Clowns Without Borders - USA

In 2010 we were planning four projects in Haiti. These projects would have focused on performances for large and small audiences, workshops for street children in and around Port Au Prince, peer educators who go into their own communities to bring awareness to HIV and AIDS and local performing artists with hopes for empowering Haitians through physical theatre, clown and social circus. After the earthquakes that devastated Haiti on January 12, 2010, our focus shifted. We are now working with our international partners and local NGOs working in Haiti to bring small moments of relief to those affected by the trauma of the earthquakes.

Here’s a little about our expedition so far - more will follow when we get back to the states later this week. We leave 40-something degree weather in the states and step off the plane in Port-au-Prince into air that was about 95 degrees but felt like 107 with the humidity. Extreme heat, great joy and sorrow, hope and desperation: Haiti sometimes seems like a collection of extremes. When we arrive in Torbek we are met by a mass of children. They remember the group from CWB who visited last April, and we are greeted with smiles and shouts of “Tim! Tim!” and “Nou pedi!” which means “We’re lost!” - the theme of the April clown show. Kids come and watch as we prepare for our performances around the area; an outdoor rehearsal ends in a long improvised clown show with a bunch of local kids.

By our second week in Gonaives people begin to recognize us and wave to us as we drive through the streets. We see people riding their mopeds wearing clown noses. People start to know who we were and why we were there. Adults sometimes thank us after a show for providing a means for the children to laugh and forget some of their recent trauma. We call what we’re doing an “anti-stresse” mission, because in Creole the term “anti-stresse” signifies fighting against trauma, grief and hardship. The mission feels like a success: the children running after the truck as we drive away from the schools are laughing, waving, making silly faces. We have also left them with an experience of white people who were not proselytizing or in some kind of official role, but who were there to play and engage with them.