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Clowns Without Borders

Guatemala Journal, January 2006

February 4, 2006 Report by David Lichtenstein

Clowns Without Borders USA is fresh back from a trip to Guatemala. This trip was launched with the idea of bringing smiles to children and adults in the communities most affected by torrential rains and mudslides caused by Hurricane Stan in October 2005. Clowns Without Borders is an International organization that brings laughter and relief to people affected by war and disaster all over the globe.

Clowns Without Borders website

Over 1,000 people were killed in Guatemala, mostly by tremendous mudslides that drowned houses and whole villages. Rebuilding and replanting are still very much in progress in these poor indigenous villages and many people are still on emergency food aid and in temporary housing.

We performed in Guatemala everyday from January 6 through January 18, 18 shows in 13 days, entertaining over 6,000 people in extremely poor communities. We had a schedule targeting the communities most affected by the hurricane, many of which are very difficult to reach.

Three clowns make up the team, David Lichtenstein, an experienced CWB performer from Portland, Oregon, and two performers new to CWB, Sayda Trujillo and Shea Freedom Howler. Sayda is a Guatemalan-American; we used her Grandmother«s house in the country, where Sayda went to grade school, as

a place to rehearse our show for two days. Shea had never been out of the USA before.

Our first show was in the TÕjutjil speaking aldea of Panabaj, in Santiago de Atitlan. There, on October 5, 2005 at 4:00 in the morning, a giant mudslide originating thousands of feet higher on the Volcano Atitlan buried much of the village, killing 80 people, most of whom are still buried under the mudflow.

The mudslide snakes down 10,000 foot tall Volcano Atitlan

Hospitalito Atitl‡n after the mudslide

Crowded temporary housing has been set up on top of the mudflow.

We performed on top of the mudflow that had buried 80 people, at the top edge of the refugee housing. There were over 300 children, plus many parents.

The show was made difficult by strong gusting winds that swirled the volcanic ash of the flow all over us, up our noses and throats and in our eyes. The children were rather rather wild. Although they loved the show, many threw rocks at us throughout the show.

Others grabbed at our props and we had to stop the show to move the crowd farther back. One woman told us that it was the first time she had seen the children laughing like that for months. It was an extraordinary experience.

We were also able to visit (and bring supplies for) a farm run cooperatively by 70 families of the village. Several villagers are graduates of the animal husbandry school run by CAPAZ. Their entire animal raising operation and coffee processing area were buried in 5 feet of volcanic mud, killing all animals and losing much of their crops. They have already heroically dug all the most essential parts of the farm out from under more than mudflow by hand, and Pieter has found donations to replace some of their animals. Unfortunately it is not possible to grow anything in the volcanic sand and ash of the flow.

Dying crops buried in 5 feet of volcanic mudflow

This coffee drying area has been dug out from 5 feet of mud.

January 8th and 9th Clowns Without Borders visited two isolated and very poor coffee fincas. Lots of hours bouncing around in the back of a jeep.

January 8th we went to Finca La Candelaria above the pueblo of Pochuta. We were down in the hot lowlands at the beginning at the hills. About 250 people packed around a concrete slab. They laughed like hyenas and we played for almost two hours, which made us quite proud since we put this show together in a few days after not even knowing each other beforehand. The people were as friendly as could be and some of the child volunteers were true clowns.

January 9th we repeated this experience at La Florida Finca near the town of La Columba in a fold of incredibly steep hills covered with coffee plantations and scrub jungle. About 200 people laughing themselves silly at this show.

Both of these fincas are large coffee plantations that originally belonged to single owners. When the owners abandoned them as unprofitable the workers, about 100 dirt-poor indigenous families at each one, claimed and squatted the land.

After some years of negotiation with banks they now own the land and work it cooperatively. But they have to pay the banks off.

At La Candeleria all the money from each years coffee crop is dedicated to paying off the land, which they think they can do in 7 years. Thus, besides working their own land all the families need to go work at nearby plantations to earn money to live on. Unfortunately, they lost much of this year«s crop to the hurricane«s mud flood.

(I died every show. Death of a Clown.)

At La Florida, the crowd was smaller because, the day of the show, most of the men trucked off to a town to support other poor workers, who apparently were threatened with getting their homes repossessed because of debt. Their coffee hillsides are badly grown over and decimated. For their first year of squatting they had almost no housing at all and still they are very crowded. In the old house that belonged to the original German owners, 12 families are packed in. They have a lumber saw and a corn grinder powered by a water mill.

The steep hills we drive through are sprinkled with hundreds of landslide scratches of exposed dirt, many of them thousands of feet long. There are many washouts in the road, most of them reasonably repaired three months after the hurricane.

We have been trying to do a show in the Central Park of our host city of Quetzaltenango. On January 6th we had started a show on the central square but the police came to stop us. The crowd booed and heckled the police but we calmed them down and moved, as instructed by the police, to a filthy stage near the market. We had a wonderful show there for about 250 people, mostly poor market children plus some families and a sprinkling of tourists.

We knew we could get a huge crowd in the Central Park so on January 10th we petitioned City Hall, got a letter typed up explaining Clowns Without Borders, signed by three officials and still were refused in the end. The Chief of Police felt that we had been upsetting his authority in our first show in some way and swore at us rudely. The mayor, the only person who could overrule him, never showed up. So instead we went to Park Benito Juarez to play. We had a fantastic show there for about 500 people including perhaps 100 homeless street children and shoeshine boys.

(Pieter caught a street boy sniffing glue in the audience of our show at the Xela Mercado)

On January 11, with the support of the San Juan Ostancalco office of woman, children and human rights, we performed for two schools in a very poor hillside barrio of that town. At the first school, Communtaria Los Lopez, we had 450 kids and 50 adults absolutely in stitches. At the Escuela Communitaria Los Romero, we had to walk in a few hundred meters because of a bridge that been washed out by the hurricane. There we played for about 300 children and 20 adults with great success.

On the walk back to the truck I talked to a man living nearby. He had spent two years working in Michigan (although he didn«t speak any English) and had earned money to construct a two story concrete house and buy a pickup truck in his hometown. In many towns like this all over Guatemala all the newer multi-room concrete houses are built with money from immigrant labor in the United States. Current debate in the U.S. congress about the new immigration law and the attempts of Mexico and Central America to influence it are headline news here. Most rural Guatamalans live in one room concrete blocks or shacks.

On January 12, Shea headed back to the United States to get ready for school, and Sayda and I headed for three distant communities surrounded by the 4,000-meter volcanoes of Tajamulco and Tacana.

Tajamulco Volcano, over 14,000 feet tall

I had been struck by stomach sickness the night before and the trip was not easy. After a few hours of twisting, but reasonable mountain roads we passed the Tajamulco Volcano and turned off on to a smaller road.

It was not a bad road, it was a miraculous road. It was a miracle that somehow the road kept finding a narrow path to twist down this knife edged ridge and worm its way through landslide after landslide. Once we had to stop for a grader that was making a way for the road through a landslide.

When we asked how long the wait would be they said Òun ratitoÓ, -just a moment- and we laughed.

Spectacular views. We were well past where the ubiquitous buses and soft drink trucks could reach and yet still the road was lined with villages, sometimes with one room concrete houses posed on promontories between the road and precipitous drops. Marco and the Toyota Land Cruiser provide by Manos Campesinas perform like heroes. Shortly before the previous end of the road, a landslide has taken out three whole switchbacks of the road and we had to get out and walk.

Crossing another landslide.

It was about and one and half hour hike steeply downhill to our first destination of Carrizal. It was some of the biggest, steepest mountains and canyons I have ever hiked in. My previous experience told me this should be wilderness and yet we were hiking through a steep patchwork of coffee and corn patches, many wiped out by landslides.

La Unidad, tomorrow morningÕs show is down below on the river.

On the way down, we ran into one of our guideÕs sons coming up with a mule, both mule and boy well laden with crops. Everyday the boy leaves the village at 3:00 to do a 7-hour portage trip, crops go up, and store-bought goods come down. Today he was doing a double, which is why he was still going up at noon. He was 16 years old but looked 12.

In the village we were given a rich soup of chicken and jungle vegetables. I was exhausted and hadnÕt eaten since yesterday because of my stomach sickness. I took my chances and ate it and it went down well. No energy, but we start, and have a wonderful show. The audience is very shy, walk towards the audience to get a volunteer and the entire part of the crowd stands up and runs away. Somehow, like in every other show, I found a perfect child volunteer for the first long volunteer play. By the end there were 350 laughing villagers.

After the show we hiked further down to the bottom of the canyon. La Unidad is located where two rushing mountain streams join together to form the Suchiate River, which lower down forms the border between Guatemala and Mexico. The riverbed is filled with giant boulders, many larger then houses. There used to be high suspension foot bridges over each stream but the hurricane rains washed one away; several houses were, too.

House sized boulders on the Suchiate river and the foundations for the destroyed bridge on the lower left.

We are again fed delicious chicken soup and nearly clear coffee served in used soda bottles that we avoided as a bad water risk. We eat by the light of a single candle, hours of walk away from the nearest electricity. We spend the night in the church back room, sleeping on pews. On the blackboard is a list of food aid and thanks to the agencies that provide it. We go to sleep at 7:00 in the evening and wake up at 6:00 in the morning.

We have another wonderful show, although the villagers are so shy that we spend many minutes of the show begging for volunteers. The crowd builds slowly up to 300 as the people trickle in from various parts of the canyon. Then itÕs time for the hike out. As usual, the villagers carrying our bags race ahead while we plod up the vertical path.

This man is carrying my baggage for me. Below at his right elbow is the village of La Unidad where we did this morningÕs show.

Three hours of hiking and three hours of driving back to the main road, over a 3000 meter pass and more bad road to the end of the main road and the village of Tacana.

There an outlying community called Cua had been hit by a mudslide that killed 47 people. Close to the mudslide, the community is holding a town meeting.

The landslide and village of Cua

We had been unable to contact this community so we pull a few town leaders aside to explain Payasos Sin Fronteras and propose a show for the next morning. They quickly agree and even offer us hotel lodging in Tacana.

The hotel is fine except that there is no water or electricity in our room. The next morning we have another excellent show for about 400 laughing townspeople. Right next to our show workers are busy building a new community center and we have fun improvising with the workers. After the show we find out that just before the show, two childrenÕs bodies had been pulled out of the mudflow and reburied.

As we are leaving they hook up the loudspeaker, point it up the hill and start asking the community to bring buckets and pitchers of water. They are out of water and the workers canÕt pour any more concrete until community members bring water. Indigenous villages seem to be naturally communitarian. These people are Mam speakers. There are 22 different Indian languages spoken in Guatemala.

Cua

Walking back to town we meet an American Peace Corp worker. He is the lone gringo in this townand he is trying to teach local communities about forestry and replanting, which is badly needed. The centuries-old pattern of Indigenous people being pushed higher and higher into the mountains to find subsistence corn plots, called milpa, is still going on. The people cut down the trees for firewood and the milpa, aggravating the landslide problem when the rains hit. Guatemala is headed the direction of Haiti where the entire island was deforested decades ago, changing climate patterns.

The bus we get onto to head back becomes the most crowded chicken bus in the world. I have a large woman with a turkey in her arms sitting mostly on top of me and unbelievably the driver keeps stopping to take on more people. At its most stuffed, the bus breaks down, and people mock the driver. After a while they fix it, 15 men get out to push start the bus and we move on. The second bus we get on breaks down, and this time they donÕt fix it, leaving us on the side of the road, hitchhiking in competition with 60 other passengers as night falls. We pile into the back of pickup truck with several others and receive a freezing ride over a mountain pass to the comforts of PieterÕs house in Xela.

Hitchhiking from the broken down bus as night falls.

January 15 -18 we did several school and community shows in the poor towns of San Juan Ostuncalco, Concepcion, and two poor distant barrios of Quetzaltenango.

January 17 is particularly enjoyable in that we do three schools in Concepcion in a very well organized tour put together by Victorina Lopez, who works for the city of Concepcion. The first school is newly constructed and requires a short walk-in because of a washed out bridge. The next two schools provide us with large happy crowds.

We are accompanied by a Harvard researcher whose name I have forgotten. He and others have been studying the health effects of indoor air pollution. They have found that indoor wood fire smoke doubles the incidence of respiratory diseases and pneumonia is the number one killer of children in Guatemala. They are studying to see how much the rate of respiratory and cardiac disease can be reduced my providing more efficient wood stoves that smoke much less.

Victorina says the current population of Concepcion is 15,000 and there are 6,000 people from Concepcion in the United States. This town is an extreme, but nationwide, the money remitted from Guatemalan workers in the United States is bigger then that brought in my GuatemalaÕs biggest exports (coffee, sugar, and bananas) and easily dwarfs all foreign aid.

David, Victorina Lopez, Sayda, and the principal of Escuela Telena-Tzicol

On the last day, January 18 we visit Pacaja Alto School in one of the poorest barrios of Xela, tucked under the Santa Maria volcano. We are brought there by CEIPA, an organization that serves worker children, young children who work as market sellers, shoeshine boys, etc. They find ways for the children to attend some kind of school or training while keeping the jobs they need to survive. Many have been placed in the Pacaja Alto School.

We have our 18^th and last successful show on a grassy mound in the sun and wind at 7,600 feet of altitude, below the Santa Maria volcano. We had made more than 6,000 people in many distant communities laugh. No child without a smile!

Escuela Pacaja Alto

and the Òschool yardÓ in front

List of Shows:

January 6 Panabaj, Santiago de Atitlan 350 people

January 7 Quezaltenango Mercado 250

January 8 Finca La Candelaria, cerca de La Pochuta 250

January 9 Finca La Florida, cerca de La Columba 200

January 10 Parque Benito Juarez , Quetzaltenango 500

January 11 Barrio La Victoria, San Juan Ostuncalco

Escuela Los Lopez 500

Escuela Los Romero 320

January 12 Carrizal, Tajamulco, San Marco 350

January 13 La Unidad, Tajamulco, San Marco 300

January 14 Cua, Tacana, San Marcos 400

January 15 Llanos del Pinal, Quetzaltenango 200

January 16 San Juan Ostuncalco

Escuela La Union Los Mendoza 400

Escuela Agua Tibia 350

Escuela Los Escobares 200

Jan 17 Concepcion, Chiquirichapa

Escuela Caseria Tojcoral 145

Escuela Telena - Tzicol 550

Escuela Barrio San Marcos 400

Jan 18 Pacaja Alto, Quetzaltenango 475

18 Show in 13 days and over 6000 laughing people!

Friends and aiding organizations

Our principle local organizer was Pieter Van Nestelrooy who runs CAPAZ, an organization that teaches commercial animal husbandry and supports

establishment of cooperative farms in indigenous communities, including the cooperative farm at Panabaj. Pieter organized the tour by contacting all the organizations and communities and generously put up the Payasos in his Quetzaltenango apartment.

Pieter in his native habitat

We are also supported by Manos Campesinos, who organize small coffee farmers to get fairer prices for their coffee. Evelyn Rodas organized 5 of our shows and Marco did the tough driving out to Tajamulco and Tacana.

Find out more about them at
http://www.manoscampesinas.org

Kevin Romero of the Alcalde of San Juan Ostuncalco brought us to 5 schools in poor upper Caserias of that town.

Victorina Lopez of the Alcalde of Concepcion brought us to three wonderful schools.

Proyecto Payasos is a Gautemalan organization that does AIDS education through the medium of clown shows and workshops. GuatamalaÕs poverty, poor education, and language/ethnic isolation puts it as risk of an potential explosion in AIDS/HIV infection. Proyecto Payasos does amazing work the fun way. This large collective has done itÕs work in 12 of GuatemalaÕs 22 indigenous languages. Thanks to Stephan. http://www.proyectopayaso.org

Rolando Morales, Margarita Tay, and Esther Lux do wonderful work with CEIPA and organized our final show.

Our friends, Elena and Marjolaine, befriended us, drank with us, and drove us to the first show at Panabaj. They work with Chilam-Balam, an organization that works with Mayan artisans to create a unified catalogue of artistic textile products to sell in Europe and the USA with the idea of maintaining fair living wages for the artists, loom artisans, and dyers. http://www.chilam-balam.org

I met two volunteers who worked with an Guatemalan organization called Maya Pedal that builds and distributes low-tech bicycled powered machines for grinding corn, pumping water, fabricating ceramic roofing tiles and other purposes.

I met and juggled with an enthusiastic group of young jugglers in Guatemala City, including Seidy and Selvyn. Some of them work with a physical theater group in Guate called Caja Ludica .

I met Andy, volunteer director for Ak Tenamit , an organization that works with fighting poverty and educating youth on the beautiful jungle river, Rio Tatin, a tributary of the Rio Dulce. They lost their volunteer that teaches circus and stilts to the kids, an opportunity for one of you circus folks out there. However they are only interested in serious people-- which means work very well with youth, speak Spanish, minimum 6 month commitment.

I met a taxi driver who worked with an evangelical group that works with children of basureros at the Guatemalan city dump called the Potters House Association . Basureros are people that work in, and usually live next to, large city dumps; adults and children eke out a living by collecting recyclable materials. (A world wide phenomena)

I am fascinated by different ways that organizations try to help people stuck in poverty in developing countries and would like to try doing it full time myself someday.

Louie's CWB center

Clowns Without Borders website