Nepal October 25-November 6th, 2004 Nepal Expedition
Desastrosus Circus & Arnau Vilardebò (PSF-Spain).
and Moshe Cohen (CWB-USA); in cooperation with the UNHCR,
Help Nepal, Maiti Nepal, Balmadir, Sharad, Siphal and Amics
de Nepal.
The team: Joan, Lula, Alvaro, Xavier, Arnau, Moshe-performers;
Marisol-Videographer; Menu-producer, stage manager; Robert-Logistician.
Everyone participated in making each show happen.
Itinerary:
Oct 25-26 Arrive Kathmandu
Oct 27 Travel to Damak, Jhapa
Oct 28 Beldangi 1 Camp (UNHCR) 3000
Sanschari Camp 3000
Oct 29 Beldangi 2 Camp 4000
Beldangi Extension Camp 4000
Oct 30 Khundabari Camp 3000
Timai Camp 2000
Oct 31 Tarabari Local School (Friends of Nepal) 1200
Nov 1 Goldhap Camp 5000
Nov 2 Damak Local School 400
Nov 2 Travel to Kathmandu
Nov 3 Day Off.
Nov 4 Maiti Nepal 300
Sharad & Siphal 300
Belmadir 200
Nov 5 Children’s Hospital 3 wards
Nov 6 Tibetan Reception Center 200
Desastrosus Cirkus Travel to Barcelona
Nov 9 Moshe travels to San Francisco
 The
expedition, a return to Nepal by Desastrosus Cirkus and Moshe
Cohen was funded by Spanish acrobat Elsa Moreno, who died
last year of a blood disease and was a friend to all those
participating in the expedition.
The main destination of this expedition were the Bhutanese
Refugee Camps located on the South Eastern Edge of Nepal where
approximately 110 000 of 150 000 Bhutanese refugees in Nepal
live. Returning to a number of NGO’s in Kathmandu was
also on the agenda, as well as a trip to the Children’s
hospital and the Tibetan Reception Center.
The Show
The show was a intermingling and mix of numbers by Desastrosus
Cirkus, Moshe and Arnau. Desastrosus brought their unicycle,
hat and club juggling routines to the table, Moshe his sponge
ball magic and cigar box routines, Arnau performed several
poetry scat songs, playing the timple ( kind of a 5 string
ukulele ) as well as considerable presentation as the director/master
of ceremonies. Xavier of Desastrosus circus as drummer/percussionist
provided rhythmic back-up throughout the show.
As presenter, Arnau found some funny words, sounds and themes
to play with, such as the word ‘fotengro’ which
means grasshopper. Arnau would sing a few lines of gibberish,
and then the word fotengro, a few more lines of gibberish
and again punctuate with fotengro. This word play was very
funny to the audience.
During the course of the expedition, Moshe and Arnau developed
a butoh clown piece about a lover without a love (Moshe) who
comes out with a very big (5 ft) orange sunflower. Arnau would
sing the story in Nepali as Moshe butohclowned the lover looking
for a love, dancing with his flower, eventually then the wind
came up (Arnau’s narration) and blew his flower (and
him) in the direction of love-Arnau asking the audience to
blow at this point.
During our Damak stay, the Bhutanese acrobats, Binod and Kamal,
played towards the end of the show-they had ’learned’
their skills by watching old English movies. We were very
happy to have them participate in the show, for us, they were
the stars of the show. 
( more about them further down in the report-in ‘activities’)
There was a fair amount of circus cross pollination as Moshe
joined Desastrosus for their hat-line passing routine of the
Desastrosus, did a ball passing line with them and walked
through their club passing routine having changed into shorts
and big red clown shoes.*** Several chase scenes developed
as transitions. Moshe would surprise Joan of Desastrosus offering
him his tall unicycle just after he finished his small unicycle
routine where he would ride a child volunteer around on top
of his shoulders. Joan would then chase Moshe around a bit
before he escaped to the backstage. The hat juggling line
routine ended with Alvaro collecting all the hats in a big
stack on his head. The other performers, realizing where the
hats had gone, would all chase Alvaro around the playing area.
The audience loved these scenes.
As the show developed over the first few days, the finale
evolved into a funny little line dance to Arnau’s music.
Desastrosus and Moshe, all wearing white conical hats (traditional
Albanian Kosovar hats) would do little jumps, with freeze
stops orchestrated by Arnau, finishing with a simple acrobatic
pyramid.
***When the audience saw the shoes, there was usually an eruption
of talking in the audience as they discussed the shoes-never
seen before in those parts. The shoes were worn by Carl Carllsonwho
did magic tricks as
“ The Nutty Professor “ on
the original Bozo tv show for many years.-a gift to Moshe
by Magic Steve.
The Situation
Overall the situation in Nepal is far more unstable than it
was during our last visit seven years ago. The Maoist insurgency
has picked up considerable momentum following the assassination
of the king and his family several years ago. There is no
concrete information about the state of the insurgency however
there are reports everyday in the newspapers about attacks,
killings, abductions, both by the Nepalese military and the
Maoist insurgency. The only thing they seem to agree on is
to leave the tourists alone, however shopkeepers in Kathmandu
say that business is way down. One well placed contact suggested
that the only area in Nepal that is outside the Maoist control
is the Kathmandu valley. Other reports suggest that they mainly
control the rural north and west of the country. The demands
of the Maoist are for a constitutional assembly and a ‘republic’.
One person suggested that their aims place them someplace
between Buddhism and communism. What seemed clear was their
desire to abolish the monarchy.
Nepal remains one of the poorest countries in the world.
The Bhutanese refugees have now been in the camps for close
to fourteen years. Victims of ethnic cleansing in the early
1990’s following the king’s declaration of ‘one
nation-one people’ and forced to sign papers giving
up their Bhutanese citizenship as they left that country,
these people remain stuck in refugee camps. For better background
information please explore:
-The UNHCR site, specifically the The Exodus of Ethnic Nepalis
from Southern Bhutan report at http://www.unhcr.ch/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/publ/opendoc.htm?tbl=RSDCOI&id=3ae6a6c08&page=publ
-the AHURA Bhutan
website
or visit
-http://www.bhootan.org/hrreports/ahrc.htm.
for a narrative about the expulsion from their country of
these peoples.
Tensions have gotten worse since we last visited seven years
ago as there is still no clear solution in sight. To make
matters worse, the UNHCR, who run the camps, have declared
their intention to stop administering the camps at the end
of 2005.
There has been a flurry of diplomatic activity in the past
months both by the US and the EU who have sent diplomats to
India, Bhutan and Nepal to try initiate new efforts to resolve
the refugee situation. As direct talks between Nepal and Bhutan
have lead to no workable solutions, there is a small degree
of hope that involving the international community will lead
to some solution for the refugees. There were meetings at
the UN in Geneva last month that involved T. N. Rizai, the
main figurehead for the refugees as well as Ratan Gazmere
who represents the refugee organization AHURA Bhutan. They
are now actively trying to set up an international conference
to address the refugee situation.
Although legally the Bhutanese refugees do not have the right
to work in Nepal, or to travel away from the camps for more
than one week, we were told that an increasing percentage
have informally left the camps to find work in other parts
of Nepal. Still the great majority remain in the camps.
Our Activities
The group rendezvous was Kathmandu, at the traveler hotel
the Milllennium hotel, an adequate bare bones hotel in the
Thamel district of Kathmandu. A nighttime walk to Durbar square
brought us all under the same sliver of moonlight, and the
presence of multitudes of shrines and temples reminded us
of the ancient magic of Nepal. Early the next morning we were
in route to the airport to fly to Biratnagar where the UNHCR
were to meet us for a two hour drive to Damak. Seven years
ago we rented a bus, and took an 18 hour drive to Damak however
because of the Maoist insurgency, it was highly recommended
that we fly. Our headquarters became the Shashi guest house,
a short block from the UNHCR compound. Damak is a town of
100 000 people, with main streets of silty dirt, lots of bicycles
and rickshaws, a few motorcycles and virtually no private
cars. We thoroughly enjoyed the lack of motor sounds and the
quiet of early mornings and evenings.
Five of our show days in Jhapa/Morang districts were coordinated
by the UNHCR where we performed in all seven camps and a local
school in Damak. The sixth day was coordinated by a local
NGO ‘Help Nepal’ in the neighboring town of Ularbari,
with a show in the village of Tarabari. The UNHCR did a great
job of ferrying us around in a Toyota mini-van, with a pick-up
hauling our show material always right behind us. We traveled
in convoys. We were surprised by the number of army checkpoints
on the road, where we zigzagged around barricades and were
usually waived through the checkpoints by the unified command
of local police and army personnel. The Maoists were active
in the region, and activity has stepped up in the past year.
Maoists were also reported to be in the camps, or passing
through the camps. Following an incident last year, local
police no longer were stationed in the camps, but only went
in when called upon.
The shows were well received although the audiences were a
little less big than last time. We were told that this was
because of the two week Daishin holiday. We were also told
that this was the only gathering that the refugees would come
to voluntarily, and for other gatherings, they had to be promised
payment (in food rations) or they would not show up. We also
noted a definite increased aggressiveness amongst younger
folks, increased tensions. Our shows were very well received
although they did not laugh or smile quite as easily as last
time we visited. Who could blame them? Of course kids will
be kids, thankfully, and they greeted us with smiles and never
ending curiosity. We could be viewed as tourists in their
camps, but actually it was us who were being toured by them.
One great surprise were a group of self taught Bhutanese acrobats
who came up to us after our first show at Beldangi 1, asking
if they could perform with us the next day when we played
their camp, Beldangi 2. Two of them performed with us, Binod
and Kamal, doing quite an array of acrobatic moves and flips.
They asked us if they could perform with us in the rest of
the camps and we were quite happy to bring them along. We
inquired whether they were teaching children in the camps,
and they told us that they needed mats in order to do this.
Hopefully by now, mats (with our $200 donation) have been
made using yoga matt like foam and cotton so that they might
start teaching children through the children’s forum.
We also donated a bag of clown noses to be used in the children’s
forums-they have an active program using theater to play out
problems they are facing.
Our return to the big city of Kathmandu was a bit of a culture
shock though we adapted quite easily. Our shows there were
in NGOs that work with children. Maiti Nepal works with returned
prostitutes and sex slaves, Nepalese women who come back from
India with AIDS, or pregnant. The organization also works
to prevent abductions of young women bringing those at risk
to stay at Maiti Nepal. When we visited Maiti in 1997 it was
housed in a small run down facility, but now it is an expansive
group of buildings, with a school for the kids, a health clinic,
dormitories and other facilities as well as a well tended
garden courtyard, and a basketball court outside the school,
where we performed for 200 kids and 90 mothers and women.
We performed at the Queen’s orphanage, Balmadir, and
a grouping of children’s’ refuges, Sharad &
Siphal, where the local school gleefully attended as well.
Our visit to the children’s hospital was well received.
We played a small show in the Oncology/Cardiology ward where
the head doctor believed in the healing power of music, and
was happy to receive a clown nose. A liter of bubble solution
purchased in Germany was left behind with him. We also visited
two other wards in the hospital, splitting into small groups
and doing a bit of clown doctoring for very receptive patients.
The conditions of the hospital were that of a very poor country,
not even sheets on the beds.
Our last show was at the Tibetan Reception Center, where Tibetan
refugees that treck over the Himalayas into Nepal land. They
are allowed to stay in the country two weeks before moving
on to India, or places further on. We were very warmly received
by the refugees, and we may well have been their first ‘Western’
experience. We were greeted with spontaneous laughter as we
drove into the courtyard of the compound and with much explosive
laughter during the show. The refugees stay in that facility
during their Nepalese stay.
That last show was in the morning, and that afternoon, the
Spanish were off to the airport. I had to wait two days more
for my plane which only flew twice a week. During that time,
I was lucky to come upon a foam store in a market street of
Kathmandu that sold foam which could be converted into acrobatic
mats. Then searching for a way to buy the foam ( took a week
to order it), I happened upon Dipika-one of the UNHCR staff
from Damak who works in the camps-I heard my name being called
as I walked into a music store in Thamel. I was able to charge
her with the foam matt mission, and supply her with $200 of
Clowns Without Borders money. Hopefully that will result in
some budding acrobats.
It is our intention to send several acrobats to Damak, if
possible this winter, to work with Binod, Kamal and their
group, to further their training, and to help set up a program
for the kids.
Click here for more
photos from the trip
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