Clowns Without Borders - USA

On this page you will find pictures of Project Sudan 2009 in addition to a collection of blog postings by Gavin, Gwen and Elisa during the Project.

View more photos here, photos courtesy of Alain Laferte, alainlaferte@yahoo.fr

A report of the Project was put together by UN TV, watch it here. And another clip, to music can be seen here

Volunteers: Gwen Rooker, Elisa Lane, Gavin Stockden, and Bruce MacPhail (Project Manager)

Partner Organizations:

• The International Rescue Committee
• Confident Children out of Conflict.

Journal

Ode to Aweil
By Gavin Stockden
May 25, 2009

We wake up early and head to Juba Airport.  It’s a crazy adventure. Lots of people queuing at various counters, its not really clear which one we should head for.  We are flying on a World Food Program humanitarian flight. Eventually we are checked in, someone goes through our luggage, laughs at my unicycle jammed into my suitcase.

We step into cubicles and are patted down.  It seems the x-ray machines are only ornamental.  We wait in the boarding lounge for quite a while, waiting for someone to wave a small boarding pass the same color as ours.  It’s seems only Uganda Air has a PA system to announce it’s flights. We have to take two flights to get to Aweil.  I’m getting worse and worse at this flying thing.  I just hate landing.  We land at Wau (pronounced WOW!) and I see I have just made my first landing on a dirt runway.  Then I see the two wrecked airplanes at the end of the runway.  I try to ignore them.  We spend most of the day sitting at the Wau Airport waiting for our connecting flight to Aweil.  It’s a small plane, less than 20 seats, so it need to make a couple of trips. We are on the second.  As it’s such a small plane, we start coming down very shakily towards the ground and I try to ignore a few more wrecked planes as we land on another dirt runway.  Aweil!

The town is a bit smaller than Juba and seems much nicer.  Great people, and a more relaxed atmosphere.  We drive out of town and do a show in a village about 10 minute away.  As we drive off I think my usual thoughts about what the kids that had just seen the show are thinking.  “What the…  “What was that?  Who were those people?  What was it all about…?”  I wonder if they will ever see a show quite like that again.

Tuesday
In the morning we do another show and at chaotic workshop at the local school, and then spend the afternoon at the local hospital run by Medicins Sans Frontiers (the French Doctors Without Borders).  We do some walk around entertainment at the OPD.  Sometimes we bring the house down, sometimes we look at each other and think “now what?”  We do the show in the courtyard of the middle of the hospital for everyone who is well enough to come out and watch.  Some of the MSF staff come to watch as well and get some well earned laughs.  I’m amazed by  them, they work so hard, what we are doing seems frivolous if comparison.  It’s really inspiring to see how many good people there are in the world who want to do so much good for others.  I’m glad that we can give them a half hour of respite before they head back into the wards to continue what seems to be a never ending workload.

Wednesday
We headed out to Malualkon (about an hour west of Aweil).  After our show and workshops at the local school we were treated to an acrobatic display by some of the school kids.  They were cartwheeling, leaping and tumbling.  Then they even set a hoop of wire alight by putting paper soaked in petrol around it, and lept through it.  I wish we could spend a bit more time with these kids, maybe bring an acrobatics teacher to work with them, but we have to keep moving.  (Maybe another time…?)  Right now this country is in a kind of limbo.  Nobody knows what is going to happen with the coming election and the possible referendum.  But kids are still kids.  They love to play and to laugh and I’m so glad I have had the opportunity to visit and meet all the wonderful people I have met.  I hope this country can find peace.  I hope these kids can stay kids and not become soldiers and refugees like their parents generation.

Journal Entry:
By Gwen Rooker
May 24, 2009, Juba

Early this morning as I slept, I dreamt I was clowning in Southern Sudan, and I was overwhelmed with excitement. As I slowly awoke from the dream, under the churning air from a ceiling fan, the realization struck me: I really am a CLOWN IN SUDAN!

We are now more than a week into our CWB Project Sudan, and today marked our fifth day of performances in Juba. So far, we have clowned in orphanages, schools, hospitals, prisons, down small dusty streets, and basically every place we’ve set foot, and all along the way, under the scorching Southern Sudanese sun, children and adults alike have laughed, clapped hands, and smiled appreciatively. We clowns did very nearly melt that first day of performances at the prison, but later that night, the sky opened and gave us a very thorough rainstorm, complete with a few big booms of thunder and some flashes of lightning thrown in for good measure. We were very grateful.

The morning after the rain, our driver took us to our first show of the day via one of the enormous four-wheel drive vehicles provided by IRC (we also receive support from IRC in the form of a three bedroom house, internet when it’s available, and lots of encouragement). In clown style, we bounced wildly along the rough, (understatement!) reddish, dirt roads that keep the fleets of Juba’s jeeps working overtime.  We feverishly clutched red noses, accordions, props, and half a dozen frozen water bottles. Occasionally, we paused before medium to Olympic-sized swimming pools in the road, allowing oncoming traffic to pass. Happily we clowns take to the jeeps and roads of Juba daily on our quest to make children laugh, the physical exertion of just trying to stay seated serving as a kind of pre-show warm-up.

The Ursana Center is the first school we visited. It is a school and rehabilitation center for children who are deaf, developmentally challenged, or physically challenged. With the help of a welcoming staff, we assembled our very sweet, young, receptive audience outside and clowned for them. In our show we use a bit that is a personal favorite of mine where we, the clowns, aren’t strong enough to lift a cowbell, so we call on an audience member to help us out. That day, our help came from a very bright and enthusiastic boy who, in spite of his seizing hands (possibly from cerebral palsy), flexed his muscles in a very convincing strongman pose and lifted the bell high, impressing clowns, friends, and teachers alike. A moment like this one goes on in the universe infinitely.

Later that same day, we clowned at the woman’s prison. The women we visited there have been imprisoned, some with small children and babies in arms, for adultery, murder, and as lunatics. As with the male prisoners, these were not the criminals I’d been warned about all my life, but instead vulnerable human beings living behind immense walls.

We’ve now clowned at multiple schools, always seeking out the shady places to assemble the students. Ursana Basic School is a public school comprised of about 1,000 students. We got lots of smiles there while clowning under a light rain, encircled by the kids. A day later, we visited St. Joseph’s School and clowned for 1,200 exceptionally excited kids. I’m pretty sure that was the largest audience I’ve ever stood before. Then we went to CMS School and performed for 600 kids. At one point during the show, and adolescent girl wearing a bright green school uniform lept into the playing space, ululating, throwing fragments of paper confetti, and dancing, to the wonderment of the clowns and the uproarious laughter of her peers! She was a smash hit!

At the Juba Hospital, women holding their tiny sick babies sat outside of the old, one-story building, trying to stay cool under the shade of a few trees. However, when we began to play, many of the families drew together under one tree to receive the respite of silliness and laughter we were there to offer.

Tonight we prepare for the next leg of our project, which will take place north of Juba, in a hotter and even more remote town. Early tomorrow morning we will fly to Aweil aboard one of The World Food Program’s small humanitarian transport planes (an event in my mind rife with Indiana Jones-esque imagery). We gathered days in Juba like lessons about the perseverance and humor endemic to humankind. It is our hope that the coming days will be just as incredible, and that this letter finds you in the most humorous of spirits.

Visiting Youth in Prison
by Elisa Lane
May 21, 2009 - Juba

Today we performed in Juba, Sudan, for the very first time, for an audience of youth prisoners. Beforehand, our minds raced with the possible challenges we would be met with once we were inside. We heard that young men had remained shackled together during a cholera outbreak. We imagined hardened criminals. What actually happened there has changed us.

As we entered the courtyard we saw the prisoners roaming around. We were informed that all the prisoners were invited to attend the show, not just the youth.   Some men were shackled, others had intense tribal scarring on their foreheads, and some had what appeared to be staph infections. The youth were all sitting on the ground in the only spot of shade in the whole courtyard, and the youngest of them looked to be about 10 years old.  They had been waiting for us.  We sat in front of them while our partner organizations, Confident Children Out of Conflict and International Rescue Committee introduced us and gave an informational talk on Aids.

We begin our show by playing our musical instruments, and the prisoners’ immediate response was laughter.  Throughout the show eyes were wide and grins were huge. They supported our performance with punctuations of applause and laughter.  We were a hit! All the inmates we brought onstage for the audience participation sections were respectful, cooperative, and funny. The section they liked the most is when our South African clown partner, Gavin, juggles three toilet bowl cleaners.  They were also impressed by his ability to ride a unicycle!  It’s probably the only unicycle that has ever been to Sudan.

After the show, they surrounded us, wanting mostly to try out the unicycle, but also to say thank you and to ask us many questions.  I probably should have felt nervous about being surrounded by murderers, criminals, and lunatics, but they made us all feel very much at ease.  When I looked into their eyes smiling back at me all I could see were humans.  Warm, kind, welcoming, humans.

Clowns Have Arrived!

By Bruce Macphail
May 19, 2009

After wrapping a couple of  performances in Washington DC for the CWB Washington DC Inner City Project, the CWB clowns are now in Sudan!

Elisa and Gwen took a two day flight to Nairobi where they met Gavin (from CWB South Africa) before making their way to Sudan. While in Nairobi  they held two performances at Kibera (the largest slum in Africa) and Mathare slums for a total of 800 children.

In Sudan, the clowns will be holding performances and workshops for two weeks in Juba and Aweil in a wide variety of venues including orphanages, schools, hospitals, a juvenile prison and IDP communities.

In addition, the clowns will also be giving workshops to local educators and social workers from nongovernmental and governmental organizations to integrate play and laughter in their work.

Thanks to all of you who have participated in supporting us. We reached our budget in large part thanks to the April Fools Extravaganza.

We have already been receiving good feedback from this project. Below is an email we received from the facilitator of one of our performances while in Nairobi:

Dear Clowns Without Borders,

We had a wonderful experience today, I have not seen smiles on childrens
faces like today, and not just that, there was a lot to learn from the
experience. The attendace was much bigger than we had planned at such short notice: with number getting closer to 600, with students age between 4 and 19 years coming from the neighbourhoods of Kibera and other local schools on the Langata…. Liz, Kenya (Facilitator in Nairobi, May 17 2009)

A huge thank you goes to the International Rescue Committee which is facilitating much of the project in Sudan by providing accommodation and transport in both cities as well as organizing many of our performances. In particular, Lisa DiPangrazio, from IRC’s Child Protection and Youth Livelihood Program.  Also, to Cathy Groenendijck-Nabukwasi, Director of Confident Children out of Conflict, a Sudanese child protection NGO, for organizing performances in Juba.
For more information on the CWB Sudan Project 2009 contact Bruce at bruce@clownswithoutborders.org
Join our Clowns Without Borders Project Sudan 2009 Facebook Group