Mukisa Kenny Willy is unfailingly polite and soft spoken.

Such gentleness could come as a surprise to those who know a thing or two about Willy’s hardscrabble childhood. That the experience did not harden him, or indeed, kill him, says something about his spirit and about the goodness of the people who took an orphan boy under their wing, fed, clothed, sheltered and taught him.

“There were a lot of bumps in the road,” said Willy, now 20.

Thanks to the efforts of the retired choral director at Auburn Riverside High School, Linda Fahlgren-Moe, residents of Auburn will hear a great deal about the life of this young man. And at a benefit concert Oct. 19, they’ll get a chance to help him.

“I have a lifelong friend named Shelley Kennedy-Sharpe, who has done something most people wouldn’t do,” Fahlgren-Moe said of the woman responsible for Willy being in the United States. “She created a non-profit organization to benefit orphans and youth in Uganda. And her motivation came through her 11-year relationship with her foster son, Mukisa Willy.”

Tragedy early

As Willy explains, when he was four months in the womb, his father died at the hands of government forces who had suspected him of being a rebel.

After his birth, his mother left him with his paternal grandmother. When she died in 1994, he stayed with his aunt. She died in 1995, leaving him without a single living relative, all on his own at the age of 6.

For the next two years, Willy led a hand-to-mouth existence on the streets of Kampala, Uganda, offering his services as a water carrier to passersby. On a good day, he could make the equivalent of 30 cents hauling the heavy, 20-liter containers to and from houses and buildings without water pumps. He would then exchange his meagre earnings for a scrap of bread, a bun, supplementing the rest of the diet he’d fished out of the garbage.

Clothing was whatever he could retrieve from the trash. He took shelter where he could find it, often in a copse of trees or in barrels. And he watched other kids, perhaps not as hardy as he, die from exposure to the cold and rain.

If police had found him, Willy said, they would have beaten him, badly, perhaps to death. Other children in his shoes met this fate.

“I never got caught, so I never got beaten. I was fast,” Willy said with a short laugh.

How did Willy keep clean? He throws back his head and laughs at the absurdity of the question.

“When you spend all your time just trying to feed yourself, you don’t have time to worry about being clean!” Willy said.

One day a man claiming to be Willy’s father took him home. What the man really wanted was a source of free labor. For a time, he was able to exploit the 7-year-old. But when Willy discovered the cheat, he fled, pocketing a bit of money on his way out the door.

Tough living

Once again, Willy was on the streets.

Grasping a thin reed of hope, Willy boarded a bus and traveled 40 miles to the city of Luwero, where rumor said he might have relatives. All he found there was a deserted house wild with brush and weeds.

It was at that sad juncture, as Willy wondered where he was going to stay, that he had his first serious encounter with luck.

“I met a lady who told me of an organization called New Hope Uganda. She told me that it helps kids who are orphans who don’t have parents. She directed me to where it was,” Willy said.

New Hope Uganda would be Willy’s home for the rest of his childhood.

Of consequence to Willy, a woman named Shelley Kennedy-Sharpe, whom he affectionately refers to as “Mama Shelley,” learned about New Hope Orphanages from missionaries visiting Liberty Lake Community Church in Eastern Washington.

Sharpe and her husband, Paul, decided to sponsor Willy, helping him with food, clothes and education and writing to him. He stayed at the orphanage until 2006. He later enrolled in a boarding school where he completed his high school education.

Kennedy-Sharpe also started a non-profit organization called “I am the Village.” Its aim is to provide Ugandan orphans, one at a time, with food, clothing, shelter, medicine and education.

Now the foundation is trying to raise money to ensure that Willy finishes his education. Willy is the first recipient and will begin his studies with Spokane Community College’s AAS Automotive Technology Program this month.

He will need about $20,000 altogether to complete his studies in the Toyota Tech 10 program.

This program consists of a two-year degree in automotive mechanics followed by a one-year internship in the United States. After completing his studies, Willy will return to Uganda and work at Toyota Kampala.

At 2 p.m. Oct. 19 in the Auburn Performing Arts Center at 700 E. Main St., Auburn Riverside High School’s Choirs, directed by Jon Stenson, are sponsoring a concert to benefit the scholarship fund for the I am the Village foundation. The concert will feature top-tier performing groups that have donated their time and talents to help Willy.

Performing will be the Total Experience Gospel Choir, the 40-voice Harmony Kings Chorus from Federal Way, the Beginner’s Luck Quartet from Auburn Mountainview High School and local talent.

Tickets are $15 for adults, $12 for students and seniors, and $50 for a family pack. Tickets are available now through the ARHS cashier at 253-804-5154 or through Fahlgren-Moe at 253-939-8673.

Willy will attend the concert, speaking briefly about his life in Uganda and what the foundation is doing for him.

“I want to go back and work with kids, especially those who were in my situation. They need hope, and I want to go back and give hope,” Willy said.