The Balkans, 1-20 August 2004
Serbia, Kosovo/a, Bosnia

27 shows ,16 days, 1900+ people
Participants:
Yvette Feuer and Bruce Macphail, members of the Obfuscated Tortoise
in co-operation with Healing Hearts, Grupa “Haje Da…”, Danish Refugee Council, Caritas, UNMIK, Dis Theatre, The Family, and other local youth workers and volunteers.

Itinirary
Date Location Audience Size
Serbia
1 August Novi-Sad, SOS Village 70 children
2 August Belgrade, House of Dom Zmaj 40 children
2 August Belgrade, Orphanage Dragutin Filipovic 30 children
3 August Belgrade,Dunavsko Kindergarten 40 children
3 August Stamnica, Institute of Handicapped People“Nikola Sumenkovic “ Total 120
4 August Kuline, Center For Handicapped People “Dragulu Markovic Gidra” Total 100

Kosovo
5 August North-Mitrovica, Internally Displaced People’s Camp “Branko Radice”- Serbs and Romas 50 children, 10 adults, Total: 60
5 August Zitkovac, Internally Displaced People’s Camp-Romas 50 children, 20 adults, Total: 70
6 August Liposevac, Internally Displaced People’s Camp-Romas 50 children, 10 adults, Total: 60
6 August Gazi Voda, Internally Displaced People’s Camp -Serbs 40 children 10 adults, Total: 50
7 August Livragona, Albanian School 70 chidren, 20 adults, Total: 90
7 August Priluzje, Serbian Youth Center 40 children 20 adults, Total: 60
8 August Staro Gracko, Serbian Enclave 40 children, 10 adults, Total: 50
8 August Stanovc, Albanian School 60 children, 10 adults, Total: 70
8 August Gracanica, Roma Community 70 children, 30 adults, Total: 100
9 August Plementina,Internally Displaced People’s Camp-Romas 60 children, 30 adults, Total: 90
9 August Plementina, School of Balkan Sunflowers 40 children, 10 adults, Total: 50
Bosnia-Hercegovina
11 August Banja Luka,
Dom Rada Vranjesevic 50 children, 10 adults, Total: 60
11 August Banja Luka, kindergarden 30 children
13 August Sarajevo, Dom Bjelave 60 children, 20 adults, Total: 80
13 August Sarajevo, SOS Kinderdorf , Drustveni Centar 50 children, 20 adults, Total: 70
13 August Sarajevo, SOS Village 50 Children, 10 adults, Total: 60
14 August Sarajevo, neighborhood show Total 20
14 August Breza, show at local festival Total 250
15 August Pazarevic, Institution for Mentaly Handicapped Adult Patients Total 70
15 August Konjic, Center For Children Rights 60 Children, 10 Adults, Total 70
16 August Ivanica, Village School Total 40

Total of 27 shows and just under 2000 people in the audience.

Clowns Without Borders Balkan Tour August 2004
(Narration by Bruce, correction by Yvette)
Clowns Yvette Feuer and Bruce Macphail traveled for two and a half weeks in Serbia, Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina doing a total of 27 shows and 16 workshops and reaching just under 2000 children.
We decided to put together this trip to the Balkans in the Spring 2004 and it took 5 months between the time we decided to go and the completion of the trip. Crucial financial support came from the Merdith Russell Travel Grant from Sarah Lawrence College which covered the expenses and the equipment. We are also indebted to support from family and friends to make this expedition possible. For two and a half weeks we did shows and workshops in various locations including schools, orphanages, mentally handicapped homes and refugee settlements.
THE SHOW
The show was quite theatrical, it was entitled The Ravioli Family Circus and the premise was that we were a traveling Italian family doing circus shows around the world. The family was quite small as it was simply composed of La Mama (Yvette) who is a long time performer and has a strong inclination towards singing which is not always to the like of her young son Giuseppe (myself), who is just beginning the family tradition of circus performance. The show was designed to be pretty much non-verbal which is one of the reasons why we used the Italian language in the show. It so happened that Yvette spoke Italian and I had some notions. We also learned a few key words of the local language (different depending on where we were), which was useful.
THE WORKSHOP
In addition to doing the show we thought we would leave a longer lasting impact on the children if we lead a workshop after the performance. The idea behind the workshop was that we created a mini-circus with the children. We all started with a dance in a circle, which Yvette and I led and they followed what we did, and then we split the children into two groups, acrobats and animals. The smaller ones would go with Yvette to do animals and I would take the older ones to learn partner acrobatics… Following the learning of a number of animals(elephants, frogs, and lions) and acrobatics moves, each group would show each other what they have learnt and we would then do a final dance. Afterwards we would perform the whole show as a mini-circus for the adults that were around. This was the basic structure of the workshop, although it changed at times depending on the number of children (usually 20-60), their ability to focus and the amount of communication that could be established. When possible we had some people translate for us while leading the workshops but as we picked up more of the local languages we managed to learn enough key words to lead a whole workshop with no translation, which was really exciting.
SERBIA
We started the tour in Serbia where we spent four days. We visited mostly orphanages and mentally handicapped centers. We did a total of six shows and six workshops all over the country from Novi Sad in the northern province of Vojvodina to the mentally handicapped center of the quite remote Kuline. The latter housed over 500 patients in very poor conditions (of course I do not mean to criticize the staff of the center as the poor conditions are the result of lack of funding by the Serbian government and meager access to international aid agencies). We were lucky to have a friend of Yvette, photographer Aron Koszeg drive us around for the first 10 days of the trip which allowed us to visit more remote places that we could not have reached by means of public transportation.
KOSOVO
We arrived in Kosovo on August 4th where we stayed for 5 days. (I do not intend to make a political statement by making a separate section for Kosovo, differencing it from Serbia. Kosovo although under UNMIK administration is still part of Serbia, but in order to organize the breakdown of this trip I thought it would be useful.) We visited different types of institution here. Since the war in 1999 which created some 850 000 refugees, Kosovo has been living under a UN administration that tries to maintain the peace of the region that is still very fragile, as the recent March events has shown it this past spring. As it now stands the country is divided by a majority of Albanians in the south and a minority of Serbs in the North. The situation is still very complicated as there are Serbian enclaves in the predominantly Albanian territories and Albanian villages in the predominantly Serbian territories. We visited communities where the inhabitants are living similarly to prisoners as they are trapped in their village. We visited communities where in March people had been shot just outside their own village for not being in their territory. When these enclaves are too small to have their own schools the children are transported by a UN bus with armed UN guards to another enclave where there is a school. Barbed wire and barricades are common-place in such communities. So are camps that host people that have been forced to leave their homes. These are called Internally Displaced People’s Camp (IDP). We have often performed in such camps. One example of it was a performance at the “school” which was organized by Caritas, a French NGO. We at first thought we were performing in a school but that was just the name given to the building for its previous function, since it has now become a center for IDPs. The old classroom had become filled with beds and the whole school was turned into a refugee center. Some people had been living in this extremely worn-down building since 1999 while others arrived after the March events forced them to move from South- Mitrovica to North-Mitrovica. Another problem which occurred because of the war and has not got a lot of international publicity was the fate of the Roma population of Kosovo. We visited a number of refugee camp style living situations where Roma Gypsies were settled in waiting to go back to their homes. People at these centers have been stuck there since 1999 and are still living in very poor conditions compared to what they had before the war. An example of this is the now destroyed Roma Mahala in Mitrovica, which was one of the largest Roma community in the Balkans and was completely destroyed and looted. The old inhabitants are disseminated around Europe or still live in these camps that we have visited.
BOSNIA
We stayed a total of 6 days in Bosnia where we focused on mainly orphanages, but also visited schools and a large mentally handicapped center near Sarajevo in Pazarevic. International organizations have poured lot of money into the country which allowed for the facilities to be in much better standards than in Serbia and Kosovo. Still, a new problem is occurring (which we also saw to a lesser extent in Kosovo), which is the reduction of international aid. As the years go by and such other conflict areas have emerged as Afghanistan, Iraq and now Sudan, the focus of international aid shifts. There are so many people to help out in the world that it would be difficult for aid organizations to fund all their programs forever. But the local government is slow to step in to cover the financing of these operations and it brings a new hardship on the country. We did a total of 10 shows in the 6 days we spent in Bosnia from Banja Luka in the north to Ivanica near Trebinje in the south.
CONCLUSION
The trip was an amazing experience for us and we hope that it has brought some relief for a lot of children. We have met several amazing people who do humanitarian work, who are driven and enthusiastic, and who are sincerely eager to make a change in the lives of many people in this much suffered region of the world. We want to thank them not just for helping us to make this trip happen, but for all their selfless and hard work. All these countries are beautiful and its inhabitants want a better future. We have talked about a future continuation of our work there and of a possible collaboration between local organizations and CWB. Till then all the best to everyone!