Like many people, the movie Patch Adams touched me and influenced my vision of how I wanted to practice medicine, as I had one year of nursing school under my belt when I saw it. Some years passed and one of my good friends told me I should go on a trip with Patch. I didn’t even know that you could go on a trip with Patch! So in short, I wrote to Patch, he answered, we spoke on the phone and I ended up with him in Guatemala and 18 other people. I had never clowned before!
What a welcome! When we got to the airport in Guatemala city, I remember Andy Huggins telling me that he felt like a Beatle! "Fabricas de los Sonrisas" (Makers of Smiles) is a volunteer organization from Guatemala in which its members clown in hospitals, old age homes and special needs facilities. A whole bunch of them were there at the airport to greet us and WOW! They could not have done a better job!
We spent the better part of the week clowning together in various health facilities and became very close with the fabricas group. Maria Olga Hurtado, the main organizer of this event, was so emotional and visibly happy about our being there. It was touching to see. Actually, if there was one word that could best describe the week we were there, it would be the word "touch". Being touched and touching others through our actions in service as clowns. Many things touched me!
I remember being in a room with three children in a hospital for sick kids. In the room were two boys (8 yrs old?) playing with a balloon between themselves. At the far end of the room was a little girl (4yrs old?) who was obviously very sick and probably dying. She was very weak and not moving much but her eyes were open. My attempts at first to get a reaction from her did not work. There was, I felt, a heavy atmosphere in the room. The boys were hitting the balloon between them, but it was as if they were not acknowledging the presence of the little girl. It was as if they knew she was dying and were scared, so they chose to ignore her out of fear.
I began hitting the balloon with the boys, but would also hit it towards the little girl and hit it back to the boys for her. The boys suddenly started hitting the balloon towards her with force and finally she cracked a smile and hit the ballon back in the direction of the boys! This happened twice within a 20 minute span. "Oh my God!" I thought to myself. What effort it took for her to do that! Despite her extremly weakened state, that will to live, be it ever so slight, was brought on by the boys interacting with her through that balloon!
As I was leaving the hospital, I was accosted by the little girls’ father. I spoke no Spanish, he spoke no english. We were looking at each other when I broke out into an improvised version of "patty cake" and he followed suit. We smiled as we clapped our hands on our laps and each others hands and ended it with a "high ten". Contact! Not one word was spoken but communication flowed … He was thankful and I was happy to have been able to have a positive impact.
I have so many more of these stories which all involve caring and contact.This is basically what Gesundheit! represents for me. Creativity, caring and contact as a basis for building a healing relationship in a communal setting. The Gesundheit! experience provided a supportive, caring community in which opportunities were plentiful for us as clowns to put a serious dent in some of our fellow human beings day to day sufferings due to illness. I remember thinking to myself prior to leaving for our trip that I was running away to join the circus! Well, actually it was that, but also much more! As a health care professional and as a person, it brought me back to and reinforced the importance of caring as an essential ingredient in any healing process.
A Guatemalan asked me at one point how I thought the Guatemalan health system was compared to the Canadian health system. Yes, how much medical equipement or machinery you have access to is a factor, but the most important ingredient is having caring individuals that dispense the health care. This can be found in all countries,but all too often it is stifled by systems that put profit and politics before its citizens' well-being.
The Gesundheit! Global Outreach experience was also for me a real treat in being with a whole bunch of dreamers in the same place at the same time! And as we know, dreams are almost always catalysts for action …
Guatemala has the largest garbage dump of any Central American country (in Guatemala City). It has had methane explosions there in its recent history due to the build-up of this gas through the rotting of garbage. There are poverty-stricken families, people that live here permanently who wait for the garbage trucks to come and discharge their loads. The people then sift through the garbage to take what is of use to them. Well, in the middle of this quagmire of garbage lies an oasis called "Safe Passages". It's a school and daycare center that was built some time ago by people who thought that children had a right to an education. They pay families to let their children go to school (families get money for some of the articles that children pick out of the garbage). The point being that people cared enough to dream up this idea and it translated into a haven of hope for children and their families. We had the chance to clown there and they were very happy to see us!
We need people like this. We need organizations such as Gesundheit! They serve as reminders (and energizers) of how caring for each other as human beings is at the center of positive change, whether it be in a health care setting or not. Gesundheit also represents for me the better side of human nature, It is a call to make the effort of acting as socially and politically responsible people where the measure and impact of our decisions on our surroundings is taken into account, especially with regard to health care. It is reducing the health care relationship to its simplest, yet most effective form with emphasis on caring, trust, laughter, creativity and compassion. I really think that "a clown a day" could very well "keep the doctor away"…
I will always cherish the relationships and bonds I formed on my "Squat in Guat." I was fortunate enough to have bunked over in Guatemala with a bunch of very lovable clowns and was privileged to have crossed paths with the Fabricas de los Sonrisas gang. Besos and abrazos to all!
Clownistically yours,
Steve Hanlin
Montreal, CANADA