight before catching a bus down to Kabale the following morning. On the way to Kampala we stopped in at one of the resorts that are perched along the shores of Lake Victoria to catch up and kick back. We were still in Entebbe and where we stopped wasn’t too far from the final resting place of the Air France aircraft that was famously involved in the 1976 hijacking during Amin’s reign. Although you can’t see the remains of the aircraft from the road, I’ve always known it was there. In all my years of coming and going to Uganda I’ve never had the opportunity to stop, until today. It was such a great opportunity to see this amazing piece of Ugandan/Israeli history; particularly considering Operation Thunderbolt remains one of Israel’s most successful missions of all time.

Manzi had also bought his 18-month-old son, Jordan, along for the drive. Not long after we were back on the road after stopping at the resort Jordan became a little distressed. Although I tried consoling him it wasn’t much use. He wanted his daddy. Since Manzi was driving there was only one thing that could be done – to let me loose behind the wheel in Kampala!

Some people seek thrills by skydiving out of planes, bungy jumping off bridges, or spending a day at a theme park. For me however, nothing excites me more than driving in the thick chaos of Kampala. To mix it up delegates from neighbouring African countries were beginning to filter in ahead of the African Union Summit, which begins on Sunday. Unbeknown to me at the time, presidents from Malawi, Congo, Namibia, and Zambia had arrived around the time my flight came in. I spent most of the time looking in the mirrors for armoured police escorts. Every time one approached all vehicles had to pull off to the side of the road and remain stationary until the convoy had passed. Watching these escorts roar past was an amazing thing to witness. You have to understand that in Kampala there are more cars on the road than there are grains of sand on the beaches along the East Coast of Australia. It was like watching a hot knife slice through butter. The escorts miraculously were able to part the sea of cars like something out of the book of Exodus.

The agenda for the AU Summit is child and maternal health. There is a petition for governments to allocate 15% of their national budgets in a bid to reduce infant mortality. I guess it’s promising to see that African governments are starting to work together for the sake of their own health care. That said, I couldn’t help but feel this summit will be all smoke and no fire.

The next morning I will jump on an 8 hour, bone-shattering bus ride out of the capital and onwards to Kabale.

Today was my last day of meetings with government officials. This time I spent the morning talking with the manager of MVC (Most Vulnerable Children) at the department of social welfare. He was a young, vibrant man who spoke fluent English, so we conversed for quite some time about the needs that are present in this land. He was extremely helpful, providing me with a great deal of information. Although he didn’t have hard copies of current statistics for all the regions in Tanzania, codes and ethics involving children’s homes, and legal acts involving children in Tanzania, he emailed everything he had on his database the same day. All these docs were sitting in my inbox by the time I made it out of the city and back to the mission base here in Mwandege. I don’t think I’ve ever that kind of speedy service from an African government department!

Although I haven’t gone through any of the docs, I took some notes during the meeting that will help to paint a picture of the need that exists here in Tanzania. At present there are 750,000 registered children in Tanzania who are in a vulnerable state. The term ‘vulnerable’ is an umbrella that covers a range of subclasses, one of which includes abandoned or orphaned children. To my great surprise there are only 90 children’s homes that are registered with the Government of Tanzania. Of that 90 they collectively house and care for 4000 children. Only 4000. This 4000 is not subtracted from the 750,000 children on the vulnerable list because children who are housed in children’s homes are no longer considered to be in a vulnerable state. It’s a sobering thought to think there are three quarters of a million children in this country who are in a vulnerable state.

The manager of MVC confirmed most of the information I received on Monday regarding the areas that are in most need. It seems as though I might have finally found a place to open this home.

At this point in time I need to let things settle. I need to return to Australia and get my head around all the information I have received. I have a pile of legal documents to sift through and I need to pray hard about where to go from here. At the moment I need to complete my studies and possibly complete a grad-program in paediatric nursing. I reckon I have about 18 months left in Australia before I’m free to start this work. In the mean time I can start working through the legalities that are needed to set up a home.

After leaving the city, Karume and I stopped in at a children’s home that was on the outskirts of Dar. An American organisation established the home in the city nearly 20 years ago. The organisation had originally rented a house but then the project expanded, forcing them to develop a purpose built facility on the outskirts in 2006. They built for 50 children but now they have blown out to 150. They had a few infants there, the youngest one being only 5 days old. The mother had abandoned the newborn in the back of a dalla-dalla (mini bus). When I heard the story whilst standing in the room full of infants my heart confirmed to me that I’ll spend the rest of my life rescuing these young lives.

My work here in Tanzania is done, at least for now. I’ve seen the things I needed to see and spoke to the people I needed to speak to. It’s been a very fruitful reconnaissance. I’m now looking forward to some much needed R&R in Kabale, Uganda.

After an amazing weekend on Zanzibar Island it was back to business. Karume met me at the clinic on early on Monday morning and from there we made the trek into Dar, a teeming city where 3.5 million people swarm.

Since already having spent a few days with Karume I’m getting to know him a little better. He is a respected and trusted man amongst the people who work at the mission base. He is the husband of one of the Tanzanian doctors working in Dr. Joel’s clinic and he has also aided a German businessman to set up a children’s home here in Mwandege, so he knows how to steer through all the red-tape. Thinking about it now, there probably isn’t a better person than Karume to be helping me at the moment.

Our first appointment was with the department who look after the registration of Non-Government Organisations in this country. The home will need to be registered under a certified NGO before I can apply for a license to operate a children’s home. This could prove to be tricky as it will mean I’ll need to assemble a board of people I trust here in Tanzania to form the NGO. This could take quite some time. Interestingly enough, there was a clause that would allow me to use the NGO that is already established in Kabale, Uganda. Under that clause I could start an annex of Akanyijuka Children’s Home/VCCS here in Tanzania. It’s obviously some sort of East African arrangement. It would certainly mean I could bypass a lot of red-tape and time, but this is not for me to decide. That option is merely a thought and nothing else. It’s something that would need to be discussed in depth with Ps. Edward and the board of VCCS in Uganda.

After there we headed to the Dept. of Social Welfare and Child Services to go over the legal docs in more depth. The woman in charge of child services was helpful. Initially she seemed against the notion of setting up a home in Tanzania, informing me that the government rather prefers community oriented programs that assist families within their homes, rather than having a dedicated home just for children. I told her that this was a fair call, but then asked her about the infants that are abandoned at birth and she said it would be acceptable to take these infants to a place of refuge, such as a children’s home. I reassured her I didn’t come to Tanzania to fix something that wasn’t broken. If the government is more for community-based programs and not for dedicated home’s then that’s not for me to question. I continued to explain I have no desire to setup a home where there is no real need. She was kind enough to print out a government record of all the registered orphanages and children’s homes in Tanzania. I’m not sure how privileged that information is, but it gave me a good idea of where not to go. She rattled off a few places on the list, places that had a number of children’s homes already in operation. Basically Dar es Salaam, Dodoma, and Arusha are the big three. She plainly said if I wanted to set up in any of those three cities then there would be a good chance the government would reject my application.

This was good news for me as it confirmed much of what was on my heart before coming to Tanzania. Upon coming here I never had any desire to set up a home in Dar, or any ‘established’ city like Dodoma and Arusha. I really felt called to go out into the Western part of the country… to the ends of the earth, as it were. The woman then rattled off the names three towns out West that are in need. The first two I had never heard of but the last one I had. Funnily enough it was one of three towns out West that I had originally planned to visit as a potential site for a home. This place is sits on the border of Tanzania and Burundi, and would take a day and a bit to travel by bus. It would actually to be quicker to drive from Kabale in Uganda, through Rwanda, and into Tanzania than to leave from here in Dar es Salaam. Unfortunately my flight to leave Dar is on Friday morning, so I just don’t have the time to go out there this time around. If I had known earlier last week then I probably would have made the drive out. Karume actually offered to escort me out there until we did the math and realised that it wouldn’t work due to time constraints. When I told Karume I had originally planned to go there on my own he didn’t seem to think it was a wise idea, not for the first time at least. This confirmed some advice I took from an Australian missionary couple that were working in Dar. They said pretty much the same thing; that I would struggle as a foreigner out there on my own.

Me going there on this trip is not important. What’s important is that this place was on my heart before coming to the country and it’s been identified as a place by the government that is in need. It’s a place I can now really seek God for and that’s all that matters at this point in time.