A Mo in Mombasa: Pictures!

Mwangi and Emmanuel-John love playing with the velcro on my shoes.

Me and Erik. Erik came to Dickson 3 months ago. When he arrived he was so malnourished that he couldn't lift any of his limbs, had difficulty breathing because the weight of his chest was more than he could lift, and he couldn't even make noise when he cried. He would make a slightly pained expression on his face and just lie there. And look at those fat cheeks now!

The kids eating ugali (flour and water) and 1/2 a fish that looks like a Sunny or something. It's pretty stinky, but they love it. This is there Saturday luxury lunch: half a fish.

Joram doing my hair...

Playing memory...

Peter and Kiio sorting a crate of tomatoes. We get a crate and half goes to Dickson and half to Onesmus. They each pick two at a time so that both homes get a mixture of good and smooshed ones. Otherwise one house would get all the nice ones and the other house would get all the spoiled ones.

This is Mwangi-Joshua. He has been at Dickson for about a month. He came straight from the streets. He's still fascinated with everything, pees in the yard, eats garbage, and once took a dump in the sandbox and covered it with sand. He's slowly learning to behave like he's in a home. Yesterday he took his candy wrapper to the trash bin and threw it away. I was ready to pounce lest he decided to grab something out of there too, but he was a good boy and did not try gnawing on the old banana peel that was hanging off the edge of the bin.

Here's Dorcas showing her orange tongue from drinking Fanta.

Here we are at the restaurant eating French fries and drinking soda. French fries come with a side of shredded cabbage here. I think it's an attempt at coleslaw.

Brian, me, and Mary at the restaurant.

Brian hanging on me. He loves to sneak up behind me and jump on my back, nearly killing me and every child in close proximity.

Mwangi on the slide.

Dorcas, Rukia, and Mary.

The "playground"- two slides and two see-saws, one of which is missing a seat, the other is missing its handles.

Emmanuel-Charles wearing my sunglasses. The kids are obsessed with aviators. They say "They are for gangsters. Like Michael Jackson." They use the word gangster a lot in the news here so I imagine they know what gangster means, which says to me they really didn't know a lot about Michael Jackson. I'd say he was more of a petty thug than a gangster.