Residencial Santa Cruz. A home in Cordoba for girls with special needs.

The patio and one of the girls´rooms.

While in Cordoba, we visited a home for girls with special needs in the Alta Cordoba neighborhood. We were inspired by the playfulness and enthusiasm shown by these teenagers. All of the girls currently living in the house are between 11 and 17 and were welcoming of the two funny dressed ex-pats that showed up to surprise them. I can´t call it an orphanage exactly, because many of the girls living in the home have relatives that, for one reason or another, don´t visit often. In many cases the family doesn´t have the capacity or means to care for a daughter with different abilities, though in some cases girls are moved out of their homes by the local municipality due to unsafe circumstances.

The ladies of Residencial Santa Cruz and the clowns.

Our show is juggling and physical theatre based, which means that it was written to appeal to all ages. Even so we usually cater mostly to younger children or mixed age groups. Very rarely do we perform for an adolescent/teen only group, which means that these girls had an important lesson to teach us. Have you ever thought about going to volunteer (at home or abroad)? What age group or population is it your initial impulse to work with? I find that for most people, myself included, the first thing we search for are children´s orphanages. Why? Because they are playful, living through hard circumstances, easy to connect with, and deserve a lot of love. Exactly what we found when visiting these young ladies.

After we finished our show and juggling workshop, the ladies invited us to take and seat and be their audience. As it turns out, all of the girls are involved in local art workshops and enjoy performing. On Saturday afternoons at the home, they learn folkloric dances to be performed around town at local schools and community events. Of course, just as we do, they decided to end with a workshop in which both Tyler and I danced the traditional partner dance, Chacarera.


 Last week I wrote about our scavenger hunt to find a place to perform for local children in Cordoba, Argentina. Revisit that story here. That hunt led us directly to Residencial Santa Cruz. When asked about donations, the caretakers enthusiastically explained that they are happy to take donations of any kind- including second hand clothes for the girls. They are also excited about the possibility of workshops and activities the girls can participate in. The grounds are spartan and the building is a bit ashamble, because the funding that comes from the government does not seem to be quite enough. I imagine someone interested in helping them set up a garden project would serve them well.

If you are interested in volunteering with these wonderful ladies, you can contact them by telephone at (011.54) 351.434.6072.

As fate would have it, one disappointment led to something incredible

Making a wrong turn on our way to the Wisma Anak Anak Harapan orphanage that I wrote about in my last post, we quite accidentally found Panti Asuhan Benih Harapan or Seeds of Hope Children's Home. Five minutes over and two streets away from one huge disappointment we found a place that really does go above and beyond to create a home experience that is balanced, loving, and supportive-- and bursting at the seams with children.

We showed up on our motorbike, dressed to perform, pointing at a map while asking (in pidgin Indonesian) if we were at the right place. We were not. We were, however, immediately surrounded by children who very much wanted to see what the Mustached Clown could do. He has that effect on people, especially kids. The matron of the home, Sandra - a woman we would come to know and admire- informed us that although they would be delighted to have us come back and perform the following day, the dozen shy faces peeking at us from inside the beaten up minibus had been promised a trip to the beach.

Just a few of the many friendly faces that greeted us when we arrived

We left reluctantly with plans to return the following day. Now, there were a few dramatic things that happened between the day we left Panti Asuhan Benih Harapan and the day we finally returned, but I'll spare you the details... suffice it to say I have some great scars to forever remind me of the day I flipped a motorbike into an Indonesian sewage ditch. We did finally make it back about three days later and spent the afternoon with one of the most humbly profound people I'll ever meet. Sandra told us stories that all at once provoked laughter, tears, anger, compassion, and thought; these stories eventually gave us a better understanding of the Indonesian culture and the unending/self-sacrificing love of some parents. These stories will guide me through my own ventures into the nonprofit social justice world, make me a more compassionate person, and probably make me cry every time I recall them.

We did perform a modified audience participatory clown show for the children, bandaged hands and all. Notice I am only hiding in the back of pictures from that day -- you're welcome. ;-) Kids danced with us, performed feats of strength and acrobatic challenge, and, of course, juggled with us. The shakey, shakey routine was a favorite all across the island of Bali.

My, what long arms you have. Is that a clown hiding behind you?

You'll notice I don't mention her husband much, but this is only because he didn't speak English. Therefore most of our communication was through Sandra. In a twist of fate, it turns out that he is the brother of the woman running the pitiful orphanage around the corner. Yes, this wonderland we had stumbled upon was opened by the brother of the "Cinderalla's Stepmother of a woman" running Wisma Anak Anak Harapan in reaction to what happened there after their parents' passing. [Refer back to my last post if you're looking for an explanation.] What we learned from all of this is that sometimes the apple does fall far from the tree. Here we are faced with two siblings running very similar children's homes in the same neighborhood-- but with a world of difference in the environment they are maintaining within them.

It was obvious to us from the website and our time there that Wisma Anak Anak Harapan is being well taken care of by a variety of church organizations from abroad. For Sandra's Panti Asuhan Benih Harapan there seemed to be support, but not nearly on the same scale. When we asked her about financial support and donations from abroad, she shared with us that there is one particular parish abroad (I believe in Europe) that collects donations enough every month to send all of her 80 children to school. Her best line "I am just a good beggar." This from a saint who has traveled, lectured, and educated for decades with the simple goal of being able to maintain a home for her adopted and extended family.

When you write it online, it never goes away...

Lesson of the Day: You can't always believe it just because it's written online. 

I remember a particularly fascinating lecture in graduate school in which a professor of mine talked about the importance of teaching students the difference between truth and dressed up fiction when introducing technology into the classroom. His lecture had to do with the fact that anyone can publish just about anything online and make it seem legit. His example was a convincing website that featured the endangered Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus.

These days with the popularity of Facebook, Yelp, and other social media, I might add to this lesson that what you post online never disappears. This came up for us in Bali when we would read about a supposedly wonderful orphanage or organization for children that just wasn't living up to its reputation. For example, an orphanage just 12 kilometers North of Kuta called Wisma Anak Anak Harapan, or Hope Children's Home. This is a place that had received rave reviews from people who had visited or volunteered and met the now deceased couple that ran the place. Just a highlight of what we read: "We felt so at home there and could feel the love surrounding them which was reflected in the happy children. The place itself is very old and rundown but exceptionally clean... we were most impressed by this place and left reluctantly after 2 hours." The problem is, well intentioned folks write rave reviews online and sometimes even create websites to inspire people to donate or visit, but then they don't ever visit again or follow up. This means that sometimes for us high expectations = a hard fall. 

From what I gather, in the mid 90's Hope Children's Home was still run by Father Reverend Daniel and his wife, whom the children called mother. They were a humble and loving, though aging couple that started an orphanage after he retired as a priest in the late 70s. At the time the children were well looked after and happy which caused them to get a lot of online attention and praise. This in turn led to a stream of donations from both churches and individuals. Somewhere between then and now they passed and the orphanage is now in the hands of their less selfless daughter Rev. Ni Nyoman Trisnawath, and you'd be hardpressed to find the carefree happy children written about online. The donations, however, don't seem to be. We saw a lot of televisions in what was the staff and Ni Nyoman Trisnawath's family quarters, a very modern bus (something no other orphanage we visited would spend so much money on), and other luxurious expenditures all framed by shabby clothed children. What was definitely worst of all was that while we did our performance for the children, most of them were secretly watching by peeking through the upstairs railings that they were supposed to be repainting. Nyoman told us that a church-group of 40 people was going to be visiting the following day and staying in the upstairs quarter (which they rented out to raise money) for a few days. This, she explained, was why most of the 100+ children present were painting, mopping, or doing other home repairs instead of watching our scheduled performance.

The hardest part of visiting an orphanage like this is convincing yourself to leave without trying to take the children home with you. For me, this was particularly hard because of a beautiful 5 year-old named Ulan. This little girl never once cracked a smile though our comedy circus show. She had just a faint hint of sparkle in the corner of each eye which turned out to be tears just waiting to spring. After we'd finished performing I found her tucked into a corner of the hallway outside her room silently crying and being largely ignored by children and adults alike. I sat with her as she cried into my shoulder until falling asleep in my arms-- and when she woke up she went right back to sobbing. All the while, my heart was breaking because I couldn't ask her to tell me what was wrong. Their website claims: "We want all of our children to receive a good education as well as a happy and safe place to grow... [while striving to ensure] all children achieve physical, emotional and spiritual growth." One can only hope that in a place that takes in and cares for orphans there would be an environment of compassion and open dialogue, but when Ulan had finally calmed down enough to get up from her corner I realized this was hoping for too much here. When I asked Nyoman why Ulan might be upset, she snapped at the child in Indonesian, told her to go play, and told me it was nothing.

This is one in a long line of difficulties we encountered regarding how to know where to do good. This orphanage has a website encouraging you to send monetary donations, and when you visit it becomes very obvious that people do. However, how are they to know that their money is not necessarily benefiting the right people under the Hope Children's Home roof? How does one decide where to send their money if they can't actually visit first? Who is out there writing about what it's really like behind the walls of the facade?

Though our overall experience of Anak Anak Harapan was overwhelmingly sad and disappointing, 

we did meet some beautiful children with whom we had a few minutes of circus fun.

I can't help but share a few of the moments that were captured on film.

Have Heart; Get Out; Do Good...

It's not always so easy.

Two months into this Southeast Asia adventure and I am even more convinced than before that in order to do significant good abroad you need an unlimited amount of a) patience, diligence, and time; or b) an unlimited pocketbook. There are plenty of people out there interested in volunteer work and other ways to give back while traveling to another country, but opportunities are like hidden jewels, you have to buy them or search hard.

I, for one, do not have an open pocketbook- so for me only the first option exists. To do the projects we've done across Indonesia and Thailand (highlighted later) it's been a series of back-roads travel, hard work, research, phone calls, and sometimes even begging. There are a few reasons for why it is so complicated. First of all, there are scams and big money organizations waiting to place you-- for the right price-- clouding the search engines. If you can get past that to doing the research and making contact yourself, often the organizations that would benefit most from the help are the ones too disorganized to accept it. There is the struggle to know where the most help is needed, what organizations are honest, where the money goes, and how to make it happen. All these hurdles can turn perfectly giving individuals away. And if one goes the organized volunteer placement route the first hardship is simply the expense of it- travel lodging, volunteer fees-- you need a pocketbook to match your heart.

For every show we did out here (3 shelters, 3 orphanages, and 4 kindergartens) there was an average of at least 3 hours of research and planning. Not to mention the language gap. Time constraints, applications, studying up, making contact, miscommunications, and lost in translations... Chore after chore, and for what? Children's laughter, stronger communities, a human connection, and a bond across continents and cultures.

It started as two circus performing teachers in Indonesia who wanted to do good and be around children.

We connected with two organizations that support orphaned and poverty stricken children.

Two teachers, two islands, two organizations, and a slick black motor bike.

Hence began our performance tour of Bali and Lombok.