Clowns in Cambodia: October 2005

by Kathy Blomquist

Clown One Italia brought 16 clowns from around the world to Cambodia for 3 weeks in October 2005. Two organizers from Italy, Ginevra Sanguigno and Italo Bertolasi spent over a year designing, fundraising, organizing and activating their vision/version of making love visible.

Tricksters were gathered from five different countries—Italy, USA, Japan, Argentina, and Holland—all resting on the relationships that had largely been nurtured with Ginevra in previous clown trips. I was one of those nurtured and inspired by Ginevra to join the clown troupe. Out of gratitude and personal challenge, I want to write about what happened and its significance—not just to me, to our group, or to the Cambodians—but to articulate the meaning of making love visible as a significant alternative in all our lives, in every form, by looking at what a clown can do.

The itinerary was dazzling. We brought our merry madness to hospitals, clinics, villages, markets, schools, and the Phnom Penh city dump. We made a week’s worth of workshops for Cambodians working in humanitarian organizations, with 30 people in consistent attendance at each one. Out of this grew the coordination of a troupe of clowns from the Khmer Arts Association who have continued regular trips to the children's hospital.

We put ourselves face to face with the recent history of genocide entering Toul Sleng prison where civilians were sent for torture and interrogation. We walked the mounds of a killing field where we touched human skulls in a memorial tower and found parts of teeth under trees where children’s heads had been smashed. We played with the children who now use these mounds as a playground and sang the alphabet song using an instrument made from an empty soda can filled with rocks. We traveled monsoon-flooded roads in the backs of trucks to inaugurate a new school built, in part, with Clown One Italia donations. We did this all to make love visible.

The context for our clown community was Cambodia because of relationships developed 2 years ago on a clown trip coordinated by Patch Adams and the Gesundheit! Institute and which was funded by Angelina Jolie, the United Nation's Ambassador of Good Will. Italian TV granted this 2005 trip on the strength of Ginevra's proposal.

Let's take a moment to acknowledge such generosity of resources toward the ephemeral service of a clown. In our present economic model—when money determines values, decisions are based on 'net worth' and actions are carefully calculated—an investment into clown missions appears foolish, trivial, temporary. One might argue that sending food, medicine or money better addresses the needs of the poor. In the face of suffering, what long-term difference does a clown make?

Our last day of clowning was to the Phnom Penh city dump. Surrounding the massive mounds and alleys of carefully separated trash lives a large neighborhood of people who feed off the city's waste. Children had been kept from going to school in order to be employed as pickers/sorters, so a French organization decided to bring the school to them.

Our 2003 clown trip brought us to this school. Mayhem might describe the scene as we escalated an energy that grew frenetic among the children. So in 2005 when Ginevra announced our final gig would be to return to the city dump, I cringed. What sort of madness would we unleash? But my dear clown mates and lime-green costumes have taken me into scary situations before, so I trusted our intuitions.

Instead of the schoolyard, we tumbled right into a neighborhood. Traveling in touk-touks through slippery mud and water, winding around pot holes and monster dump trucks, we announced ourselves to the adults who were at work inside sheds—a wave and smile met with bigger waves and bigger smiles, laughs, and roars. On foot we were led by children determined to help us cross very large puddles of water using small Styrofoam 'stones.' I succumb to soaked feet with a neon green skirt, striped arm socks, and lime hair.

Our routine is familiar and comforts us as we parade; lilting folk songs from a concertina, exhaling into balloons, looking about for gigglers, finding hands tucked into ours, arms linked, processing toward the ever unknown together. Human companionship bursts the strange, unfamiliar sights and smells of this neighborhood in the dump. These children eagerly expect us to come closer to their reality—even closer, come close, right into the avenue of adults and babies watching our puddle parade.

Our routine improvises according to what we discover. Sometimes we're pulled right into Grandma's living room or included in a game of tag. Often we dance with the music and grab handfuls of kids to join a roving party through the alley. Many find the quiet intense attention of one person who wants a long look at the costume, the hat, the tambourine, the face of the alien clown. For some, this one-to-one, eye-to-eye becomes the heart-to-heart of an entire visit. We jump into laps, into beds, into the streets to meet people on their terms and to get as close to them as trust allows. In other venues we rock kids who are HIV positive; roll on the floor with ones who can’t walk; serenade the tipsy old lady with chew; blow bubbles, give lipstick kisses, hold hands with a scared mother watching her son die of AIDS.

This day, our last day, we exchange songs at the top of our lungs. I sing my last rendition of the 'Hokey Pokey.' They sing their favorite children's song 'Arapi Ya Ya Ya.' We've cavorted over an hour, sending vibrations into the crevices of their reality and we don't really want to leave. And now we must leave. It is departure's part of the parade and I have no idea what I'm about to experience.

As it happens, we have 7 times the children helping us back to our touk-touks. We are tired; physically exhausted and waving through the plastic rear window as we drive away. Tumbling along the puddle mud mix are a handful of laughing kids giving us their neighborhood farewell. The older boys are slapping the sides of our windows with thumbs up.

One young girl around 4 or 5 years old with ashen brown hair from malnutrition has kept up with these chaps to my shock and concern. She's catching glances at our waves and kisses and it fuels her. I can tell by her focused face that she is in full concentration and there it is—she is gleefully giggling between the effort put into little legs that keep up her balance and her speed. It's the kind of non-stop giggle that happens when you are totally surprised by yourself. Remember those? When was the last time your body let off the stream of a spontaneous tickling giggle? Was it at the playground? In the kitchen? On a bus? Watching your child? Your friend? Your lover? Remember that.

Suddenly she trips and, just as sudden, she finds her way up again, her giggling face erupting into an emotion I couldn't name and then my shocked face erupts into a million spontaneous tears. I'm bursting with despair and bursting for joy as I continue to keep this child in my focus till we turn the corner of our realities. Our realities? Where is reality? What is her name? Why am I American? What is she doing now? When is reality? What is her future? What is mine?

Little dump girl, you aren't supposed to look so happy! The dump neighborhood is a horrible place to grow up. Aren't you miserable or angry? I look at your living conditions, your little legs, frumpy dress, and malnourished hair for some answers to my state of guilt. My state of guilt has no place in your neighborhood! It belongs in my neighborhoods in countries whose economies call you a poor little girl, appeasing with food, medicine, or money—trivial, temporary fixes to your happiness. My way of thinking could get in the way of relating to you as a source of hope and not a vision of pity.

Does she remember me? I still do and will see her brilliance as what emanates through—despite the dismal dump, the context of her conception; as real and lasting as the joy our full sensory selves created together.

What long-term difference does a clown make in the face of suffering? Perhaps in the face of a clown with lime green pigtails, a moment of ecstasy will continue to float between Cambodia and North America and it will never be forgotten.

Perhaps the clown gets permission to get closer than most, led by children, over obstacles that becomes a game heading right into someone’s heart.

Perhaps non-sense is another instrument of compassion more able to compose human connections where there once were none.

The choice to clown this experience made it possible to make visible the invisible forces of joy, love, hope. We create these clown communities to re-distribute the abundance of these forces—which are also forms of food and medicine—worth more than gold—impossible to count, and available to all living species.

Click here [1] to read articles from the Cambodia Daily.