December 13-20, 2008, Gesundheit! clowns journeyed to Cuba, to provide humanitarian assistance to communities devastated by hurricanes, and to study the impact of collaborative play on survivors of natural disasters.
We have some experience in bringing clowns to such communities, as in Sri Lanka in 2004, where 40,000 were killed and 2.5 million displaced by a massive tsunami. And Cambodia in 2003 and 2005, where 1/3 of its population died in a horrific civil war. And in Macedonian refugee camps in 1999, where hundreds of thousands of Kosovo refugees fled to escape war. We have found that despite profound loss, survivors benefit greatly by spontaneous improvisational (or free) play, with music, dancing, games, and silliness, even without a shared verbal language.
Cuba was hit by three hurricanes in 2008, displacing 500,000 of its 12 million people, with 7 killed. Some communities were hit very hard, with few structures left standing. 85% of Cuba's rural infrastructure was destroyed,450,000 homes damaged, crops and roads were ruined, , schools destroyed, communities disrupted. The reconstruction effort was stymied by the US led economic embargo, (despite attempts by some in Congress who called for, to no avail, a temporary lifting of the embargo allowing medicines and food).
Despite the hardships, Cuba responded to the disasters with persistence and a demonstrable commitment to its people (compare Katrina in the US). Cuba is a small nation with a big cultural heritage and a strong sense of identity. Its culture is rich and diverse in music, dance, and theatre. The government, in addition to the relief workers rebuilding the damaged infrastructure, also sent artists, dancers, musicians to traumatized communities.
Our Gesundheit clowns were accompanied by members of one of Havana's performing arts groups "La Colmenita" ("The Little Beehive"), comprised of children age 8-15. They sing, dance, act, and perform throughout the world. We traveled together by bus, all in clown attire, with musical instruments, balloons, bubbles, and lots of laughter. Our destination, Santa Cruz del Sur on the southern coast, had been hit by a tidal surge of over 6 meters, leaving a scattering of intact homes and not much else. Most residents were forced to leave, to stay in camps or live with extended families. Now several months after the hurricane, there were many houses being patched up, new homes being built, and yet still many families living amidst rubble and in abandoned buildings. And, since all our luggage was lost en route to Cuba, we had an experience of how to get by with less, through the sharing of meager resources. We slept in large 30-person tents by the seashore. We took bucket showers in outdoor stalls with water heated on the stove. We ate simply, drank bottled water, and hugged a lot of people.
Our clowning method consists of universally recognizable play gestures- in the pandemonium of a visit to a school, chasing and being chased; in a special needs school, music, and joining hands, dancing in a circle; in a hospital, gentle bedside play with a balloon, a puppet, or bubbles; in the street, a live dance, meeting a greeting, public silliness and laughter...always laughter. We paraded with local families down the main street of Santa Cruz del Sur. We danced and played with construction workers building single-family dwellings for those who had lost homes. We immersed ourselves deeply in the community and shared in some of their daily tasks, ate side by side with local residents, and played with children in the streets and on the beach. And always in our increasingly smelly clown clothes!
Our clown musicians brought instruments and a band formed with guitar, bongos, banjo, and fiddle. La Colmenita clowns, Santa Cruz citizens, and gringo clowns collaborated in a traditional American dance, the Virginia Reel, and, as it has in the past, the dance brought smiles and created instant community. Our band played traditional Appalachian mountain music, strange in its cadences to the Cuban ear, here in the land of salsa, son, and Cuban syncopations. Yet, the interplay of African-born banjo and Celtic-based fiddle backed by guitar and driven by bongos was rhythmically satisfying and sufficient to create the call for dance.
Many times, in the streets, in the hospital, this dance brought people together in laughter and fun. Music is a universal language. It bridges cultures, societies, and nations. An "us" formed from a group of strangers, over and over affirming the deep human tendency towards harmony and collaboration. And everywhere in the clowning, shyness gave way to mutual mirth and the recognition of our kinship in play.
Our last night in Santa Cruz, a stage show by the seaside under the Caribbean stars brought the community together. People of all ages watched and listened as children and adults recited, sang, dances, and played music. Gringos and Cubans shared the stage as an Appalachian fiddle and banjo was backed by luscious Cuban rhythms. Everyone sang together as gringos and Cubans provided musical accompaniment to "Guantanamera", the Pete Seeger song based on a Jose Martí poem (Jose Martí was a Cuban poet beloved for his lyric voice, his remarkable intelligence and his dream for a free Cuba). His poem celebrates a farm girl from the Guantanamo region of Cuba.
Guantanamera
Guajira Guantanamera
Guantanamera
Guajira Guantanamera
I am a truthful man from this land of palm trees
Before dying I want to share these poems of my soul
My verses are light green
But they are also flaming red
I cultivate a rose in June and in January
For the sincere friend who gives me his hand
And for the cruel one who would tear out this
heart with which I live
I do not cultivate thistles nor nettles
I cultivate a white rose
The show closed with a gringo singing "Imagine", John Lennon's song of hope for world peace. Then the celebration began in earnest with salsa and reggaeton booming through the night as Santa Cruz young people danced their resilience and triumph over adversity; danced as if everything depended on it.
In Cuba, as in Sri Lanka we met many who had lost everything they own. We witnessed a steady slow rebuilding effort and a grim determination to overcome tremendous obstacles. Yet we also witnessed, over and over, the remarkable transformation in virtually every person we met.
Fun, play, music, and dance draws people together. It kindles the cooperative spirit of a community. As Dr.Thomas Syndenham said in the 17th century "The arrival of a good clown exercises a more beneficial influence upon the health of a town than of twenty asses laden with drugs.."There is a spirit in a community that feeds individual behaviors, attitudes, feelings , and also is fed by those same individual forces. This collective spirit can give rise to conflict or cooperation, greed or sharing, seriousness or fun, hatred or love, despair or hope, exploitation or care, revenge or reconciliation. The spirit of community is easily hurt by violence, by trauma, fear, war, famine, disease, and economic or political injustice. Yet an injured spirit can heal ,and communities heal if conditions met for healing to occur. We have learned of the necessity of creating loving caring atmospheres for this kind of healing to occur, and the music and clowning are tools which seem to “work” best when the spirit of the moment is happy, fun, playful, collaborative and accessible to all.
In essence , every moment is a health care moment. Any event, be it weather, or a chance interaction with a friend or a stranger, a sermon in a church or a rant on radio, every moment we are in this world, the manner in which we interact with this world around us has significance to our immune systems, our stress mechanisms, our moods and feelings, and our bodies. Any sense of alienation, or distress, or fear, or helplessness, in some way, has an impact on our health. Likewise, companionship, fun, play, joy, love is medicine, both to giver and receiver.
Gesundheit! plans to use the observations we have made in Cuba to better define this process. We left many new friends in this small and damaged community, but as we departed, we hugged, kissed, wept, laughed together. One hug, one person, one smile at a time, we heal. We heal others in their pain and suffering. We heal ourselves, in our estrangement from each other. Together we build the world we desire.