My first "pikin"... ^^

"Child" in Krio, the common language in Sierra Leone, is "pikin" (pee-keen). The picture above is of the first time I fed Plumpynut to a pikin. The child's mother has passed away and he lives with his grandmother. Early death of the mother is a common contributing factor to malnutrition and we see children at the PHUs often with their grandmother. The picture is pretty small, but you can see the child guiding my finger with Plumpynut to his mouth and the grandmother, if I'm not mistaken, as the smallest smile on her face...

Just an example of some of the work I'm helping out with in the field. I help with obtaining measurements.. the weight, height, and as in the picture above, the mid-uppper arm circumference (the MUAC - "moo-awk").

I leave you with this picture. This is a picture with my first pikin the week after I first met him. He is a pretty demanding pikin.. I had to hold him the entire time because he started to cry every time I put him down.

So ends up you don't have to wait till I get back for pictures! I've resized the pictures so I can upload them relatively easily :D

Enjoy! and leave me comments if you visit ^^