PE’s story is a good story. It is one of many happy ending stories concerning Kisedet’s beneficiaries and today we are telling you more about him.
PE was born in Moshi in 1999, a town on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro, he belongs to the Chagga tribe, one of the 123 ethnic groups in Tanzania.
After his parents splitted up, PE and his father moved to Dodoma while there is no reliable information on where his mother has gone, up to now. The bad relationship with his father forced PE to leave home and start living and working on the streets from the age of eight, begging or collecting and reselling plastics. Kisedet’s social workers met him in town through street outreach activities; on their advice PE started attending the drop-in center constantly, and in February 2011 he started living in the short-term center Shukurani. Unfortunately, his first stay at the center lasted only a few months, since in August of the same year he ran away to go back to the streets.
Kisedet didn’t give up on him and resumed working with him on the streets: the social workers managed to trace his father and proceed with the family reunification. PE went back to live with his father and he was enrolled back in school attending the fourth year of primary school. Once again, the father failed to take care of his son properly and PE left their house once more to go back to the streets.
One day Mbeleje, Kisedet’s founder, found him sitting on the ground at the corner of her house and asked him what he was doing there. He replied he wanted to go back to Shukurani and Mbeleje told him: “Ok, I’ll take you back but know that this is the last time”. Peter, who at the time was just a kid, had the strength to change his life in a positive way from that moment on: in 2015 he completed primary education and enrolled in a private secondary school which he successfully completed in 2019.
PE kept studying following his dream of becoming a tour guide and so in July 2020, thanks to Kisedet’s support, he enrolled at “Tumaini College” in Arusha and he obtained the certificate for Tourism and Hospitality in the following year. After that, PE returned to Dodoma suppoting the staff at both Kisedet’s shelters while also working for the mobile industry for a short time. PE decided to continue his studies in the same field, in October 2021 he began a two-year course at the Tabora Polytechnic College (TPC) and in July 2023 he obtained a diploma in Tourism and Hospitality.
Now PE is doing an internship which allows him to escort and guide tourists to national parks and historic sites, this will help him gain the necessary experience to fulfill his dream of becoming a tour guide.