Peter Mutabazi knows what it’s like to have a hard life. He grew up in a small village on the border of Uganda and Rwanda. Peter’s family was so poor that they had to grow their own food. He started helping his mom in the garden when he was only 4 years old. The family didn’t even have clean water, so the kids had to walk for hours to get some for the family. Poverty was their reality.
But that was not the worst of it. Peter’s dad was a cruel and abusive man. He would hit his wife, starve his children, and make their lives miserable. The abuse got worse as time went by.
One night, when Peter was 10, his father sent him to buy cigarettes. On his way back, it was raining heavily, and the cigarettes got ruined. Peter knew that if he went home, he would face a brutal beating. Scared to death, he ran away instead.
Peter had to overcome many obstacles and hardships in order to create a better future for himself. But he never gave up. He eventually moved to Oklahoma and started a real estate business. He bought a house with two spare bedrooms, and he felt restless knowing that there were kids who needed a place to stay. So he went to a foster agency and dedicated his life to helping children.
“In the USA, you need to take parenting classes and get a license from the state you live in if you want to be a foster parent,” Peter told Bored Panda. “All foster children are under the state’s care. Since I got my license from a private agency, they would contact me when they had kids who needed a home. I have had 12 kids in the last 3 years, from 2 to 11 years old. Since I’m single, I could only take care of two at a time.”
But Peter soon met a boy whose story broke his heart.
One night Peter got a call from his social worker asking, “Can you take in an 11-year-old boy just for the weekend?” It was just a few days after he had said goodbye to the two brothers he was fostering, so he told her that his heart was still hurting from the loss of the two boys, who had just gone back to their birth parents. Peter thought he didn’t have enough strength left to care for another child at the moment. But the social worker kept persuading him, and he agreed to take in the child.
At first, Peter didn’t want to know why Anthony was in foster care. He couldn’t handle any more emotional pain. He decided that if the placement lasted longer than the weekend, he would simply say no to keeping him any longer, afraid that they would bond, and then he would have to deal with the loss and grief again.
The social worker arrived at his home with the boy at 3:00 a.m. after driving for two hours from another county within the state. There is a huge shortage of foster families in Oklahoma, so when a child enters the foster care system, social workers often have to place the child outside of their original county, often taking the child away from the only place he or she has ever known. And older children are much harder to place, so the social worker had no other choice.
Peter told Anthony he could call him ‘Mr. Peter’ but just 20 minutes after his arrival, he asked if he could call the man ‘Dad.’
That’s when Peter realized that this boy was special. He had a connection with him that he couldn’t explain. So he decided to keep him for a little longer.
On Monday morning, the social worker came back, and Peter asked her why Anthony was in foster care. He was shocked by what he heard. The boy had been abandoned by his biological mother when he was 2. He was then adopted by a family that seemed to be religious and caring. But almost ten years later, the same family that raised him dumped him at the hospital and never came back. Peter couldn’t believe it. He wondered, “Who would do that?”
But then he learned that the family also gave up their parental rights, meaning Anthony had no one to go to. Peter knew he had to take him in.
He did. And he never regretted it. The two have been together ever since. And on the 12th of November, Anthony finally got to share Peter’s last name. His adoption was made official in a Charlotte courthouse, and photographer Cole Trotter captured the precious moment.
“I didn’t have any trouble with the adoption,” Peter said. “It took longer, but I knew he would be my son… Nobody wanted him, and it’s really hard to find homes or families that would take an 11-year-old boy.”
“I am truly blessed to have him; I feel like I have needed him or that he changed my life more than I have changed his,” Peter said.
But he didn’t stop fostering kids. “It’s hard to be a single foster dad, but it’s worth every minute of it. We are about to have another child, and we are thrilled.”
Peter Mutabazi is an inspiration to many, especially to fathers who want to make a difference in their children’s lives. He has shown that love is stronger than blood and that family is what you make it.