Man Has Fostered 34 Children, Adopted 1 and Hopes to Adopt More: 'It's Giving Me Joy' (Exclusive)

“My kids are my family,” Peter Mutabazi tells PEOPLE. “They never think of me as a Black dad—they just know me as Dad.”

Peter Mutabazi is a single foster parent who shares his journey on social media to show others that families don't need to be the same race — and to encourage other men to be active dads.

"I really want to inspire others," he tells PEOPLE before Father's Day. "Men, we have the responsibility of being in the kids' lives. It's not a job for just moms."

To date, 49-year-old Mutabazi has fostered 34 children and adopted one, and he's not stopping soon. Currently he has six children — including his adopted son Anthony, 17, and foster kids ages 9, 8, 8, 7 and 21 months — living with him at home in Charlotte, North Carolina.

"I want to change the narrative," he says. "Actually, men, we can be dads for kids who need us. Of the 34 kids I've [fostered], I noticed that none of them have ever said, 'I wish we had a mom.' No one has said that. Why? Because no one had ever had a dad."

His Own Challenging Childhood

Part of why Mutabazi wants to help kids is the compassion he developed for others during his own childhood in Kabale, Uganda, a small village on the border of Rwanda. The oldest of five children, he was only able to eat every other day, he recalls. At the time, many children in his village died of malnutrition or malaria by the time they were 2.

In the pursuit of a new life, he ran away from at 10, went to a bus station, and bought a ticket to Kampala, a city about 300 miles away, he says: "I never wanted my father to find me. I thought he would kill me."

He recalls living on the streets for four years before befriending a man who essentially became his foster dad and enrolled him in boarding school. "That changed my life," he says.

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Mutabazi went on to earn a bachelor's degree in business administration at Makerere University in Kampala, studied crisis management at Oak Hill College in London and in 2002 moved to Santa Clarita, California, to study theology at The Master's University.

He spent the next 11 years living in Denver, working for a child-development ministry and traveling to Africa with pastors and Christian singers, some of whom were adopting African children. Mutabazi asked if he could adopt a child from Africa himself, but he was told that he could not as a single man. Then he took a safari with a pastor from Texas who showed him pictures of his foster kids and told him about foster care in the U.S.

"The bulb went off, 'This is my dream,'" Mutabazi says. "These are the kids I would really want to help, because I was one of them."

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Becoming a Foster Dad

Soon Mutabazi started researching whether he would qualify to be a foster parent in the U.S., where more than 117,000 children and teens need permanent homes, according to AdoptUSKids.org.

"I wanted to know more. And the more I got to know, I just had to do something," he says.

In 2015, he went to a foster agency in Denver and asked if he could mentor foster kids. Excited by the prospect of eventually becoming a dad himself, he started reading parenting books and continued exploring his options after moving from Denver to Oklahoma City, where he launched a new career flipping houses. The new job meant he could travel less and have more flexible hours — exactly what he needed to make his dream of fatherhood possible. "I wanted to be a full-time dad," he says.

The big moment arrived in Spring 2017, as he became a licensed foster parent and his first foster child moved into his home. "He was the blondest kid I've ever seen," Mutabazi says. At first, Mutabazi assumed the social worker had made a mistake placing the child in his care. "I said, 'You are at the wrong house. I think you've got a mix up.'"

But it wasn't a mistake, and Mutabazi says the experience showed him how kids of all backgrounds can end up in foster care. "It's all kids," he says of those who need homes. "Being a foster parent, I have to truly welcome and embrace and love every child that comes in."

And that's exactly what he's done in the last six years, becoming a foster father to 34 children. One is Native American, three are Latino, nine are Black and 19 are White — diversity that he cherishes. "My kids are my family," he says. "They never think of me as a Black dad, they just know me as Dad."

Adopting a Child

Mutabazi bonded with two brothers who lived with him for over a year. When they left, it broke his heart. On a Monday, he told his social worker he wanted to take a few months off and heal. Around midnight that Friday, his social worker called and asked him to take an 11-year-old boy just for the weekend.

Within 20 minutes of arriving at Mutabazi's home on that January 2018 day, Anthony asked, "Can I call you dad?"

Anthony arrived in protective custody when he was 1 1/2 years old and was adopted when he was 4 years old, but without any warning, his adoptive parents took him to the hospital, signed away their parental rights and left. "They didn't say goodbye," says Mutabazi, who learned about Anthony's story when the social worker came to pick him that following Monday.

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"I could not understand how another human being can do that to a kid," says Mutabazi, who decided to tell Anthony he was home. "Literally, right away, I knew, 'This is my son.'"

He legally adopted Anthony on Nov. 12, 2019. "It was joy," Mutabazi says. "For him, I've always been dad from day one. He knew I was there forever."

Two weeks later, Mutabazi officially became a U.S. citizen.

Facing Questions About Race

As the years have gone by and Mutabazi has adjusted to life as a father, he's faced situations where people question a Black man raising children of a different race. Today, the children living in his Charlotte, North Carolina, home are mostly White, and Mutabazi feels the need to carry copies of his adoption and foster paperwork with him everywhere he goes. "Sometimes we go to the grocery store and someone will call the police," he says.

When a foster child was melting down at Chuck E. Cheese, Mutabazi recalls, he carried the crying and screaming boy outside to calm down, and a woman asked where the boys' mother was. "I literally said, 'I am his mom and his dad,'" Mutabazi remembers. He says she called the police and accused him of kidnapping the boy.

Even when Mutabazi is standing right next the kids, people ask, "Where are your parents?" If he takes the kids to the doctor's office, he's often asked, "Who are you? Are the parents coming?"

"It doesn't phase me," he says. "My goal is to be an anchor for the kids. I'm not going to let someone else's ignorance take that joy or that mission from me."

His single status has also been questioned, he says: "From the get go, when I was going to [foster parent] classes, other parents looked at me [and said], 'Where's your wife? You can't be here by yourself.' My journey is for me to change the narrative of what people think of family."

Sharing His Story

To achieve his goals, Mutabazi shares his story on Instagram (@fosterdadflipper), where he only posts photos of the kids wearing sunglasses and uses fake names to protect their identity. Last year he published a book, Now I Am Known, and launched the Now I am Known Foundation to raise money for foster kids, including his own. One of the campaigns was created with the goal of purchasing a larger vehicle that can transport his whole family together.

His Single Status and Everyday Life

In addition to the four foster children currently living in his home, a 19-year-old foster son who aged out of the system "comes and goes" and is still considered family. They also have two dogs: Rafiki, a 2-year-old labradoodle, and Simba, a 3 1/2-year-old goldendoodle.

Being a single parent has many challenges, like the time Simba ate two of the toddler's pacifiers and needed emergency surgery. Mutabazi piled the kids into the car and take them with him to the veterinarian. "I'm constantly with my kids," he says. "If one kid gets sick at 8 p.m., the other three have to come with me to the hospital because I cannot leave them behind."

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When asked if he's still single, he jokes, "Do you have a friend that is single, that loves foster kids and wants to foster 100 kids?" One of his foster kids suggested that he marry her mom, who is currently incarcerated, but while Mutabazi says it would be nice to have another set of hands for help, he's not in a rush to meet a significant other. "Here's my honest truth: I'm content just being a single dad," he says. "I'm 100 percent content to be able to do what I love to do without having to worry about someone else."

He is also an advocate for foster care and a keynote speaker about the topic at conferences and events, but he insists, "My kids come first. It's giving me joy."

Mutabazi keeps the little ones busy by biking, swimming, running and camping with them. After a recent trip to Disney World, he's hoping to travel with them more.

"Sometimes kids who come from foster care don't have the opportunity to see the world," he says. "I want them to."

For more information on foster care and adoption, visit visitadoptuskids.org.

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