Paul

Our house is walled in with a courtyard and gate, manned by 10-year-old Paul. In addition to letting folks in and out of the gate, Paul sweeps up the yard at 6 a.m. and again at 6 p.m. and he boils our landlady's water on a fire set up outside their backdoor. When Paul isn't working around the yard, he sits in a tree outside our kitchen window, watching the children playing at the primary school next door. Phoebe and Joseph, our landlords, have raised five children who are doctors and engineers in the U.S. and Nairobi. They have now taken in Paul and two teenagers, Boniface and Joyce, a girl. Joyce and Boniface are orphans, their parents having died from AIDS. Paul lost his father and his father's first wife to AIDS. Paul's mother, Carolyn, was the second wife, is still living, but unable to care for Paul.

Every day, when we return from work or town, Paul will greet us--having heard us from his perch in the tree out back. He runs to the front to let us in. When I see his smiling eyes, I sing the old song, "Hey, Hey Paul, I want to marry you." Paul speaks very little English and mostly Luo, the language of the local tribe, and he rarely speaks that. But he smiles and giggles when we greet him in English or Kiswahili and especially when I sing to him. Even though Phoebe says Paul attends the primary school next door, we never see him in uniform and he's always at home during the day, usually in the tree outside our kitchen window.