Haiti Noel 07.Dec. 10-24.
participants: Elisa Lane, Brendon Gowen, Sarah Liane Foster, Tim Cunningham, Moshe Cohen.

partners: Maison De Naisance, Unicef, Medecins Sans Frontières, Focas, and our organizing geniuses: Père Santoni and Père FanFan.

Expedition Sponsors: White Flowers Foundation, Virginia Emergency Nurses Association, and many many individuals.
Hearty Thanks to all.

A preliminary report. (as of Dec 28th.Full Report soon)

Altogether, we performed 27 shows, made 3 hospital visits, and taught many clowning, juggling and stilt walking workshops. the first week we spent in Les Cayes andTorbeck, and the second week in the capital Port-au-Prince. Project Haiti veteran Tim Cunningham joined us for our second week. He replaced Moshe in the 4 person show, as Moshe went on a parallel track performing 8 solo shows in partnership with Unicef.

There is a great deal to say about Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere. The crisis and tensions that result are especially evident in Port-au-Prince whose population has inflated greatly these past 10 years. The population density there is 18 000/square kilometer. Christmas is the biggest holiday of the year, and our timing gave us opportunities to play for many christmas celebrations in schools, children's homes, hospitals and community events.

The whole team went and worked with the jugglers of Foyer Lakay several times. Foyer Lakay is home to a large number of youth (~100) who had left home to live in the streets. The Canadian Clowns Without Borders have been working there for 5 years now engaging the youth in circus skills. There was great enthusiasm as we worked with them on juggling, acrobatics, and stilt walking. They absorbed everything we could offer.

Sarah Liane is busy writing a more complete report to share.

CWB-Haiti-07—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.

Journals

Emilia's Journal Nov. 2003