Clowns Without Borders - USA

December

Volunteers: Sarah Liane Foster, Moshe Cohen, Brendon Gawel, Elisa Lane, Tim Cunningham

Project Overview
Performances: 27
Duration: December 10th-24th
Clown Hospital Visits: 3
Workshops: 7
Informal Walk-around Performances: Numerous.
Estimated Audience: 5,000

Project Goals
To spread laughter. The primary goal of Clowns Without Borders’ December 2007 project in Haiti was to spread joy and laughter to people affected by disease, poverty, violence and unrest, with a particular focus on children. We used clown shows, circus skills workshops, clown doctor visits to hospitals, and informal walk-around performance as means to this end.
To strengthen relationships. Continue to work with organizations and communities we visited in 2005 and 2006 in order to establish a consistent presence in these communities and build on their circus skills through workshops.

To explore toward expanding our programs. Make contact with new organizations and potential partners, and explore the idea of a potential long-term project in Haiti.

Situation
Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Many people struggle with oppressive poverty and have a difficult time obtaining adequate food, clean water, clothing, housing and medical treatment. Haiti has endured numerous tropical storms and hurricanes in the past few years. Many in Haiti live under the constant threat of epidemic treatable diseases like malaria, dengue fever, HIV, and diarrhea.
Because there has been political unrest in Haiti for so many years, the government has been unable to organize and manage land, utilities, or infrastructure. There is no sewer or waste disposal system, resulting in severe congestion of waste in urban areas like Port-au-Prince. Public electricity is sporadic. Roads are often unpaved and full of large holes. Public hospitals have no food or medical supplies. Massive deforestation leads to large amounts of dust and erosion.
Security is a big issue in Haiti. Some locals told us that violence and kidnappings are less now than what they have been, but our contacts at UNICEF were warning us about increasing incidence of kidnappings. It’s hard to tell. There are some areas of Port-au-Prince, like Cite Soleil, that many NGOs do not enter because it isn’t safe.
In our work with orphanages and homes for street children in Haiti, we have learned that many children living in orphanages or on the streets do have parents and families, but were given up by their families or chose to leave home, having perhaps better prospects in orphanages or on the streets.

Itinerary
Overview:
Sarah, Brendon, Elisa and Moshe spent the first week in the Les Cayes area in the southwest of Haiti. This was CWB-USA’s third visit to the area. The group spent the week performing shows, doing walk-around performances, and teaching stilt, juggling, balancing and clown workshops to local kids. We saw a lot of old friends – adults and children in the community who remembered some of us, our previous shows, and even some circus skills they were ready to build on. We also met a lot of new people and made some new contacts – for example, we visited a nearby orphanage and did a lively show under a metal airplane hangar for about 600 kids.

After a week we flew back to Port-au-Prince to meet Tim, who had just finished his finals and was able to join the group for week 2. We re-worked the show to have Tim replace Moshe. The group spent the week in Port-au-Prince working through Pere Fanfan, Medecins Sans Frontieres, and a group called FOCAS, while Moshe worked through UNICEF doing solo shows.

Audience members look up to the elevated stage to watch our show at a festival for Orphans and Vulnerable Children where we performed through FOCAS in Port-au-Prince.

The Show
For the first week, Moshe, Sarah, Elisa and Brendon performed shows together. During the second week Moshe did solo shows through UNICEF while Sarah, Elisa and Brendon did shows with Tim. The show structure remained quite similar the second week, with different solo bits and character interactions. We started off with a parade entrance with Moshe/Tim on ukulele, Sarah on trombone, Brendon on a water jug drum, and Elisa carrying the trunk. Elisa kept getting lost in the audience and Sarah had to get her back. The third time of this slapstick with the trunk ensued. When we finally put down the trunk and got together in front of the audience to finish the song, Elisa took Brendon’s drumsticks and began to dance with them. Sarah went out to get her but got caught up in the dancing. Brendon joined in. This dancing brought the house down every time, due mainly to a combination of exuberance and butt-shaking. Tim/Moshe, left alone, began to cry. Others returned to comfort him and began to cry as well. Brendon began wailing, which brought down the house once again. Struck him on the head with a squeaky hammer to quiet him.
After the crying routine was over, Tim’s audience volunteer came up and started it again, to the delight of everyone at this school for orphans in Carrefour, outside of Port-au-Prince.

Finally it was time to announce the show. First came the acrobatics routine, a series of tricks performed by Elisa and Brendon. Next, Moshe did a sponge ball magic routine, and Tim did a funny hat routine. Both of these incorporated audience volunteers, which audiences adored. Next, Tim and Sarah did a club juggling/stealing routine. The routine arose from the announcing/interrupting that became a theme for these characters. Elisa and Sarah did a bit with the disappearing “moushwen,” or handkerchief, trick. This culminated in pulling them out of 2-3 audience members’ ears. Next Brendon did a bit tossing an invisible “ball” into a paper bag. The bag snapped with every impact of the invisible ball, to the delight of the audience. Audience members then got a chance to toss the ball. At the end Brendon pulled a real ball out of the bag – the audience volunteer magicked it into reality! We emphasized in each trick that the “magic” came from the audience.

Elisa pulls a magic handkerchief out of child's ear

Brendon threw the ball back to us at the trunk, and Moshe/Tim accidentally caught it in his mouth and swallowed it. Doctor scene! Sarah put lab coats on herself and a volunteer doctor from the audience. They cast a spell on the patient, turned him around and around, and finally hit him on the head with the squeaky hammer, which did the trick: the ball went flying out into the audience. Once again the audience member saved the day! When Moshe was in the show, he would do his cigar box juggling routine at this point. When Tim was in the show we did the water lazzi, resulting in water being spit and dumped all over everyone except Elisa. She then got her umbrella for the umbrella pantomime: the umbrella has a mind of its own and pulls Elisa all over the stage. It rises up into the air and is dragging her off the ground when Sarah, on stilts, comes in and takes it. Chase scene! Brendon on stilts gets in the mix. More chase scene! Finally tired, everyone decides to share. Then music comes on for the final dance.

There’s More!
This is an abbreviated version of the final report for the December 2007 Clowns Without Borders expedition to Haiti.

Journal

Dec. 21st We pass the large mansions of Petionville and all the heavily guarded compounds of the NGO’s flooding Haiti. The roads quickly deteriorate as we leave the rich part of town. We see scars from this year’s hurricane season that pounded this island; Noel was particularly tragic in Port au Prince where there were 29 reported deaths. The truck is full of clowns, Brendon, Elisa, Sarah and I. We have two guides from FOCAS (a community health outreach nonprofit) and a footlocker full of show props, a bag of stilts and extra suitcase of juggling gear. We are prepared to perform, teach a workshop and make funny. These roads seem to shrink in front of us, piles of trash and burning rubbish, hills of rubble and walls fallen into the middle of the road makes this terrain nearly impossible to navigate. And then the truck stops. Our driver says we have to walk; the truck won’t make it any further. In front of us is a ravine deep and filled with trash, shattered stones, human and animal waste, pigs and goats grazing and people doing laundry.

Scattered throughout the sludge and trash are small fires releasing the most putrid smells into the air. The stream (which could almost be considered a small river) collecting and moving all of this waste down hill empties about 5 miles down to our left into a breathtaking mountain lake. If you could hold your nose and cut the piles of trash out of your periphery you would be deeply moved by the site of this lake, seemingly crystal clear water surrounded by jagged hills. Just as breathtaking, before us is a steep slope barren and packed with concrete shacks. Roads, or better, footpaths are hardly visible between the houses. And today a good number of the houses are not even visible because there are hundreds of people out in the streets for a holiday festival. People are lining the streets, perched upon houses and high within the treetops. A sound system blasts Haitian hip-hop and Kompa music.

Our guide looks at us and points way up on the hill to the middle of the mass—that is where our show will be. We shoulder up our and rock-hop through the stream of sewage and filth. Fortunately we don’t get too wet. The path is incredibly steep and loose, some steps but mostly rubble. As we near the crowd we hear the ever familiar “Blan! Blan!” or “Foreigner! Foreigner!” from the children around us. They laugh and gawk at our silly outfits and follow us up the hill as we get deeper and deeper into the crowd. Today’s event is a holiday gathering for local orphans and vulnerable children (OVC’s) who cannot go home for the holidays. (We’ve been told by our sponsors at Unicef that almost 90% of orphans in Haiti are not really orphans. That is they have living parents who choose to bring the child to an orphanage thinking that this setting would be able to provide more for the child. Brining a child to an orphanage is a desperate move, and one need not look far to see the palpable desperation in the streets of Port au Prince). There are hand written signs on construction paper The hip-hop music shuts off and an announcer says that the clowns are here! The paths up the hill are barley two meters wide at their best and we’re all dumbfounded as to where we might actually perform so folks will be able to see us. We continue to be lead through the crowd and then quickly to the right and up skinny concreted steps. We pass through what could be a foyer to a house and onto its rooftop. There in front of us is a platform built by broken pieces of plywood, a couple of car doors and stilted up on skinny metal rods. The platform is about 6 meters off the ground spanning from one rooftop to another.

The platform is about 2.5 meters long and just over 1 meter wide—our stage. Each step we take moves the platform and the crowd laughs at our honestly frightened expressions. BUT, we can see the hundreds on either sides of the stage: children with distended bellies from malnourishment, their caretakers looking exhausted, some dressed up, some in rags filling the streets, rooftops, and trees.

We nervously dance to the music blasting through the speakers and a roar of applause and cheers fills the hillside. We begin. Throughout the show, we keep checking in with each other to make sure we’re all doing OK with the height. Brendon and Elisa daringly pull off the partner acrobatics; Sarah and I are offered a microphone so everyone can hear our Kreyol/French banter; we dare not put a child up on our shoulder here but we still do pull a girl from a rooftop to help cure me in the doctor scene in which I develop ping-pong ballitis and produce numerous ping pong balls from my mouth; Elisa and Sarah wooo the crowd with the disappearing Moushwen (handkerchief); everyone loves us bonking each other on the head with the squeak hammer; no juggling clubs fall to the audience below; and then we wrap things up with a clown version of the electric slide.

Our ridiculous dancing brings out the loudest response from the crowd (as it often does in our shows in Haiti) and we finish the show. Ferocious laughs have passed through the crowd and we leave the stage with cheers and people dancing throughout the streets below. It makes me think that the work we do is not about what happens on stage, nor it is about the audience who sees it. The work comes from the energy that we put out and then how it is received in the audience—and then it lingers, expressed by laughter, hugs and playfulness.

We load our bags and head back to our truck. The entire way down the hill and across the stream of sludge we give high fives and wish a joyeux noel to community members. I squeak kids’ heads and noses and we all do stupid pratfall trips over rocks. Our bags disappear from our hands as people all reach in to help us carry them. Back at the truck a man returns our clown trunk to us and says: “Man anpil shag palou” A Kreyol saying that roughly equates to the English saying, “many hands make the load light”. We drive away; Brendon and I play a ukulele/water jug drum version of “5 foot 2, eyes of blue.” We hope that the work today and the work that we’ve done everyday so far here has helped add hands and lighten the loads of those we encounter in Haiti.