Ayiti, November 2006
participants: Tim Cunningham, Sarah Lianne Foster, Elisa Lane
Nov. 4th. We are all car sick, green in the face, trying
our best to keep our wits about us as we drive down a small
dirt road, swerving to miss Jacuzzi sized puddles, dodging
small goats and pigs, and being shaken to pieces by the rocks,
crags, and debris on the road. Our destination: Larnage, a
small and extremely poor community in the Southwest of Haiti,
near Okay (Aux Cayes). When we arrive about 10 am, it is well
over 95 degrees, and the sweat is dripping. Dr. Stan Shaffer
takes us through the gates of Maison de Naissance, a 24hr
access birthing home and natal clinic. As we enter he explains
to us their motto “Dekabes! Healthy Mother and Healthy
Baby” Dekabes is a Kreyòl word for a double win
in lottery games. At MN Dekabes is used to celebrate when
a healthy baby is brought into the world by a healthy mother.
In Haiti, where infant mortality rates are tragically high
(72 deaths/1,000 live births), MN has done an extraordinary
job curbing this trend for the Larnage community. Dr. Shaffer
introduces us to the Dekabes for the day as we meet a 4-hour-old
baby and her resting mother. While holding this newborn Elisa,
Sarah, and I all hope that our next two weeks in Haiti will
be a Dekabes of its own.
14 shows, 4 hospital visits, 4 workshops, numerous walk around
performances all together for over 2,500 people; clown work
in Aux Cayes, Port-Au-Prince, Torbeck, and Larnage; collaborations
with the White Flowers Foundation, Maison de Naissance, and
Médicins Sans Frontières, and all in a span
of 13 days—Clowns Without Borders-USA has had a Dekabes,
a double, triple, even quadruple success! Tim Cunningham,
Sarah Liane Foster, and Elisa Lane have just returned from
a whirlwind experience offering psycho-social support through
clown shows and workshops in various areas of the poorest
country in the western hemisphere.
Haiti, a country stigmatized by the western media as violent
and treacherous; paralyzed economically by foreign free trade
policies and corruption; home to thousands of malnourished
and starving families many of whom have to seek out loans
to purchase food to eat; and just a few hours from the shores
of the USA, is a place of tragedy, beauty, and hospitality.
Even as we drove into the Bel Air area of Port-au-Prince,
a very poor and notably dangerous community, we were embraced
with kind smiles and warm hands. Though we had no food to
supply, money to donate, or medical expertise to give, we
were welcomed and cared for by this community and communities
around the country. The laughter that we experienced and the
joy we witnessed of a young, shy girl in Carrefour learning
to pitch a juggling club and then learning to throw it as
hard as she could to her friends, or the hundreds of belts
of laughter as we stilt walked onto a local green at the end
of a school day in Torbeck, was bone shaking and powerful.
The work began in Torbeck by spending time hiking dirt paths
and roads to arrange school shows and meet with neighbors
to let them now clowns were in town. Everywhere we went in
Torbeck and Larnage, we were surrounded by children shouting
“Nou Pedi!” (We are lost). This was the theme
of our CWB show when we first came to this region to perform
last April. Many of the children who saw the show last year
asked us incessantly “Ki kote moushwen?” (Where
is the handkerchief) referring to our disappearing handkerchief
bit in the show that always brought the house down. A few
kids, especially our friend Angelo, actually acted out parts
from our show last year and then gave us suggestions on how
we could improve it.
This time around we tried to incorporate more local issues
into our show and so we created—with the help of Angelo
and his compatriots—“Tout Moun Fou!” (Everybody’s
Crazy). We created a 45-minute piece that incorporated ideas
of child empowerment, women’s empowerment, dealing with
Malaria, disease, and hunger, and all through the lens of
clown and the world of the comedic absurd. Our audiences ranged
from 5 year olds to 25 year olds and hundreds of older adults
who sometimes laughed harder at their children laughing at
us than they did at the show itself!
When CWB-USA was in Haiti last April and this time, we encountered
numerous beautiful moments but also just as many heartbreaking
experiences. One of our biggest struggles with the work there
is when we finish a performance or community visit and we
are asked for food or money. This took place frequently during
our hospital visits in Aux Cayes. There patients are required
supply their own food in addition to medical expenses; we
met many very hungry parents sitting bedside with their sick,
often malnourished children. We could assume that the parents
had to spend most of their money on their child’s care
and had little if any to feed themselves.
We met one woman in particular, who during our first visit
decided to dance with us at the hospital and was probably
the funniest performer of the day. We were working in the
pediatric wing of Cayes general, doing very simple, quiet
clown work, when she came onto the scene dancing, and playing
with us. Within minutes she had the whole room laughing and
enjoying themselves. At the end of her dance, she asked us
for payment for her dancing, either money or food. We had
none to give, and she seemed very frustrated that she had
gone through this effort for nothing. We finished performing
for patients who invited us to play with them and left feeling
empty, sad, and frustrated that we could not offer more to
this woman.
We were so distraught we thought that it may be better that
we do not return to that particular hospital. However, the
nurses invited us back, and after a few days of doing school
shows, we decided to try again.
Upon entering the Cayes hospital again, we met with the same
woman who had danced for us before. She spoke to us kindly
and began asking us to do certain bits that we had done a
few days before, ukulele song, the moushwen, juggling, etc.
This time however, she served as our hospital clown director.
She escorted us to different parts of the room so other kids
could see us; she coached us on what bit to do, and she performed
with us throughout. Never asking for anything, other than
for us to play a song again so she could keep on dancing,
she seemed to have changed her outlook. This woman took on
our role of performers to try to bring light to a degenerate
hospital ward infested with flies and the sick feelings of
death in the air. It is as if she understood the importance
of laughter, and with our return, wanted to bring it to not
only her sick child there, but to all of the kids and their
families surrounding us.
All along the way we met other aid workers, inspiring NGO
facilitators, doctors, teachers, and extraordinary children.
And while we were welcomed by most, we did meet some NGO professionals
who were skeptical of our presence there. “Why in this
desperate nation were we doing clown shows, teaching comedy,
and other circus skills? Couldn’t our services be used
better elsewhere? People here need food, medical care, shelter…”
Yes, it is true and we daily saw this need and felt like we
wanted to do more to offer different types of support; however,
the radiant smiles on children’s’ faces when Sarah
and Elisa walk on stage high on stilts, or when the Moushwen
magically appears out of some audience member’s ear,
is breathtaking. The power of laughter and smiles, though
hard to measure, resonates so strongly in these areas of need.
An NGO worker we met in Port-au-Prince put it simply citing
a rally cry from the women's textile strike in Lawrence, MA
of 1912: “Do not just give us bread, give us bread and
roses.” Perhaps our cry reads better: "Do not just
give us bread, give us bread and noses!"
The noses made it!
Many thanks to Mary White and the White Flowers Foundation,
Pere Fanfan, Maison de Naissance-Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies,
and Médicins Sans Frontières, for the financial
support, connections, and opportunities to make the work happen.
Also, thank you to all of you who have continued to support
our ventures in bringing laughter out to folks who can use
it most!
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