How Peter Mutabazi moved from Kampala pickpocket to most celebrated foster dad in US

US based Ugandan,Peter Mutabazi’s social media pages have become unlikely windows into a life that fascinates thousands of Ugandans and millions of viewers around the world. 

On Instagram and TikTok, he shares short, intimate clips of his daily routines as a single foster father in the United States — moments filled with laughter, exhaustion and quiet reflection.

In one recently shared video, Mutabazi sits calmly on a sofa while several of his white children pace restlessly around the house. 

Schools have been closed because of a winter storm, and cabin fever has set in. 

The camera captures chaos, patience and warmth all at once. There is no dramatic soundtrack, just a man observing his children with humour and affection.

Having raised over 40 children, and adopted several more, Mutabazi is one the most recognisable foster-care advocates in the US today. But the calm confidence audiences see today was forged in a childhood defined by fear, hunger and survival.

Long before he became a viral foster dad, Mutabazi was a homeless child navigating the streets of Kampala. 

Born in a rural village near Uganda’s border with Rwanda, his early life was marked by extreme poverty and brutal abuse from his father.

“My father used to say to me, ‘I wish you were never born so I didn’t have to feed you,’” Mutabazi recalls.

At just 10 years old, he ran away, convinced his father would one day kill him. What awaited him in the city was no kinder. 

He slept near a rubbish dump, went days without sleep for fear of being attacked, and survived by stealing, begging and carrying groceries — often slipping food from shoppers’ bags.

He called himself “Garbage Boy”.

It was in 1988, while stalking a potential victim in a bustling marketplace, that his life pivoted. The man he intended to steal from — Jacques Masiko — turned around, smiled and asked him a disarming question: “What is your name?”

That simple act of recognition unsettled the street-hardened teenager. No adult had asked him that before. Masiko offered him food, then something more radical: consistent kindness. Over time, he asked Mutabazi whether he wanted to go to school, share a meal with his family, attend church.

“Dreaming wasn’t part of my ecosystem,” Mutabazi says. “Hoping felt like lying to yourself.”

But he kept saying yes.

Masiko, then the Uganda country director for Compassion International, enrolled him in boarding school and welcomed him into his family. At the dinner table, an empty chair was deliberately set aside for Peter — a small gesture that carried enormous meaning.

“For the first time, I felt like I belonged,” Mutabazi says.

With Masiko’s support, he completed university in Uganda, studied in London and moved to the United States in 2002. Today, he works as a senior child advocate at World Vision and has fostered 47 children, adopting three.

The social media clips that now captivate so many are not carefully crafted performances. They are echoes of a promise Mutabazi made long ago — to become the kind of adult he once desperately needed.

“My entire life hinges on undeserved kindness,” he says.