Johanes' turns 10

Today was a really long day, but very inspiring. A few days ago I met Joseph, the director of Fonelisco, another orphanage in Mwanza for street kids, at the internet cafe in town. He was looking for a new volunteer and thought I was her. I told Joseph what I was doing in Mwanza and he was very enthusiastic insisting that I must go and visit his orphanage and meet his kids and also offered to put me in contact with people for both the sex ed programme I am putting together for the orphanage and my dissertation research on ARV treatment.

Max and I went over in the late afternoon. We had no idea where we heading but saw a huge crowd of children and jumped out of our taxi. The children swarmed us immediately and talked to us loads, they wanted to know if we would be their teachers and if we would stay and all sorts of things. We went to Joseph's room and he showed us all the things he does to help the orphans: he paints and sells cards, gives drum and dance lessons, assists researchers and has this amazing plan to expand Fonelisco and build a modern hospital which could support far more orphans than he can at the moment. We asked Joseph why he started his orphanage and he answered simply "it is what I can do to help my country."

Max and I trekked back to Hisani in a couple of dalla-dalla's (with her encouragement I stayed on the whole way!) and arrived at 7 just in time to celebrate Johanes' tenth birthday. Some of the children don't even have birth dates, none of them have celebrated before, so this was a big evening. We played musical statues and gave the children biscuits (cookies), bananas and peanuts to celebrate. I've never seen English children dance the way the orphans did! :) Despite our best efforts, we couldn't find a cake anywhere. We had a really nice evening, it was lovely to see them all enjoying themselves so much.