A Day at Oasis.

If you walk 30 minutes down the old train tracks that run through Kitale, you will find yourself next to a bunch of old warehouses. Walk behind the biggest one and you will find the little world of street kids that make up Oasis of Hope.

There are always a group of about 10 glue boys playing soccer just outside; on the right side is the office, where you can find the very wise and smiling Jeffrey, who started the place. In the middle of the grassy area is a very old, dead Toyota station wagon in which you can usually find Manuel, sitting in his “office” when he’s not teaching the kids. On the left is the large classroom where everyone does Bible, Kiswahili, Social Studies, and Maths together. In the breaks between classes, some kids play marbles in the dirt, some clean up the classroom, some scrounge up old pieces of notebooks to sketch on, and some play jacks with rocks.

At lunch time, everyone finds a spot to sit and someone passes out old plastic cups. The edges of the cups are jagged and crooked because the glue withdrawal makes the kids chew on almost everything. A boy brings a jug of river water over and fills the cups, and everyone rinses off their hands with it and drinks the rest. The cook brings in a gigantic pot of rice and a gigantic pot of beans, and huge portions are dished up and passed out. Everyone eats ravenously with their hands for 2 minutes, and then the plastic bags come out of the pockets. The remaining rice and beans are dumped into them for dinner that night, when the kids be back on the streets. Some of the older kids get extra food from the younger kids, and some of the kids from the slums give their food to the street kids. For whatever reason, there is never any fighting during this time. Boys haul more water in from the river and the girls wash all 60 plates and cups. At 2pm everyone leaves, walking in all different directions – some to town to beg, some to go refill their glue bottles, others back to the slums, and some to stake out where they will sleep that night. They walk away with bags of rice and beans sagging in their pockets and old winter coats with holes around their waists to sleep in.

And that’s a day at Oasis. It is both awesome and heartbreaking to spend time with these kids. To me they are so brave, so strong, so conflicting... these beautiful children with adult addictions, who have gone through things no child OR adult should ever have to deal with.

I hate seeing them later on the streets, with the glue bottles hidden under their shirts, but I wonder if I would be doing anything different if I'd experienced what some of them have. Probably not. I am just happy they care enough to come to Oasis each day, and that I have the privilege of hanging out with them.