Our men's clothing room

I tend to get my weather forecast by seeing how much of the local Duck pond is frozen over.

The pond half crusted under a sheet of ice told me that it was cold and that the men coming into the Oasis today would be in the need of some warmer clothes.

An International Teams conference had taken our team leaders away, leaving Dan, Christian and I from the normal staff to set up clothing room for the day. We were willingly helped by the Davidson from Chicago who have given up the chance to spend Christmas with their grandchildren to volunteer for us over the Christmas period. Between the five of us we were able to set up the chairs, fill the tea / coffee pots, move out the woman s and kids clothes and start hanging the donated clothes for the male refugees. It is always a concern for us on a men's day as we never have the endless boxes of clothes to give away to the refugee men, like we seem to have for the ladies and the kids. But we could only hang what we had, which included some sweaters, Jeans, t-shirts and some winter jackets. After lunch we were joined by two Austrians who volunteer from a local church to help us in the distribution for clothes, and a refugee from Africa - we often call to help us when we are a bit light on Oasis workers.

At a quarter past one we opened the doors to left the first group of refugee men cone in, who had been waiting in the cold. It was a mixed group of nations, a Georgian man, who came with his wife and disabled daughter, 2 men from a minority group in Kosova, a Roma family, 2 Portuguese speaking Africans and a couple of Algerians, Egyptians, Chechen's and one or two young men from Afghanistan. Our African volunteer was great speaking to the refugees while they waited for their turn to go through the clothing room. He seemed to be getting on with them so well that i though he must have known them for a long time, only later on the train ride home did he tell me that he had never met them before.

A little while later to Chechen men came into the Oasis, we tend to know more about these two men then they would like us to know, as their wives come into the Oasis often on a Woman's clothing room and tend to share with us, what their husbands had been getting up too.

An Afghan guy came up to us and asked if he could be pushed up the groups, so he could hurry back and start a small job he has in the camp. Subtly we were able to get the Afghan into the next group as well as the 2 Chechen husbands who had grown tired of me making jokes at them with material their wives had mentioned to us. All through this the old Afghan man with token number 41 had risen for every group and tried to give it to us so he could get some clothes. We give the clothes out on a first come, first serve basis, each refugee receiving a token with a number on it, from 1 to on this day 74. We were still in the teen numbers when no. 41 was still coming up every group, a few times I got some Afghans to explain to him that he had to wait for his number to be called. But persistence won out and he was also added to a group before his number.

Later another Roma family entered the building a father with his wife and three daughters - they were heading back to Serbia on Thursday and were really wanting a large suitcase to pack their things in to. Suitcases go really fast in the Oasis and I doubted that we would have one, but I would look... their was one suitcase perfect for this family so I reserved it for them and told them to ask for it when they went through the clothing room. While they were waiting we gave the daughters some chocolates and the father pulled out an old Automatic camera and wanted a photo of a few of the Oasis staff. Winding on the film and the click of the shutter the small girls wanted to have a view of the picture on the back of the camera, only to the amusement of the adults and the disappointment of the girls the camera had not instant views of the photo.

A young Chechen couple came in, asking for the photos that Tom had taken of them last week, they were happy with the prints they received and hanged around for awhile as they enjoyed being pampered by the Americans who would offer them endless cups of tea or coffee, and where willing to be used as the butt of their Chechen jokes.

It was a light atmosphere at this men's clothing room, a place where the men could come, relax, have fun, drink a warm cup of coffee. And at the end of the day we still had some clothes hanging, every male refugee leaving with at least 2 pieces of clothing.