ordinary radical in lexington

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On Christmas Eve 2005, Pierre Manga saw a blonde woman in the Walgreens near Henry Clay High School. She was waiting to fill her breast cancer medication prescription. Recognizing her from school soccer games, Pierre wished the woman "Merry Christmas."

He smiled at her, but Paula Hollis remembers that this young man looked sadder and more tired than any 16-year-old she had ever known.

She would not meet him again until Thanksgiving of the next year.

Then he would become, in short order, her oldest son.

David Perry | Staff

Paula Hollis and Christine Lumumba embraced on Thursday. Lumumba plans to help Hollis minister to other African refugees. 

PHOTO SUPPLIED

PHOTO SUPPLIED: Family photo taken in Democratic Republic of the Congo: Pierre "Peter" Manga, age 8 at that time, and brothers Philip, 5, John 3, and Jacob, 8 (Peters's twin who is now missing.) When three Congolese boys came to the U.S. with their father, they knew nothing of this country, its food, its mores, how to handle bereavement. They had an overwhelmed dad but needed a mom. In stepped single mother Paula Hollis, egged on by her teenaged daughter, Kirsten, who noticed the boys needed help. For four years, Paula has stood in for the boys' mother. Last Tuesday, the real mother, long thought dead, arrived from the Congo. Photo Supplied.

David Perry | Staff

John, 15, left, Pierre, 21, and Philip Manga, 17, were seated on the couch with their father Jonathan Lumumba, left, Paula Hollis, Christine Lumumba, right, and Paula's daughters Kirsten Hollis, 21, and Ashley Hollis Parker, 27, bottom right, gathered at Paula Hollis' home on Thursday. Paula Hollis stood in for the Congolese boys' mother, Christine, after they came to the U.S. with their father. On Feb. 9, Christine Lumumba finally arrived here.

David Perry | Staff

The Hollis girls and their mother welcomed the Manga brothers into their lives when they were new to America. The boys' biological mother, who had at one time been thought to be dead, arrived in Lexington earlier this month.