Trying to make a difference, from half a world away

By JARED FLESHER
Staff Writer

BRANCHBURG -- Mwandu Caito, a native Tanzanian, is in the United States for the first time.

He's here to celebrate the holidays and meet his in-laws, and to raise money for the AIDS orphanage he's starting with his American wife, Terri Place.

So far, a number of things have surprised him during his visit.

Take the dog show he watched on television recently -- people walking around in circles with groomed animals.

Where Mwandu lives, near the Indian Ocean in a town called Bagamoyo, they don't have dog shows, he said.

(Growing up, Mwandu fashioned toys out of wire, and soccer balls out of plastic bags.)

Mwandu is also not used to the mixture of highways and suburban housing which defines much of Central Jersey.

In Bagamoyo, the streets are filled with people. But here, he's noticed, everybody stays at home or uses a car to get places. There's no one around to talk to.

"In Bagamoyo, there's more community," he said.

For Mwandu, a day trip to Philadelphia last month felt much less foreign than Branchburg.

Mwandu is a trained sound engineer.

He's helped run shows for rappers such as Ja Rule and Shaggy when they perform in Tanzania.

His last gig was a Jay-Z concert in October.

But that's only one of his occupations.

With his wife, Terri Place, Mwandu also runs "The Baobab Home," an organization in Bagamoyo that helps feed breakfast to 40 children every morning, sends seven street boys to school and now plans to take in orphans.

Mwandu and Place flew into Newark Liberty International Airport in mid-November and will stay with Place's mother in Branchburg until early January. Their goal is to raise the $25,000 it will cost to run the orphanage for one year. It will house nine infants and toddlers whose parents have died from AIDS or the effects of poverty.

The couple has been meeting with church groups, high-school groups, women's groups and anybody else who may be interested in donating.

Place grew up in New Jersey and attended Bridgewater-Raritan West High School. Her road to Tanzania began after a life-changing event: a divorce. Looking for a fresh start, she went to Uganda three years ago to volunteer at an orphanage, and soon after decided Africa was where she needed to be.

"This is what I was put on Earth to do," she said.

After Place met Mwandu in Tanzania, they fell in love, married, had a son, Justis, and started on plans of starting an orphanage of their own.

While much of Africa has a reputation for violence and government unrest, Tanzania is stable, according to Place.

"Tanzanians pride themselves on their peaceful way of life," she said.

But that's not to say the country doesn't have it's share of problems.

"Medical care is pretty awful, and education isn't very good," Place said of conditions near Bagamoyo.

When it comes to housing, she's reminded of the story of "The Three Little Pigs." The poorest Tanzanians live in straw houses, most people live in houses of mud and brick, and more affluent people live in cement houses, she said.

About 8 percent of the population is infected with HIV/AIDS.

"I try to present Tanzania as being really bad, but not the worst for sure," Place said when characterizing the epidemic in the country.

Some countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have HIV rates reaching 24 percent or more.

Place said one of the reasons things are getting better in Bagamoyo in particular is because American-bought anti-retroviral drugs are now available for free to about 300 AIDs patients.

"That's not everybody who needs them, but it's enough to get people out of the woodwork to start testing," she said. "When there were no AVRs, nobody tested, because it was just a death sentence. Nobody wanted to know."

Mwandu and Place hope to have their orphanage open in a matter of months, but securing all the government licenses they need has been a challenge.

"It's hard to plan because Tanzania kind of defies planning," Place said. "I went right before we left to get an update from social services. They said, 'Oh, everything's fine. Just wait.' That's Tanzania. Waiting is a big part of our lives."

In the meantime, the Baobab Home has served the community in other ways, including helping with the construction of housing, feeding children, arranging medical care, starting a library, and sponsoring the education of students.

In Tanzania, kids feel differently about school than many American students, Place said.

"They love school," she said. "School gives you a purpose in life. Everybody wants to go to school. Nobody dreams, like here, 'Oh, I wish it was summer.' "

Tanzanian students are especially fond off tests, Place said.

"They love to take examinations," she said. "I don't know why. They don't even care what the tests are, they just love tests."

While here in New Jersey, Place and Mwandu plan to speak to groups of American students about Tanzania. One of the questions they received concerned raising their son in Africa, who is 21 months old.

"The question was, well, it wasn't actually a question, it was more like an accusation that we were guilty of child abuse for raising our son in poverty when we could be raising him here," Place said.

She thinks Justis will be fine.

"There are so many wonderful things about my son's life," Place said. "He doesn't watch very much TV, he has a zillion friends, and he's out and active every day. If you look at the diabetes rate here, 1/3 of children born here in the year 2000 will get Type-2 diabetes, which is related to diet and lack of exercise. Then you've got a higher murder rate, you've got school shootings, processed food, all kinds of stuff like that. I'm not saying Tanzania's utopia and everyone should live there, but anywhere in the world you live there are tradeoffs."

For now, Mwandu and Place are focused on raising money for the orphanage and getting all their government licenses in order. But for the future, they have even bigger plans.

"More children," Mwandu said. "Like 40 or 50. That's what I would like. A big Baobab Home to care for more kids. That's my goal."

To that end, the husband and wife have already bought two acres of land on the other side of town.