For 2 days of ministry in Kenya we had the opportunity to help another Church with their lunchtime street children feeding program. It was an experience we will not soon forget….
The stench of alcohol, drugs, urine and body odor permeates the air as the boys file in to wash their hands and clothes. As they slump into a chair, the hardness of having to grow up to fast melts off as they sit fighting sleep to pay attention to the Gospel service we are hosting which includes a skit, song and brief message.
We quickly build relationships with the children, listening to their stories and hearing about their daily lives over a lunch of maze, beans, and soup. The next day the Pastor of the church offers us a rare opportunity: to go and visit the street children at their home,a place known as ‘Black Base.’
The Black Base gets its name from its color. Located on the outskirts of a large market and across from a taxi spot, people of the Base steal the tires to burn for warmth, making everything an extra dark shade of black. My first step into the base took my breath away.
Children ages 8 to 25 years old running around in tattered clothing. Empty glue bottles crunch under my feet as the smells of waste and hopelessness permeates the air.
The children have glue bottles hanging from their mouths and their noses, some using sticks to scrap the bottom of the bottle for that extra kick. Everywhere I look, children are high from sniffing glue, stumbling over themselves and the trash that litters the ground. These are children who should be learning the rules of geometry, not the rules of hustling.
The look in the eyes of the children sends chills down my spine. 8 years old & higher than anything I’ve ever seen… it shakes you.
One guy asks me to sit with him; he was sitting in the middle of the dumpster that was missing a side.
I walk deeper into the base, look to my left and think, ‘no way, I must be seeing things.’ As I walk over to these mysterious objects, I realize ‘yes, I saw that correctly.’ Homemade wooden crates stacked 6 high, 5 wide. All overflowing with bunnies that the children sell for income.
I hear someone calling “Resa!” and turn to see one of the boys from the Church yesterday. Only today he is high from the glue. He shows me wear they sleep at night: a tarp that 15 or so boys sleep under in hour increments. The boys rotate a sleep schedule of an hour of sleep and an hour of standing guard so the others sleeping aren’t attacked by rival gangs or police raids.
The smell is now getting to me. Just standing there you are getting high. People are pushing and grabbing at us, wanting to talk to us and show us different parts of the base.
God where are you here? These are children, who have run away from various people and places and have joined this gang of a family that is the Black Base. These are your children. Where are you and what do you want to do here?
Just. Worship.
And so the sound of worship invades the hoplessness and we pray. After we are done praying, we look around and all the glue bottles have dropped from the mouths of the 50 or so children that are praying with us.
We learn that we are the first mazungos (white people) to do ministry at the base; Pastor tells us that most come just for the pictures.
