Clowns Without Borders - USA

March

Volunteers: Deven, David, Olivia and Leah

Summary
Number of Performances: 20
Number of Workshops: 11
Length of Expedition: 12 days, March 4th-18th
Total Audience reached: 4,118
Number of Artists: 4

Participants
The team consisted of veteran clown David Lichenstein (Expedition Coordinator & Clown), and newer members Leah Abel (Clown), Olivia Lehrman (Clown) and Deven Sisler (Clown).

Partners
Food for the Hungry, UNICEF, AVSI, Foyer Lakay, La Maison Arc-en-Ciel- Viva Rio- and many independent orphanages, schools and churches.

Budget
Total Project Cost: $7,711.40
Cost per Audience Member Per Show: $1.87

Journal

Deven’s Journal

See Photos Here

11 March 2009

“Viva Rio” is a NGO from Rio de Janerio in Brazil and one of the most powerful programs I have encountered. Theirs is a model they started in Rio, and are experimenting with in the Bel-Air section of Port-Au-Prince. The site of the project is an old factory, warehouse site that they are refurbishing and making their center of operations. Aspects include a water treatment facility that off-shoots into a fish hatchery (eventually), a recycling program and a youth initiative, which is based on capoiera, a Brazilian martial art that utilizes music and can appear like a dance.

I am immediately impressed with the huge, clean space of the youth center. Each child, immediately takes off their shoes and sits in the ever-growing circle as we enter, the level of respect is subtle, but apparent. I don’t put my finger on it at first, but there is something different about this organization to any other school or place we have played so far. Then I realize, these kids are completely and utterly self-motivated to get to this place and this program at this time every day on their own. No adult gets them here, or maintains their schedule. It is questionable, if most go to school, but they make it here. There is a sense of self-responsibility from the smallest child to the oldest, every single one participating with alert focus and dedication, especially during the capoiera horda.

Our show goes well, with much clapping, cheering and hollering, they are a captive and generous audience. Afterward, we join them for the horda, the practice with live musicians of capoeira where two individuals play/spare in the center of a singing clapping circle. It was incredible. There are many elements of acrobatics in our show, and so the opportunity of the audience to turn around and show us amazing skills was quite beautiful.

7 March 2009

Haitian car signals are unique to the country, as far as I can tell, consisting of pointing in the direction you are planning to go, waving someone else on there way, honking in different rhythms to indicate your presence/change of direction and maybe yelling. It is anarchic to say the least.

Tap-taps are the primary form of most inexpensive transportation. For the Haitian equivalent of a dollar you are packed like a sardine into the bed pick-up truck, with wooden plank seating and a caste iron overhang built over the truck bed. Most that we have seen are wildly spray painted in so many bold colors, with portraits of Jesus, Bob Marley or Aristide and all with sayings like “shalom” (peace in creole), or “merci jesus”.

As soon as we pull through the gate, a calm quiet prevails in comparison to the seemingly chaos on the street. We bump along a white rock road with lush, green overgrowth past wide open church, many homes and smaller gated/walled areas. We pull up to our destination, as we are ushered into the kitchen/living room and asked to sit, twenty orphan girls between the ages of five and thirteen enter to sit with us. They each politely pick an adult of our group and give a cheek kiss-kiss greeting to introduce themselves. We sit and talk or play a little, Olivia’s hair is the biggest novelty, as we speak with the adults and hold hands.

It is the first group of many, where the children can stare for a long time.

We decide where we play the show, they carry our things and chairs for themselves; rather than let go of a hand they have found to hold.

They are all wearing dresses. I don’t know why I found this curious, until I started writing and realize they were all wearing dresses. Not a one was wearing pants or shorts. Yet, they played and danced and ran around no matter the dress or shoes they had on. After the show, we played with them, letting every child try more than once the acrobatic balance of standing on our thighs: Angel pose. Some of them began doing Angel together.  I am really impressed how aware they are of their bodies, and how easily they take to the basic partner acrobatics.

The time when we have to leave is particularly hard when we have gotten a chance to play or do a workshop with the kids. Olivia said she had seen that look before– a deadening in their eyes as they understand we have to leave, just as they have been left before. We had both seen it before, but never from every single child.

This is the hardest part. This is the part that can make it complicated and makes me wonder and think how I can do more.

6 March 2009

Amélie Grysole, 2009, agrysole@yahoo.fr

Looking out the window of the plane, it becomes apparent we must be closer to land as the the sand makes elaborate designs around a shipwreck off the coast of Port-Au-Prince, Haiti and the water begins to change to lighter shades of Caribbean turquoise. There is a slow merging of the coast with the ocean, undeveloped in sharp contrast to the development of the New York City that we left only a few hours ago. The mountains grow larger in the distance, and as we hover over the congregations of rusted corrugated roofs. I begin drawing similarities between this coast and that of Banda Aceh, Indonesia; the exquisite tropical beauty of the land and abundance of the natural resources, in contrast to the poverty of the majority of the population and lack of basic systems I take for granted: sewage, proper water treatment, garbage. It is markedly more green and lush, as there hasn’t been a natural disaster in this particular area of Haiti lately, as there had been in Banda Aceh when I was there six months after the tsunami. The trauma here has been slow and continuous for centuries.

I am traveling with a group of performers, David Lichenstein, Leah Abel and Olivia Lehrman through Clowns Without Borders, our mission is to bring laughter to as many children as possible in this, the poorest country in the western hemisphere. I was often trying to precisely articulate for myself and those close to me: why Haiti? why now? There are the most basic reasons: it is literally in our backyard; one of the most efficient ways to use our funds, as plane tickets are often one the largest fiscal aspects of  our expeditions; and all the children here are always in dire need.                                      

The true reason erupts in goosebumps inducing cheering and laughter during our first performance in one of the nicest schools we will visit. The children at, College Pastor Nere Delmas 2, are a wonderful audience, welcoming us with a song and thanking us with another after the performance. They all wear uniforms, like all children in school in Haiti, and a group from the secondary school put on their own show for us as well for us. The school is a concrete barrack construction, with desks decades old, but clean and having all that is necessary.

After a fantastically productive meeting with the owner of the school, we played with a group of children for an hour or so; sharing acrobatics, juggling and language. Some shy at first were sitting on our shoulders and standing strong on our thighs in angel in no time. We were asking a boy to jump, to get into a partner acro move by showing him and saying “saute”, to jump in french. His reply was “No, je voule”, “No, I fly”, and in that moment there is no question that I could be anywhere else.