(Originally posted on Karibu Kenya on June 29, 2009.)

"Mzungu! Mzungu!" the children on the side of the road shouted, as they pointed at us, their eyes full of light. With stray goats and chickens taking over their space on the vast expanse of the dirt, they expressed only joy, beaming the truest smiles I'd ever seen.

Evelyn, our friend from the Ray of Hope, clued us in to all the Swahili we would need to understand and respond to these sweet children. "'Mzungu' means 'white person,'" she said. "African children love white people. You are seen as rare, special ... magical, to them. They think you don't speak any Swahili. So the next time they point at you and yell, 'Mzungu!,' I want you to yell back, 'Mwafrika!' It means 'African.' They will love it, and you will make them laugh."

Off we went down the dirt road, littered with animals and shanties and garbage. Children hung onto older siblings, roofs, sheep horns - they held tight to anything that might provide security for the moment. Though there was no running water anywhere, and very little electricity, I heard spirited, happy voices, singing a cappella to a rhythmic, fast-paced beat.

I danced, and then I heard from a young mouth, "Mzungu dancing!" The little African girl in the tattered blue dress, who was pointing at me, repeated, "Mzungu dancing!" I smiled, continued shaking my hips, pointed right back, and shouted, "Mwafrika singing!" The singer's eyes grew wide, and she covered her mouth with her hands and giggled.

In that moment, I understood how amazing children are. After just a week of working in Kawangware, Nairobi's second largest slum and most neglected one, I knew that the odds of the singing child's life not being tragic were slim ... next to impossible. But she was singing when I got to her, and laughing when I left, the circumstances of her hard life punctuated by the stray cow approaching her from the field behind. Sewage streamed in the open all around her, but she saw that mzungu dancing, and she celebrated me.

I don't know what kind of life she will have - she, one of a one-million-person population in just her slum alone, where there is not enough food, water, or shelter for all to share - and yet, they share.