However, what a great mask, and so immediate !! For that I love it.  When I travel, I often have one in my pocket, at the  ready in case I am looking to  transform a challenging moment. This photo came to me yesterday, of my friend, student and teacher, Bernie Glassman, the Zen master, who is leading a pilgrimage in India right now. It’s so clear how his putting on the nose immediately transforms the situation at hand. Blessings to the power of the Nose.

It’s time for earth repair
They get a little frazzled
after a while
patch and rubber cement
time

I wouldn’t have to bother
if they were still for sale
the factory in China
burned down

Mitrovica, Kosovo Thursday November 9, 2000

The security precautions on this trip are: Do not talk Albanian to the Serbs, or Serbian to the Albanian audiences.  Don’t use Yugoslav Dinars in Albanian sections, only in Serbian.  Deutsch Marks work on both sides.  Showing the Albanians that you work in the North with the Serbians is a potentially disastrous idea.  And vice-versa.  This is so different than last year’s “Asphalt” where mines were the major concern.  It seems that all the mines if not removed have at least been located.

But the Serb-Albanian enmity remains strong.  Reminders are around us constantly.  KFOR checkpoints and soldiers on patrol everywhere, the Serbian nationalist paraphernalia on sale in the kiosks and boutiques in Northern Mitrovica blaring at me each time I pass by.  I imagine that there are similar stores in Albanian sector; I just haven’t run across them yet.

Yesterday, the Gypsies in the morning spoke Serb but those in the afternoon Albanian.  As I understand it the Northern Gypsies are referred to as Hashkali and those in the south as Roma. I am not sure as I have received several other conflicting views. The UNICEF report ‘Youth in Kosovo’ simply refers to them as Hashkali/Roma/Egyptian, grouping them under one title consistently, never explaining the distinctions.  Perhaps I have to find a different report. No one I ask seems to know where or whom the Egyptians are.

Saturday November 11

Today’s story started yesterday afternoon.  Just back from the shows in Klina, Tortell talked on the cell to Leo in Pea.  The show in the capital tomorrow is cancelled.   The show in the National theatre, the big deal lights and sound, the full whamboozle of Kosovar and foreign dignitaries. There was a definite non-mission status to the event, no refugees there. It was a compromise that we had made, agreeing to play to a ticket paying public in the big town, in exchange for full cooperation in the field. Oh well, we can let that go now.  When we mention the cancellation to Phillipe (Triangle Generation Humanitaire) he suggests that instead, we go perform at Zitcovak, a Rom camp in the North, right past the lead mines.

Tortell and I both react with big smiles.  That makes big sense to both of us, to play in a gypsy camp instead of a sumptuous theater.   We are glad for the opportunity. We agree and arrange with Phillipe to take us there tomorrow. A momentary sense of the doldrums turns into a celebrative mood….

Sunday November 12

Zitcovak. Roma/Hashkali camp next to lead factory

100 kids and adults

This is by far the worst spot we’ve been to yet.  Situated next to a defunct factory building and a graveyard of decomposing buses.  The encampment is a collection of the green UNHCR refugee tents in the shadow of a steep mountainside.            We are on a tiny country road and turn onto a gravel driveway.  We pass a big brick factory building full of small broken windows.  It appears to be completely deserted.  We drive through a gate into a big empty gravel yard.  On one side of the place is a huge white hangar, an inflated tent with big letters etched in the side WFP  (world food program).  It is totally fenced in.   At the end of the empty lot is some kind of abandoned wall and gate and behind that are a large grouping of tents, the light faded khaki green, kind, with the little pointed roofs that lead out to a squared design, with UNHCR etched in black in several places.

Coming from under the fence to the food depot is a long clear hose and there are several women filling up large jerry cans with water. Kids are running around.  We are quickly spotted and they start coming towards us.  While still inside the car, we quickly figure out where to do the show and where to park the car.  As we pull into the far corner, Tortell directs Leo how to park it just so, with the back facing the playing field so that we can make it into a mini backstage.

The kids crowd around.  It is beautiful in a way, how excited and lively their spirit, and yet it is clear they have nothing.  Some of the kids are barefoot and their clothes are near rags.  A good number of the kids have some kind of skin problem and none look like they have washed anytime recently.  As we get out of the car, there is an aggressive curiosity amongst the kids who gather around, small wiry bodies crowding in to see what we bring.  Tortell hits the ground running pulling out his red and white plastic construction site tape. Using a bunch of rocks he sets the tape on the ground to describe a large semi circle playing area.

I jump into action pulling out and setting up props.  Soon though my camera finds its way to my hands.  I can’t resist their innocence masked in their weathered faces.  There is a small sense of despair hidden beneath their pride, mischief, and playfulness.  There is a sense of resourcefulness that is well beyond their ages.  One girl perhaps 8 asks for me to take her photograph.  She is maybe 8, with her young brother in tow, maybe 3 at most 4, who looks questioningly at the whole interaction.  It is all foreign to him.  But she has it clear in her mind that she wants me to take her picture, I can see it in her beautiful dark eyes.  I lead them to the edge of the gully where we set up the stage. It is full of rusted hulks of buses.  One of the buses is somehow buried, with its face in the ground and its tail staring up at the sun at a slightly oblong angle.  They stand in front of it.  The girl goes into a classic flamenco pose holding her dress out with one hand and bringing her other into the air.  And she gives me a proud stare. Her brother stands there a little bewildered and lost looking off to the side as she stares into the camera, the bus standing up, a rusted skeleton as their backdrop.

They live at the foot of a high hill that has the sun disappearing close to 3pm and the temperature dropping intensely fast.   We watch the shadow fly across our hard gravely ground stage.  Tortell throws the Taraf de Haidouks music onto the turntable and the Rom are all thrilled.  I start doing a little dance to the music, there are chuckles egging me on.  I try a few less than gracious moves which starts the laughter a bubbling.  Then I delve into slow motion flamenco, parodying the form to everyone’s delight.

Tortell and I check in with each other before starting the show.  We both comment on how glad we are to be here sandwiched between a food depot and a bus cemetery rather than in the confines of the theatre. Watching the sun moving fast, knowing that it will be getting cold quickly once the glow disappears, we agree to keep a tight rein on the show There is a sense of fun, but also one of challenge.  Though the audience is a little thin, and takes a little convincing to let go, there is fun in the air, and they all have a good time. Little smiles, big smiles and laughter are populating the grim surroundings.

After the show, Tortell and I are quickly surrounded by little faces, and to our surprise, they start are asking for marks, for money. I tell them, in sign language, that we aren’t here for that and that we didn’t bring money. But evidently, they want the large 50-escudo coins that I used in the show.  I explain that they are Portuguese and near worthless, but they are convinced that they are German marks, even after I show them the coins.  Maria Jose, who is part of our crew, translates an elder woman’s remarks, that they should have better brought food than clowns. Tortell and I look at each other in dismay. We are missing the usual after the show glow of celebration that we share with the kids. How could we have known?

As we get ready to leave tiny grinning 6 year old comes in from the outside, gate dragging a huge tree branch about 10 times his size, proud as can be.

Brilliant face blazing in winter sunlight.
Defiant teeth glimmering in conqueror’s grin.
Barebacked heroes pose for the camera.
One foot upon his prize,
a tree branch ten times his size.

A report from the Dream Doctors Convention in Jerusalem

Insights often happen in most unexpected places, and something clicks in my brain when I hear Serge Ouaknine words:

“La joie est la rencontre de deux bonheurs-joy is the meeting of two happinesses”

His remark comes as he speaks in the heated panel discussion entitled Exploring The Borders Between Hospital Clowning and Therapeutic Clowning.

WHAT clicks is that Serge is steering the panel’s conversation past the borders, the either/or argument, to a deeper level, where we recognize, no matter how you define it, that the clowns are bringing in the joy, and that is what counts.

The panel discussion is taking place at Maale Hachamisha, a sprawling hotel complex over a hilltop near Jerusalem. The occasion, The Israeli Dream Doctors 10th year celebration, has brought together 200 Medical Clowns, CliniClowns, Dr. Clowns and Clown Doctors, Founders and Administrators, Artistic Directors, Doctors, Nurses, Professors and Researchers. I am there as a Clowns Without Borders representative for the 4 day conference, the first ever encounter of this emerging professional world. It is a truly amazing gathering of like-minded people dedicated to making children’s lives better, and to bringing more laughter into their world

Ranana in action at the Kidney Dialysis Center, Shaare Zedek Medical Center

After two full days of activities, the conference has come to the apex of a strong debate: is the medical clown an artist or a therapist? Or both?

Perhaps a little background is in order.  Here is the introduction to the panel provided by the conference:

Moderator: Dr. Ashley Tobias, Israel

Participants: Daniel Kleiner, docteur Clown, France; Thierry Jacquier, Foundation Theodora, Switzerland; Ms. Cheryl Lekousi, Hearts & Minds, U.S.A; Mr. Olivier-Hugues Terreault, Dr. Clown, Canada; Prof. Gili Goldzweig, Academic College of Tel Aviv–Yafo, Israel; Ms. Shoshi Ofir, Dream Doctors, Israel; Prof. Serge Ouaknine, Quebec University, Canada

There are tens of hospital clown organizations around the world and new ones are born almost every month. Consequently, there are several thousand people with or without artistic background visiting hospitalized children in one form or another. Two main streams of clowning can be identified, the first one being the “clown doctor” family, which are artists visiting children in highly decorated attire, resembling a real doctor, often using medical instruments in a humorous way and making references to hospital procedures. The clown doctor visits children at their bedside from room to room, making clown doctor rounds. The second family is of the “hospital clown” style, which represents a clown character (often in the same shape and form as the one found in a circus) and visits children more often than not in hospitals, going from room to room.

While there are some small philosophical differences between the streams (more or less integrated in the hospital routine), both groups tend to be composed of professional or semi-professional artists. Every charity that is active in the hospital clowning field has set up its own recruitment and training procedures. While the objective for a vast majority of the organizations is to alleviate the fears of children in the hospital and help them cope with the stress caused by pain and the separation of their family, some foundations also have introduced a therapeutic aspect in their work.

The objective of this round table discussion would be to explore the motivations and experiences behind the therapeutic and non-therapeutic approaches chosen by clown doctor organizations and to further define clown therapy.

As you can see, there are organizations here from around the world, and they all operate in different fashions.  No one on the panel is disputing the possibility or likelihood that the clowns’ presence, and creating laughter has therapeutic effects. As far as I can tell, what is being hotly disputed is whether Therapy should be the objective of the activity.  Over the years, art has become recognized as a therapy, as witnessed by the large number of art, music, theater and play therapists working (mostly in the Western world.)  What is the focal point here are the clown in the hospital. Are they part of the hospital’s staff, or outsiders, whom as artists and clowns, come to visit?

Michael Christensen, founder of The Clown Care Unit, who are the pioneers in the field, was quick to point out in an earlier presentation, that the initial thrust of the clown doctors was to parody the doctors. By exaggeratingly impersonating Doctors and nurses, by performing operations such as a red nose transplant, or a chocolate milk infusion, the clowns were clearly inviting humor into the hospital room to everyone’s (patient, patient’s family and hospital staffs’) delight.  Just as clearly, it is their position as artists, and outside the fold of the hospital, that gives them the power to parody.  The artist’s argument is that to identify the clowns as members of the healing team takes away much of their power.  I am oversimplifying here, but hopefully you get the idea.

The Israeli Dream Doctors are probably the strongest flag bearers on the Therapy side. The dream doctors have become members of the hospital staff, and accompany children through all kinds of procedures. They are present in certain examinations with the specific purpose of diverting the child’s attention away from the procedure. The Dream Doctors organization and associated hospitals have done evidence based research studies demonstrating the clown’s effectiveness in helping the healing process, most famously in women’s fertility clinics. As conference attendees, we all took a field trip to various hospitals to go see the Dream Doctors at work, witnessing how they operate in that environment, their level of interaction with the patients, and their camaraderie with the hospital staff. It was amazing, and heart warming to witness the clowning that they are doing.

If you are wondering just what kind of therapy the dream doctors are involved in, I think a listing of titles of abstracts about evidence-based research presented at the conference will offer a good idea:

• Medical clowns effective in reducing pain in children with cerebral palsy undergoing Botulinum Toxin Injections
• Preoperative anxiety in children: Medical clowns vs oral midazolam
• The effect of medical clowning on pregnancy rates after in vitro fertilization and embryo transfer (IVF-ET) -results: 20% improvement !!
• Decreasing anxiety levels among children in the Hemato-Oncology department of the Soroka Medical Center
• The influence of medical clowning on blood pressure and pulse rate of patients undergoing elective cataract surgery

My visit to the hospital provided another perspective into the question of art or therapy. When we arrive at Shaare Zedek Medical Center, my group of conventioneers (30 or so) is ushered into a small conference room for an introductory session before beginning the hospital visit. The session includes a discussion in the round with the chief of pediatrics. As a facilitation tool, she passes poker chips around the room. We are to take 3, and when we wish to make a point, we have to throw one of our chips into the center. She begins by asking for us each to say the one word we feel is the role or job of the medical clown. As we go around the room, there is a beautiful canopy of responses. However, evidently the Doctor did not hear the one she was looking for, as she emphatically gives her response: healers.  She proceeds to explain her point of view, that we are part of the hospital staff, whose job is to heal the children. Everyone working in the hospital has one purpose for being there, to help heal the child. Thus, clearly from her perspective, clowning is our tool for assisting the healing. From this, one can deduce that she would consider the clowns as therapists.

No one would deny that this is part of the equation, but quite a few present quite vocally disagreed in a small shower of chips expressing the clown’s function as an artist and a counterbalance to the hospital environment.   Caroline Simonds, the founder of Le Rire Medecin in France some 18 years ago, offers an eloquent point or two. If I remember correctly, she embodies the concept that the fact that the clowns are viewed as separate from the rest of the staff is part of their power.  She also phrases the discussion in another perspective: is the medical clown there to cure the patient, or to care for the patient?

I had the honor (many years ago) of playing (as guest clown) alongside Caroline in a Paris hospital.  I so remember her going into a boy’s room, giving him a little doll with flexible limbs. She froze. He would bend a puppet’s arm, and Caroline bent hers. The kid bent a leg, she followed suit. A big smile erupted on his lips as he twisted Caroline around. Laughter ensued, eventually from both of them in the process of untwisting.

Back to the present past and the little hospital conference room, where I sit incredulous as the doctor, who rather than moderating the discussion, seems to be trying to champion her point of view, responds, contradicting Caroline’s point of view. It’s too much for me. In the heat of the moment, yours truly gets into the act. I stand up to take the floor, walking to the center of the circle to dramatically drop my poker chip in the pile.

Pointing out that I come from a completely different environment, the Clowns Without Borders world, I ask if perhaps we should look at this question in a different light, “that what the clowns do is to invite in the spirit of joy. That perhaps, just perhaps, through our play and clowning, we encourage the children to en-liven their joy, to connect with this aspect of life, and through their joyousness, with their desire to be alive?  This is what we, as clowns, can do.”  I end my commentary asking rhetorically, ” Is that therapy? Is that healing? Is that artistry? Is that spirituality?”

I am honored as I sit back down by a clatter of poker chips doubling up my words. Thankfully, the doctor doesn’t take me to task. I do not wish to make her the “bad guy,” and I do hope that the good doctor will forgive my storytelling.   I do realize how hard she works, all with the utmost drive, to save lives that she holds dear. No doubt she has to watch as some slip away, despite doing her utmost to cure. The whole hospital staff shares these experiences, including the clowns.  No doubt, that creates a strong bond, and in that sense, whether the clowns think of themselves as healers isn’t as important as realizing that they are truly allies.

During the visit portion of our hospital tour, we are brought to the kidney dialysis center. The kids who need dialysis come here 3 times a week for an extensive part of the day. So there is a great amount of familiarity and community one feels when one enters. At first the busy room brings up images of late 50s crowded beauty shop, then one sees that it’s the kids who are hooked up to these very high tech dialysis units, lot’s of lights, tubes, controls… their parents look on, interact, read books. In the middle of it all, one clown, Ranana, a tall young woman, is behaving like the captain of the ship, sometimes holding conversations with the entire room, and then zooming in on any number of the children for a more private moment. Ranana is there today as a visiting clown, it is no longer her regular station, as she has recently transferred to work in another hospital.  At various moments, nurses come up to give her hugs, and exchange deep smiles. There is incredible warmth in their exchange, great beauty in the compassion they share.  As we leave, I am sensing an almost spiritual role of the Clown’s presence, to hold the humor chalice, to be the court jester of the dialysis unit.

Back to the conference at Maale Hachamisha, and to the big panel discussion where there is earnest debate amongst the panelists. Strong opinions that agree, oppose, gently skate around, and combine possibilities-the artist’s actions have therapeutic effects. A member of the public, a local hospital chaplain, gets up to explain similarities between her role and that of the clown’s.  My favorite point on the therapy side of the discussion comes from Shoshi Ofir of Dream Doctors, who describes how the medical clown “offers the full scale of emotions, and we connect with the child in the place of their choice, where they wish to be.”

Then Serge Ouaknine, seated at the end of the panelist’s table, speaks. He is a Moroccan Jew, a university professor in Montreal, a director, and an actor who worked with the famed Jerzy Grotowsky in Wrotzlaw, Poland, back in the 60s.

Serge is perhaps the only real outsider on the panel, and his learned opinion doesn’t disappoint. He has my, and everyone’s complete attention with his opening statement about joy, which he attributes to a poet who is also an astrophysicist. He continues by stating that: “theater, or clowning, is not a matter of image, or space, but of breaking time.”  The purpose of clown is to break the time track, and to bring the patient into a moment out of linear time. Serge describes this moment as “touching the perpetual, the endlessness, that in Judaism is called Ein Sof.” He explains that the clown gives the child a chance to enter an imaginary life, what, or where, he would like to be at that moment, rather than where he is-at the hospital. Serge describes this activity in a wonderful way, “the clown creates a public intimacy.” I am paraphrasing Serge, and his argument goes further, and deeper, but hopefully you get the essence of his argument; one that everyone applauds enthusiastically.

I am particularly enthusiastic because he is bringing the argument around to what for me is the essence: joy and the expression of joy.  Later, after the panel, I sit down with Serge for a long talk. I tell him how much I enjoy his perspective, and then I ask him to consider a similar argument, but perhaps more from a Zen perspective.  I tell him the story, one that I have told many times, about a discussion I had with Egyoku, abbot of the Los Angeles Zen Center.  I had offered her a friend’s description of clowning: ‘a poet of the emotions, a language of the heart.’ Egyoku response “in Zen, we don’t like to separate the heart and the mind. We use the word kokoro, heart-mind.” Well that opened up a world of understanding about the intuitive and the rational aspects of our minds, the left and right side of our brains.

It’s not really one or the other, but more a question of who is in the driver’s seat. When we clown, when we look to invoke humor, to become a poet of the emotions, the intuitive mind may be in charge, but one doesn’t just turn off rational thought completely.   In fact, in the case of the medical clown, as the clown is functioning in the ultra rational Hospital environment, their rational side remains quite vigilant, to keep the clown within boundaries that the hospital environment demands.

After my explanation, Serge opens a wide smile and simply says, “I like you.”

Somehow the debate about art or therapy, cure or care, melts into nothingness when one considers Serge’s quote that joy requires two people connecting.  For me, this is the key to the clown’s success. When the clown embodies the possibilities of play and humor, and invites the child to participate, it is their connection that invites joyousness to become alive in the room.

No matter how you look at it, the medical clown creates this magical space that children can enter, where fun can be had, where the funny is alive.  At it’s most effective, the clown disappears the hospital room from the child’s view entirely.  It may be but a few minutes, or even seconds, but to the child, and the clown, it’s a big moment, a whole world outside time.

The afternoon show is in Zona 18 on a flat soccer field, not quite as dusty as yesterdays’ railroad tracks. Its our first full group show due to transportation backups in Livingston where the river boat broke down and part of our expedition (Tortell, Montse Johnny Rainbow and Neil) were unable to get back to Puerto Bario in time to catch the last bus. Speaking of buses, on the road today on a two lane highway headed for Chichicastenango, we almost get run off the road by diesel belching dueling buses. They are painted in bright colors with Religious slogans decaled on the windshields in glitter letters. The ticket man of the first bus is hanging way out the doorway waving wildly at us as they pass us flying fast and forcing oncoming traffic onto the dirt shoulder in order to avoid disaster. We watch as the two buses push on ahead of us, the ticket man angrily facing front fist shaking as the buses weave in and out of lanes in true Hollywood fashion, the first to the next stop winning the prize of waiting passengers.
Day 10
Nebaj – morning workshops. Round two. Last time we worked with teachers of older kids. This time we work with 40 educators and teachers, most of whom work with three to six year olds. I do a Qi-Gong type warm-up including voice and mime exercises. The women, some of whom have babies strapped to their backs, can’t stretch their feet wide because of their tight red ‘cortes’ wraps. However the whole group plunges into it with occasional fits of laughter as they explore a completely foreign world, much to the surprise of my skeptical colleagues. I finish with the A-En-Ih-O-Umm (Shintaido) exercise that I learned from the Japanese master in San Francisco and when we finish we are totally in synch, all finishing exactly at the same time, followed by a moment of meditative silence. We are all amazed by the sense of harmony of the group.
The rest of the morning they play games that we hope they will be able to use with their students. In the afternoon we teach juggling, make-up and stilt walking. Afterwards Ramon, Jaume, Montse and Anna go to Acul to try and buy the type of hat that I had found on our previous excursion, and there is a nice moment that evening when Ramon walks into the house wearing a stack of a dozen of the hats on his head. Everyone explodes with laughter.
The late evening is filled again with the constant dog barking and rooster crowing that comes and goes in waves and tides, sometimes close and sometimes far off.

Day 11

A change: a stretch of paved streets in the small town of Aguacatal where we stop for lunch. We are on our way to Todos Santos about to cross over the highest mountain range in Central America. . We hit the road after the morning show in Nebaj, in the Parque Central. The road is too bumpy to write as we climb deep dust sloped roads (terraseria) up towards the Altiplano. The rutted road offers incredible vistas of beiges and olive greens contrasted by the ever colorful traditional dress of the locals we pass walking the roads.

The 9Am Nebaj show starts with a parade from the MSF house to the market where we dance before leading another trail of peoples to the stage in the parque central. A white stucco wall with arches, the remains of some former structure, stands alone as the backdrop to the four foot high cement stage we perform on, it’s origins lost in the history of the town. We play to what seems a sea of faces, over 1000, then it’s a rush job to get out of town, knowing that we have six hours of four wheeling ahead. It’s a good show although the public doesn’t show their excitement, or applaud all that much, but the absorbed faces are wide-eyed open, and giggles from the kids explode easily. I improvise with the cigarette left on stage from Circ Confetti’ volunteer (they hit it out of his mouth with a juggling club as they pass clubs around him), disappearing it, then sneezing it out my nose to great delight.
The morning is full-Pasqual’s wife is expecting her second child any day, which doesn’t stop her from cooking up a big meal in the kitchen. Pasqual is trying to clear out the plugged up kitchen sink ladling out smelly sewage then straightening out a thick wire to clear the pipe that leads to the street. The plumbers snake has yet to reach this part of the world, yet they sell Ray-O-Vac batteries at isolated little shed-stores with straw roofs lost on deserted Altiplano roads.
Todos Santos, our destination, is cradled in the first valley cup after descending from the peak of the Altiplano range. We descend into a sea of fog after crossing a wide windswept plateau of bleak brown and sparse settlements. On one mountainside is a Hollywood like sign that spells TODOS SANTOS, but it is made of painted white stones on the ground, no fancy billboard structure here.
The houses on the way vary widely from wood with thatch straw roofs to the mud/straw brick variety to crude log cabins. As we get close to Todos Santos the traditional style veers to lean-to type structures, wooden plank walls joined at weird angle that offer little logic until you consider high wind parameters.
Last night was the big party at Casa 2 of the Ninos, Refugios del Mundo, which ends in lots of late night dancing. These hard working humanitarian workers love to dance and laugh, a healthy way to let off some of the stress surrounding them. I’m quite beat now after the five hours of terraseria, full of thin air high altitude wilderness. At one point it smelled like Colorado, pine trees and small streams following the road, or rather the other way around, with Bermuda green grass surrounding . In the Altiplano the landscape plays various shades of brown and fields of boulders with huge cactus lines define pathways and separations, varying in degrees of curves and straight lines.
As we get close to Todos Santos, the traditional dress changes. The men are wearing red pants with white stripes and small round straw hats with embroidered bands. The collars of the shirts are similar, very wide full of complex multicolor embroidered patterns. Some wear western style jackets against the cold fog descending into the valley. Jauma is playing my ukulele as we sit around the table of the Canada house where we spend the night before our morning performance.
day 12

I’m trying to catch the beauty of the smiles that keep blessing me, but my camera is not me and the faces become more serious when the camera angles in on them. We play this morning after some serious negotiating with the church committee. At first they refuse to let us play on the raised area in front of the church in Todos Santos’s main square, a vacant stretch of earth off the road that leads through town. All of the area’s the schools come down and we play to a sea of faces again, fully delighted kids who after the show raise clouds of dust as they excitedly chase then get chased by Ramon’s Gigantica. A huge circle around him that continually changes shape as the kid’s rush in laughing then run out screaming.

We’re finally back on the smooth road again, out of the mountains and headed back to the capital, still five hours to go, though. In Huehuetenango, we have reached a second-world mixed pastel town full of two story stucco town houses. There is no more traditional dress to be seen or thatched hut farms on deserted mountainsides. I return to this morning’s conversations trying to convince the Mayan priest to let us perform on the church steps. Luckily Roman from MSF shows up and knows how to talk to him, and follows a pointed finger placing a folded twenty quetzal note in the donation box. We then listen to the priest tell us how the Catholic church is the oldest religion, the number one religion, the most important. And this is not the Italian father who is off in Chichitenango but an indigenous man with a red and yellow flower bandana wrapped around his head pirate style, communicating through his cohort, a man in traditional dress with a cataract white eye. Of all things a photographer from the Magnum agency, John Vink from Belgium, and his German girlfriend, are there clicking away, both with Leicas shooting TMAX 400. But the ‘catechista’ does not want me to take photographs.
Carla (Veterinarians Without Borders) tells us a story about highway bandits who dress as clowns. I remember how none of the educators at the Nebaj workshop had ever seen anyone juggle before. Carla is explaining the whole Theater/Circus world of Guatemala which sounds pretty slim, used to be bigger but… an all too familiar story. We’re in pine covered mountains passing through a valley settlement. Coming out the other side we pass two groups of women coming out of the forest carrying huge bundles of branches on their backs. supported by headbands. Gathering of firewood, a common but ever surprising sight to my foreign eyes. The burdens seem bigger than they are, families, three generations carrying including several kids with only slightly smaller bundles moving in bright colors.
Billboards appear roadside as we approach Quetzaltenango.
More hillsides of brown, some with deep plowed lines, others sparsely covered in dead maize stalks. Delineated dirt brown climbing up and over rounded mountains. Occasional solitary trees and green patches distinguished more by relief than color. We pass near Solidad, where the men’s traditional is a pink/red shirt with brown wool skirts with small white polka dots tied what seems Balinese style. We’re done with the rough dirt roads but the pavement is so full of potholes that it’s like running an obstacle course and we keep on flying onto the dirt shoulder kicking up dust storms as we avoid the holes.

I would be hard pressed to describe Guatemala City fully. Pockets of wealth amongst expanses of grey. I am flying in from San Francisco to join up with a group of Catalan performers who have already been there several days. When I arrive they are allready busy performing on the Carribean coastal side of this cental American country. They’re adventure there involves hiking hours through the jungle to arrive at several communities. There are five of the they. Jauma (Tortell Poltrona, founder of Payasos sense Fronteras) and his wife Montse, Anna and Miguel of Cirque Confetti and Ramon from Trupo de Nassos. Jauma has brought parts of his show with him including the fourteen chairs that he stacks in a wide semi circle and balances, his flea gun routine and his bomb routine where he gets a volunteer to stand on a chair while he lights the fuse then runs through the audience screaming to take cover. The fuse fizzles, he sends the volunteer back then casually throws the bomb backstage which is immediately followed by a large explosion.
Anna and Miguel have quite a repertoire of juggling and circus skills highlighted by a high unicylce, ladder and stilts routine in which Anna brings Miguel a ladder to stand on to get on his unicycle. First she holds the ladder but then lets go to go pick up the unicycle and he finds himself stuck on the ladder and does a free standing balance. The routine ends with Miguel on the unicycle and Anna on tall stilts passing fire torches. Ramon at the end of the show and during preshow parades would get inside his 12 foot tall clown puppet and play with the audience to great delight. The show we create is a circus presented by our contact/guide Rudi, a Guatemalan clown who is very involved in bringing theater to the remote communities of Guatemala with his partner Tatoo.
For the first week we are joined by two Canadians-Neil Rempel and Johnny Rainbow. Neil is a street-performer who performs as a Tom Waitsian character and has brought down several routines : a fire juggling and fire blowing number and one where he becomes Elvis Presley on stilts. Johnny Rainbow is a fast talking railroad-man who also organizes a small children’s theater festival in Kenora, Ontario. He is native American, has a strong humanitarian concern and is responsible for getting the money together to bring Neil and himself down to Guatemala.
It makes for a large contingent to move around and we are lucky to have the logistical and transportation support from quite a few humanitarian organizations(NGO’s-Non Governmental Organizations) including Enfants Refugies du Monde, Medicins sans Frontieres (French and Swiss contingents), Vetenarians without Borders, Educateurs sans Frontieres and ADR quart-monde . We are staying in several of their houses and there seems to be an armada of Toyota and Land-Rover pick up six passenger vehicles to ferry us around. It takes at least two vehicles, preferably three as not only are there quite a lot of us but we are trucking around quite a lot of performance materials, a curtain backdrop and a rented sound system.

2/23 About Day 2
Morning in my bed in the little room of the Enfants refugiés du Monde house, in calle 5a, Zona 3, of Guatemala City. Cement stucco walls, tiled floor, faded yellow paint. There are street noises and a view of some black rooftops behind which two huge domes of green tree dominate my skyline. Later today, the rest of the gang will return from the Carribean side of Guatemala, where they have already been in action for a number of days.

Yesterday I traveled to the country, to kilometer 29 of the El Salvador road where I performed in “Anini’, a small orphanage. Some of the kids, 3-5 years old, greeted me saying “Papa”, with hopeful question marks in their innocent eyes. There is a large aquarium at one end of the room and earlier when I peered in I spotted a little sign planted along the bottom gravel, amongst the goldfish that said “Quieramos Padrinos”(we want foster parents).Yow.
I did a show in the main room after having been led on a tour of the facility, which included a few crosses and a chapel. Most kids sat in a wide semicircular row of benches, while the disabled, and very challenged ones who the middle floor. Soon the kids and I are navigating a boat on a sea of laughter. Lots of silliness, lots of fun.

In the evening, I tagged along the EFM staff to visit Cruz, an Indian from Nebaj, recently arrived via helicopter emergency to the hospital. He had been in the hospital 10 days up there already with two chest stab wounds and they had yet to determine if the lung was punctured. In Nebaj, he had not been fed for ten days, nor had the wound been sewn up. Now there was infection…It seems his story did not garner much community support, a womanizer he was in disharmony with some elements of the community as he was living with someone else’s separated wife.
His hospital room is quite basic and clean though you have to pay if you want the TV turned on; the man in the next bed has his leg broken by a hit and run truck. I offered up a few magic tricks. he tells me not to make him laugh because it will hurt his ribs…When I ask if then I should skip the magic, he says “no no, si si” and he smiles through the pain and gets swept away for a fun moment.

Day 3 2/23
Spend a bit of time morning in bed writing about Day 2

The van is stuck in the main market area, we’re inching past third world orderly chaos. Diesel fumes permeate as unloading trucks exasperate and wild colored 1950s’ school buses vie for pole position on their way to the next bus stop. We are headed to the “fero-caril”, where we are to perform. I am not sure what that means but I will find out. Bright Guatemalan colors sparkle among street sellers, vegetable piles on cloths layed down on the street. I spot a discerning indigenous woman inspecting produce, long black hair in braids, with a baby strapped to her back in typical fashion. The driver, Jean-Marie, from ADR quart-monde (fourth world), points out ahead the main-market, a sea of wavy tin roofs. Melons in baskets next to piles of black tires and women carrying plastic buckets full on their heads.

Miguel and Anna, from Circ Confetti, and I are busy figuring out how I can back them up on harmonica and ukulele, as they won’t be able to use their tapes…which is certified as we arrive to the fero-caril. I gaze past shadowed groups of individuals into the bright gleam of railroad ties. There in the thick littered dusty ground, the concept of sound system falls through dirty children’s hands playing with sticks and any loose objects should drift their way. The chance of there being an electric plug is extremely remote.

The tracks cut right through a congregation of mechanics and tire repair centers. As you walk along the tracks past the commerce, a mass of corrugated iron slowly transforms into doorways, habitats small shacks, a few people sitting in the sheltered shadows. Small groups of children emerge from doorways, dusty faces on dark indigenous skin. The loose dirt, hot dark fine sand, along the tracks is pure silt. When I trip (on purpose to the kids’ delight,) I watch the little cloud of dust erupt. I’m stunned, the kids laugh.
We change in one woman’s house, It is neat and organized. As we walk in, I am surprised by several potted plants. No excess here as my eyes walk past a formica card table with several covered platters of food. Another surprise, an electric blender with a hint of fruit smoothie on the bottom, red…
The walls are flattened cardboard boxes framed by recycled two by fours. A single electrical wire wrapped along a beam linked to a bare bulb, which the woman lights when she leaves, closing the door to let us change. There are strategic holes in the cardboard where differing items live, a pen, a disposable razor….An assortment of pots, dishes and glasses live in a red crate on the hard earth clean swept floor. I am surprised as I follow electronic voices around the corner of the makeshift wall to the half separated bedroom where above the lumpy single bed a portable TV set is flashing fuzzy black and white soap opera images. On the same shelf lives an equally outdated radio cassette player. I remark later to Jean-Marie how together their little house seemed, he agrees remarking that this is a dynamic family, the father gets work, the mother is very community involved, the kids go to school.

The show is good fun, and afterwards the kids dance with the Ramon’s giant puppet and scream with delight as they chase my bubbles.
Later at the van, after we pack up, we wait while Miguel gets the flat tire on his giraffe unicycle repaired. Two kids hanging around the van get Jean-Marie to give them books to read, which they devour, completely absorbed during the waiting time remaining. Jean-Marie brings a traveling library to this community on a weekly basis.

Case:  A famous writer who was known for being highly articulate and witty came to meet Gregory Bateson.  The chatted for a while and then the writer left. Bateson remarked to a sutdent, “At first I thought he had a sense of humor, then I realized the he did not.”   The student was confused by Bateson’s remark and asked him  to explain what he meant by a sense of humor. Gregory looked at the student for a moment before replying, ” It’s knowing that you don’t matter.”