Clowns Without Borders - USA

Project Overview

We performed in Guatemala everyday from January 6 through January 18, 18 shows in 13 days, entertaining over 6,000 people in extremely poor communities. We had a schedule targeting the communities most affected by the hurricane, many of which are very difficult to reach.

Three clowns make up the team, David Lichtenstein, an experienced CWB performer from Portland, Oregon, and two performers new to CWB, Sayda Trujillo and Shea Freedom Howler. Sayda is a Guatemalan-American; we used her Grandmother´s house in the country, where Sayda went to grade school, as a place to rehearse our show for two days. Shea had never been out of the USA before. Our first show was in the Tiutjil speaking aldea of Panabaj, in Santiago de Atitlan. There, on October 5, 2005 at 4:00 in the morning, a giant mudslide originating thousands of feet higher on the Volcano Atitlan buried much of the village, killing 80 people, most of whom are still buried under the mudflow.

We performed on top of the mudflow that had buried 80 people, at the top edge of the refugee housing. There were over 300 children, plus many parents. The show was made difficult by strong gusting winds that swirled the volcanic ash of the flow all over us, up our noses and throats and in our eyes. The children were rather rather wild. Although they loved the show, many threw rocks at us throughout the show.

Others grabbed at our props and we had to stop the show to move the crowd farther back. One woman told us that it was the first time she had seen the children laughing like that for months. It was an extraordinary experience.

We were also able to visit (and bring supplies for) a farm run cooperatively by 70 families of the village. Several villagers are graduates of the animal husbandry school run by CAPAZ. Their entire animal raising operation and coffee processing area were buried in 5 feet of volcanic mud, killing all animals and losing much of their crops. They have already heroically dug all the most essential parts of the farm out from under more than mudflow by hand, and Pieter has found donations to replace some of their animals. Unfortunately it is not possible to grow anything in the volcanic sand and ash of the flow.

To read more, check out David’s blog here.

Journal

January 7th

Clowns Without Borders USA is now performing in Guatemala.  This trip was launched with the idea of bringing smiles to children and adults in the communities most effected by torrential rains and mudslides caused by Hurricane Stan in October, 2005.  Over 1000 people were killed in Guatemala, mostly by tremendous mudslides that drowned houses and whole villages.  Rebuilding and replanting are still very much in progress in these poor indigenous villages and many people are still on emergency food aid in temporary housing.

Three clowns make up the team,  David Lichtenstein, an experienced CWB performer from Portland, Oregon and two performers new to CWB, Sayda Trujillo and Shea Freedom Howler.  Sayda is a Guatemalan-American; we used her Grandmother´s house in the country, where Sayda went to grade school, as a place to rehearse our show for two days.  Shea had never been out of the USA before.

Our principle local organizer is Pieter Van Nestelrooy who runs CAPAZ, an organization that teaches animal husbandry and encourages the estabishment of cooperative farms in indigenous communities.  We are also supported by Manos Campesinos, who organize small coffee farmers to get fairer prices for their coffee.

Our show yesterday was in the aldea of Panabaj, in Santiago de Atitlan.  There a giant mudslide originating 2000 feet higher on the mountain buried much of the village at 4:00 AM in the morning, killing 80 people, most of whom are still buried under the mudflow. Crowded temporary housing has been set up on top of the mudflow.  We performed on top of the mudflow at the edge of the housing. There were over 300 children, plus many parents.  The show was made difficult by strong gusting winds that swirled the volcanic ash of the flow all over us, but the children loved it. One woman told us that it was the first time she had seen the children laughing like that for months. It was an extraordinary experience.

We were also able to visit (and bring supplies  for) a farm run cooperatively by 70 families of the village.  They have already heroically dug all the most essential parts of the farm out from under more than one meter of mudflow by hand.  Unfortunately it is not possible to grow anything in the volcanic sand and ash of the flow.

We are performing in Guatemala everyday from January 5 to January 18.  We have a schedule targeting the communities most effected by the hurricane, all of whom are difficult to reach.  We also our performing for a few schools and orphanages in poor communities closer to our base in Quetzaltenango which should allow us to get in 2 shows on a few days.

David Lichtenstein
Quetzaltenango, Guatemala

January 8th and 9th
Clowns Without Borders Borders visited two isolated and very poor coffee Fincas. Lots of hours bouncing around in the back of a jeep.

January 8th we went to Finca La Candelaria above the pueblo of Pochuta.  We were down in the hot lowlands at the beginning ot the hills. About 250 people packed around a concrete slab.  They laughed like hyenas and we played for almost two hours, which made us quite proud since we put this show together in a few days after not even knowing each other before hand.  The people were as friendly as could be and some of the child volunteers were true clowns.

January 9th we repeated this experience at La Florida Finca near the town of La Columba in a fold of incredibly steep hills covered with coffee plantations and scrub jungle.  About 200 people laughing themselves silly at this show.

Both of these fincas are large coffee plantations that originally belonged to single owners.  When the owners abandoned them as unprofitable the workers, about 100 dirt poor indigenous families at each one,  claimed and squatted the land.  After some years of negotiation with banks they now own the land and work it cooperatively.  But they have to pay the banks off.

At La Candeleria all the money from each years coffee crop is dedicated to paying off the land which they think they can do in 7 years.  Thus, besides working their own land all the families need to go work at nearby plantations to earn money to live on.  Unfortunately they lost much of this year´s crop to the hurricane´s mud flood.

At La Florida, the crowd was smaller because the day of the show most of  the men trucked off to a town to support other poor workers, who apparently were threatened with getting their homes repossessed because of debt.  Their coffee hillsides are badly grown over and decimated. For their first year of squatting they had almost no housing at all and still they are very crowded.  In the old house that belonged to the orginal German owners, 12 families are packed in.  They have a lumber saw and a corn grinder powered by a water mill.

The steep hills we drive through are sprinkled with hundreds of landslide scratches of exposed dirt, many of them thousands of feet long.  There are many washouts in the road, most of them reasonably repaired three months after the hurricane.

We have been trying to do a show in the Central Park of our host city of Quetzaltenango.  On January 6th we had started a show on the central square but the police came to stop us.  The crowd booed and heckled the police but we calmed them down and moved to a filthy stage near the market. We had a wonderful show there for about 250 people, mostly poor market children plus some families and a sprinkling of tourists.

We knew we could get a huge crowd in the Central park so on January 10th we petitioned City Hall, got a letter typed up explaining Clowns Without Borders, signed by three officials and still were refused in the end.  The Chief of Police felt that we had been upsetting his authority in our first show in some way and swore at us rudely.  The mayor, the only person who could overrule him, never showed up.  So instead we went to a different park to play.  We had a fantastic show there for about 500 people including perhaps 100 homeless street children and shoeshine boys.

January 11th

On January 11, with the support of the San Juan Ostancalco office of woman, children and human rights, we performed for two schools in a very poor hillside barrio of that town.  At the first school, Communtaria Los Lopez, we had 450 kids and 50 adults absolutely in stitches.  At the Escuela Comunitaria Los Romero, we had to walk in a few hundre meters because of a bridge that been washed out by the hurricane.  There we played for about 300 children and 20 adults with great success.

On the walk back to the truck I talked to a man living nearby.  He had spent two years working in Michigan (although he didn´t speak any English) and had earned money to construct a two story concrete house and buy a pickup truck in his hometown.  In many towns like this all over Guatemala all the newer, nicer houses are built with money from immigrant labor in the United States. Current debate in the U.S. congress about the new immigration law and the attempts of Mexico and Central America to influence it are headline news here.  Most rural Guatamalans live in one room concrete blocks or shacks.

Tommorow, January 12, we are off to distant communities on the Vulcan Tajamulco, the tallest volcano in Central America.  These communities are reportedly very hard hit by the hurricane and require long walks to reach. It will only be Sayda Trujillo and I because Shea is already going back to start his university term.

David Lichtenstein
Quetzaltenango, Guatemala