Juggling lesson in Lujan, Argentina

Something a little bit fun today!

We just received some incredibly nice words from Cydney, our partner in Lujan, Argentina.

"Circus of Smiles is truly amazing. Paula and Tyler came to Lujan, Argentina last year, where I had the pleasure of helping them coordinate shows all over the municipality. They brought joy and love to some of the most underserved populations in the province of Buenos Aires. These two amazing clowns traveled to and from Lujan for a month, extending their energy and joy to every child and adult they came in contact with. They happened to be in the area during some extreme flooding that left many communities devastated. Instead of staying away, safe and sound in the capital city, these two packed their scarves and juggling balls, took a bus to Lujan and headed for the relief shelter where about 400 people were staying. They provided the comic relief so necessary in moments of such distress, giving the children an evening of play, pure joy and an opportunity to be children again. It was beautiful. The word spread fast and before we knew it, school principals and organizers were calling to see if they could have these two beautiful clowns visit. In total, we visited around 10 different establishments. This was a truly inspirational experience and I will never forget it. They are so talented... but most importantly, it all comes from their hearts."

Thank you Cydney! And to celebrate, here is a video of that amazing first day in Lujan.

Circus of Smiles- Juggling in Lujan from CircusOfSmiles on Vimeo.

Within a few days of a major rainstorm in Luján that caused citywide flooding, we were invited to entertain/distract the 30 or so children staying in a temporary shelter. We arrived that afternoon to some very anxious and excitable children who were thrilled for something to do. We did our audience participation heavy show and then handed out juggling scarves to all that wanted to learn a bit of juggling. As that lesson ended, it became very clear that these children needed to run out a whole lot of energy. We reached into our circus teacher bag o´ tricks and played a lot of silly games... watch Tyler and the kiddos juggling.

From little to less in Lujan, Argentina.

One of my favorite things about doing Circus of Smiles work is that it allows me to experience the local approach to schooling, education, child welfare and shelter. My background before running off to join the circus was in education, so I love seeing the similarities and differences between countries as we travel to new places. In Luján, as I have mentioned before, there is a pretty wide economic divide between the different neighborhoods. We got to get up close and personal with this reality on our third visit to town when we did 7 shows in one [very long and exhausting] day.

I would say the most obvious difference we saw that day was between Escuela #920 in Barrio Parque Lasa and Guardería Infantil in Barrio Ameghino. These two also happened to make up one of our favorite spots to visit, and our least favorite, respectively. What it really comes down to is a child centered environment- or lack thereof.

Escuela #920 in Parque Lasa. Notice the conga line being led by a boy in a wheelchair.

*Staff and instructors. There was an obvious gap in the amount of training and education received by the two teams of instructors. The classrooms in Parque Lasa were well planned out with imaginative play areas, developmentally appropriate toys and student created artwork on display. In Ameghino, most of the teachers were tucked away in the small kitchen drinking maté (a very popular local tea) and at least half of them had cell phones in hand when we arrived.

* Safety. To be set up for success, a child (or any person) must feel safe- both physically and emotionally. Escuela #920 is one of the most inclusive schools I have come across. All children are welcome in this school; they have some of the most loving aides there to support students with different abilities. Acceptance of all needs and abilities has been instilled in all the students and staff. When a little boy with hearing aides and physical deformities was invited to help us onstage, the cheering support from the entire student body was inspiring. The Ameghino daycare, on the other hand, was full of small dirty faces that obviously hadn't been wiped after snacktime some hours before. There were crying children left in cribs, and a few toddlers trying to climb a fence to the outside of the school were met with yells and insults instead of a teacher walking over to redirect. Oh, how I wanted to give a lesson on positive redirection and pro-active instruction!

Guardería Infantil in Barrio Ameghino.

 * And finally, environment. This is the area that seems to be most affected by the neighborhood's funding abilities, and honestly contributes a lot to the above mentioned bullets. Whereas the school in Parque Lasa had a beautiful campus and multiple classrooms, the daycare in Ameghino was in a small room borrowed from a local church. It had a dirt floor and some roughly constructed sharp edges. Really, it was a place children go when their parents need to work and can't afford to send them anywhere else, not a place that would inspire a child to want to come to school.

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.

An Innovative Toymaker in Cordoba, Argentina.

One of my favorite things about travelling the world with Circus of Smiles is the inspiring people we meet along the way. Last night we met a first class innovator at an outdoor crafts market in Cordoba.

Cork Action Figures, CD Storybooks, Soda Bottle ¨Ball and Cups¨

Javier, originally from Colombia, makes toys out of the recyclables he finds around town. He also leads sustainable crafts workshops for parents and teachers. This, of course, made me wish we weren´t leaving Cordoba that very same night... but at least it leaves us one more thing to look forward to for our next visit.  Tyler decided he had to buy out the entire stock of finger puppets (made of soda bottle tops, yarn, binder coil, and paint.) We were extra impressed by how they came wrapped and ready for travel, in a little house made from two small water bottles cut in half.

 

Javier´s company can be found on Facebook, as Paz Verde Juguetes Sustentables. I am currently waiting for him to accept my friend request, because he says there are plenty of photos and ideas posted there. As many of you know, I work for a company that places high value on using recyclables within the classroom as well as on creating innovators that envision and create a better future. Naturally, I find his work very exciting, and look forward to trying out some of his projects back at home! I hope these pictures give you a bit of inspiration to try something different today.

A children´s story about unconditional
 love, writen on a recycled CD book. 

A soccer game with a marble for a ball and popsicle sticks for players.

Cork action figures with moveable parts- and a great paint job

¨Gangnam Style¨ at the SOS Children´s Village

Unless you´ve been living under a rock, as I apparently was until arriving in South America, by now you have heard of the K-pop sensation ¨Gangnam Style.¨ Most notable for its catchy tune, being the most played YouTube video of all time, and the fact that it marks the first time a Korean pop artist has been able to break into the mainstream US (and broad international) market. I was introduced to the song in Buenos Aires over lunch with two friends visiting from Korea; I have not been able to get away from it since. But let´s be honest, I really don´t mind.

QuadraNose Clown

In my last post, I mentioned that we finally made it out to the SOS Children´s Village Cordoba. There are 30 youth living in the children´s village, about 10 of which are teenagers. We had a great time clowning at their party to celebrate the International Day of Children´s Rights! It is quite possible that this one will stay one of my favorite moments of the tour. We did our regular shtick, the 30-minute audience participation show followed by a juggling playshop with the neon scarves- and of course the distribution of red noses. After that, the kids and the junk food took over, but we were happy to follow their lead. A few of the older girls took on the roll of dj, and seemed to have an affinity for the Gangnam Style song -- they played it SIX times in a row.

And oh, how we danced!

Gangnam Style Dance from Paula Heather on Vimeo.

Flooding in Lujan. Or, ¨how can we possibly make it even harder to get to the places we give to!?¨

From our home base in Buenos Aires, we have quite a commute to get to Luján. We take a bus from Plaza Miserere in the downtown neighborhood called Once to the main terminal of Luján; this bus should take 1.5 hours but generally takes just as long as the day´s circumstances see fit. Once at the terminal, we hop in a remis (like a taxi) or a local bus to get to the neighborhood we are visiting for the day. I´ll repeat what I mentioned in the last blog post for those of you that haven´t seen it. ¨Luján is a complex area where the neighborhoods, schools, and social services span the map from wealthy middle class to very poor. The town has some geographic lines (rivers, highways, countryside and train tracks) that seem to very clearly divide the different populations. The places we visit tend to be very patchwork- schools in borrowed spaces, houses built from scraps of whatever people can find, clothes that have been found or donated and (almost always) children everywhere.¨ Because of the geographic dividers, the neighborhoods we visit are very rarely close to the center of town. This means that faced with special circumstances, our longest time door to door was six hours.

¨Why!?¨ you ask? 

Because early that week the province of Buenos Aires was hit by a downpour of rain that flooded many parts and Luján was hit especially hard by the rains. This left hundreds of families displaced from their now subaquatic homes and meant that the municipality was quickly charged with the task of setting up temporary shelters and otherwise providing for the people. Suddenly makes a six hour commute seem incredibly bearable, right? I was blown away by the grace with which the people of Luján -within the municipality especially- looked after the displaced. One particular shelter was set-up in the Polisport (a community sports complex) and housed up to 300 people at one time. Volunteers cooked meals off-site and brought them to the complex, necessities like water, mattresses and clothing were available to the people, etc. 



Provisions for the people. Photo: Cydney Justman

Flooded streets in Lujan. Photo: Cydney Justman


Within a few days of the flooding, we were invited to come to Luján and entertain/distract the 30 or so children taking shelter in the aforementioned Polisport. We arrived that afternoon to some very anxious and excitable children who were thrilled for something to do. We did our audience participation heavy show and then handed out juggling scarves to all that wanted to learn a bit of juggling. As that lesson ended, it became very clear that these children needed to run out a whole lot of energy. We reached into our circus teacher bag o´ tricks and played a lot of silly games like Big Mouth, The Invisible Ball, etc.




Outdoor show.
 Great, until the mosquitos arrived.



A wonderfully outgoing boy preparing to be our helper.

We finished the evening exhausted and covered in mosquito bites, and fortunately the commute home only took about 2.5 hours!

South America tour begins in Luján, Argentina

Circus of smiles has made it to Argentina! Luján, Argentina- to be exact. Though we got off to a slow start, once we started we hit the ground running. In Spanish, there is a saying: ¨arracamos a full¨ which I would roughly translate to starting up at full force. That is how it has been for us here, thanks mostly to the excitement and warm welcome we have received from the Lujaneros (people of Lujan.)

Luján is a city in the Buenos Aires province of Argentina, located 68 kilometers north west of the city of Buenos Aires, that is best known for its large neo-gothic Basillica. The town is visited by more than six million people each year. The city is known as La Capital de la Fe (Capital of the Faith). Getting beyond what the tourists see, Luján is a complex area where the neighborhoods, schools, and social services span the map from wealthy middle class to very poor. The town has some geographic lines (rivers, highways, countryside and train tracks) that seem to very clearly divide the different poulations. The places we visit tend to be very patchwork- schools in borrowed spaces, houses built from scraps of whatever people can find, clothes that have been found or donated and (almost always) children everywhere.

We have had the joy and privilege to team up with my very old friend, Cydney Justman. Cyd was one of my closest friends in middle school. After not seeing one another for almost 10 years, we both found ourselves in Argentina doing social/global projects that have now come to feed into one another. She has become our °in° for many harder to reach populations, our confidant, our advisor... basically, Cydney has become our local coordinator in Luján, and we are very grateful! 

This set of projects feel more like sprints than the long distance race that was our Southeast Asia tour. Just yesterday we finished 7 shows and a few hours of hospital clowning in a space of 30 hours. None in the same space, or even neighborhood as another. Some much joy, laughs, and exhaustion already... and so many stories to share. Stayed tuned for anecdotes on lost cameras, swearing toddlers, and conga lines.

South American tour!

Announcement: We're going to South America!  

Circus of Smiles will be touring again in fall of 2012. 

There is a deep satisfaction that comes from transcending the barriers of language; it's magic when you find you can communicate through smiles and mime only. Even so, there is a kind of comfort and inspiration that comes from really getting to know and understand a person you can really delve into a deep conversation with. Needless to say, we are excited to teach and perform for children with whom we share a common language. That's right, this time around, we will actually be able to speak the local language.

Though there are still many details to hash out and many, many, many plans to be made, I am thrilled to be going back to the part of the world that feels most like "home." Argentina will be our home base, and the plan is to perform in at least two other nearby countries as well.

Argentina is a place that means a lot to me on an intensely personal level, and also happens to be where I first found (and was inspired to join) the circus! It seems right on many levels that it should be our kickoff tour as a legit non-profit.