Clowns Without Borders - USA

Nick Trotter writes from Chiapas, Mexico where he joined Rudi Galindo on a Clowns Without Borders project in January 2008.

-They are running towards us, spilling out onto the dirt road like monsoon flood waters.

-Eighteen thousand Bhutanese refugees surging forward in a sea of small brown hands.

-They are all reaching to touch the clowns who have traveled over great oceans and mountains, across a thousand rivers to this strange Fellini movie of a place, Nepal.

Show in the afternoon in the INI for some 50 kids, displaced from three communities near Chenalho…stories about discordance amongst the families, no clear leadership amongst three disparate groups living communally in a barn like structure. After the show the kids are treated to popsicles, they all line up and one by one tell the young boy working the ice cream cart what they want. There us great excitement as the piñatas are strung up. The kids are separated by age group and each group rings around their piñata strung up over the branch of a large tree. Faces squirm and explode with each stick swing, miss, hit and then scramble on the ground in a big cloud of dust when the piñata breaks. A couple of social workers try to infiltrate the scrimmage to calm the fury of hands scooping candy but they are unable. A huge bag of cheap plastic toys are distributed, the kids are looking happy.