Lynn's Majengo needs money to grow
It’s been a few years since we checked in with Lynn Connell’s activities in Africa, but that doesn’t mean that things haven’t been eventful.
This month, she’ll be back in the limelight, with two events planned, one in Toronto on Sunday, December 18 and one in Creemore on Friday, December 30, which aim to celebrate the success of the Majengo orphanage in Mto Wa Mbu, a town in the Arusha region of Tanzania. They will also kick off Connell’s biggest fundraising effort yet, as she and the orphanage’s other organizers get set to raise $300,000 to build an entirely new facility on six acres given to them by the district government.
For those of you who need a refresher on Connell’s story, we can give you a quick run-through.
Back in 2006, Connell decided to shut the doors on her Creativity Art Retreat Centre in Dunedin for one summer and travel to Tanzania with an organization called ICA Tanzania. She spent several months working at an HIV/AIDS centre operated by that organization, using her creative talents to deliver arts therapy to the many HIV sufferers who dropped into the centre.
When that experience ended, Connell toured Tanzania for a couple of months, visiting the Masai tribes (where she eventually set up a foundation that would pay for Masai girls’ high school studies) and going on safari. But before she did that, she visited the “Blessed Comfort Orphanage,” a run down place on the Safari Trail (there were several orphanages along this trail, set up there in hopes of receiving donations from tourists who pass through.) The children’s clothes were torn, the floors on the orphanage were muddy, and food was scarce. Connell spent several days in the vicinity of the orphanage, and even took ten kids on safari with her. Weeks later, she was back in Canada.
She could not stop thinking of Africa though. In January 2008, she was back. She spent a few months working at the same orphanage, trying hard to raise money and find donations of supplies; anything to bring up the standard of life of the children living there.
That’s when Africa dealt Lynn a serious blow. One day she found a hidden closet at the orphanage, full of supplies that were not being used. One thing led to another, and it was found out that the man who ran the place was keeping the kids in squalor, in hopes of getting more money from passing tourists – money that was being funneled straight into his personal bank account.
It was a low point, a time that Lynn now says she can’t think about without crying. But soon after, Charles Luoga, the ICA Tanzania director who had been overseeing Connell’s work at the AIDS Centre, took her to Mto Wa Mbu to visit 52 children squeezed into the dark and leaking mud-floored foyer of someone’s house, which was set up as a makeshift daycare. It was an orphanage of sorts, but in such terrible condition it had been refused official orphanage status. They had no furniture, no books or resources except for one teacher offering his time voluntarily, and a few neighbour women who came by to cook lunch – which in most cases was the only food the children would receive all day.
Connell and Luoga found a half-built house down the road, and committed themselves to starting an orphanage for these children. Then Connell came back to Canada and raised about $25,000 to renovate and refurbish the house.
In March 2009, 27 children moved into the “Majengo Orphanage,” with new beds, sheets, towels, an outdoor kitchen, showers, toilets, a playground and an on-site pre-school for the children under age 7. The older kids attend local primary schools in the area.
All was going great, especially with the serendipitous addition of Pennsylvania resident Matt McKissock to the fundraising and organizing team.
In the spring of 2009, McKissock was looking to rent a cottage in Muskoka for his family, and came across an ad for one owned by Connell’s family. During a brief conversation about keys and deposits and such, Connell mentioned she was heading off for Africa in the next few days. McKissock was interested and asked more. The following discussion led him to wonder about the nature of what Connell had done: faced with an intolerable situation, she stood up and did something about it, when others would likely have walked away. Seeing the same reaction in himself, he flew to Tanzania weeks later and before long created a fundraising foundation that his family would administer in their hometown of Warren, Pennsylvania. For the last two years, that foundation has covered the operating fees of the Majengo Orphanage.
Then, in September 2010, something happened that nobody expected. The district government made a decision that all five of the corrupt orphanages along the Safari Trail, including the one that Connell had started out at, would be closed down. And the 67 children at those places, most of them without clothes, shoes or belongings and many of them malnourished and sick, were dropped off at the Majengo Orphanage.
Operating costs went up and conditions became more crowded – “it’s a bit of a mob situation,” explains Connell with a laugh – but the orphanage continued its work.
Today, the orphanage supports the needs of 114 children, between the ages of 1 and 14, with food, housing, medical needs, education and clothing. Seventy-seven children live inside the orphanage, and 37 live out with relatives and friends, spending every day at Majengo.
And now, with the new land available to them and plans for a whole new facility, Connell has been charged with fundraising. She recently set up Majengo Canada, a registered charity that can issue tax receipts, and in January she will travel to Tanzania with a large group of people with “connections,” she says, hoping one or several of them will be as taken with the project as McKissock was.
On this Sunday, December 18, she will host a reception at her Toronto home (284 Major Street in the Annex; all are welcome), and on Friday, December 30, she will be at an opening reception for a January show of her latest artwork at Curiosity House. Connell can also be reached on her cell phone at 416-951-6528 if anyone has questions or fundraising ideas.
As for Connell herself, she is a woman transformed. “I have my kids, my grandkids, my art, and everything else is Africa,” she says.
The Majengo Orphanage can be found online HERE and Lynn Connell’s blog about her African journey can be found HERE.
