¨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.

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.

"Help Portrait" Free professional Portrait Day in the bay area

This one is a little off topic for me, since it is happening right here at home.... but I stumbled across this and think it is good enough to share. So, people doing good here at home, here we go:

Help-Portrait is a global event during which photographers, videographers, makeup artists and other professionals worldwide work with nonprofits and community organizations to photograph individuals and families who wouldn’t normally have access to professional family photos and print them out so they have something to show their friends and families.

Do you NEED a free portrait? Here’s a test… if can afford an iphone, this event probably isn’t for you. The free portraits are meant for those living under the poverty line who are truly in need so that during Christmas time they can get a professional family portrait done free and clear.

Help-Portrait  Bay Area Locations – 2011:

• Saint Vincent De Paul – 11am – 5pm
  525 5th St, San Francisco
• Mission Economic and Development Center – 11am – 5pm
  2301 Mission Street, STE 301, San Francisco
• BayView Opera House – 11am – 4pm
  4705 3rd Street, San Francisco
• La Clinica – 10am – 4pm
  3451 East 12th Street, 3rd Floor, Oakland
• The North County Women’s Center  - 11am – 4pm
  2362 Bancroft Way, Berkeley

The Bali Children's Project

Travel to places where children need laughs and inspire them.

Sounds simple enough, yes?
 

Once we had decided on our project, the work really began. The first hurdle became researching and contacting organizations that would host us. My first Balinese contact was with the The Bali Children's Project who promoted themselves as an organization with volunteer possibilities. Since they are based in the states, they do make an effort to stay on top of e-mails and such, something that only really worked for contacting them. For just about everywhere else it was a combination of phone calls that very quickly made clear the language barrier, or showing up unanounced --armed, of course, with our best charades for can we do a circus show for the children-- and hoping for the best. 

Our inquiry began:

My name is Paula. My partner Tyler and I are teachers in California. We are now visiting Bali through the end of the month. After exploring your website, it seems like your organization has a network of schools throughout the country, and we would be very interested in getting involved. Besides having a background in preschool and elementary teaching, we are both circus teachers.

Our goal is to travel throughout Indonesia and offer a variety of circus theatre shows in local orphanages, schools, shelters, and other non-profit centers that cater to children. If you are interested in providing details of some of your school program locations, we'd be happy to do a quick circus theatre performance for your children. We are, of course, not charging for these presentations.

I look forward to hearing from you. 
Best, 
Paula 


Almost immediately I heard back from one of their California based directors who put us in touch with their Balinese coordinator, Eka. Now THIS is were the fun begins. Bless her heart, because what Eka lacks in organization and timeliness she makes up for in smiles and compassion. Our first meeting should have been the first clue, but even so we fell trap to her lack of forward planning more than once. Each time we arranged to meet her, we were given a time, date, and the name of a place... though never an actual address, or really even more than a vague description of the general vicinity in which to begin our search. 

On the first day we tromped off on what should have been a 15 minute drive to the main office of BCP. When we arrived an hour later we discovered that Eka had already left to a province in the far NW of the island-- 5 hours away. We set out up the mountain on our slick black motor bike armed with a map, two very small backpacks, big smiles, and big time hope that this long-shot would work out. This, like every coming appointment, was an adventure of driving in circles, repeatedly asking for directions, and finally finding out she'd sent us to a completely different part of the province than she actually wanted us. Near the top of the volcano we got caught in a rainstorm that ran us off the road, struggled to find edible food, and ended up in an $8 a night homestay with a million dollar view.

When we finally made it to rural Munduk two days later, we found "Sanda House" hidden away down a dirt walking path in the middle of a rice field. When she arrived an hour late, the look of shock on her face that we'd actually found it was priceless. We now know that "just drive to Munduk and ask someone" is never a good sign. Thank goodness for Tyler's gift with maps and orientation. Anyone who knows me can attest to my lack of any sense of direction.

Ty and his team at Sanda House study our route to the various schools

On the brighter (and less off road adventure) side, once we'd sat down with Eka to form a plan the tour began. Through the BCP we performed in four kindergartens that were all set-up and supported by the organization. These are all in rural villages where the emphasis on family value seems as high --and higher-- than the poverty level. We'd arrive to be greeted by wide-eyed school children all running around in matching school uniforms. Now, in most parts of the world, Kindergarteners are small... but Indonesian kindergarteners are tiny. Over the course of the 30-minute performance, their looks of timid curiosity would evolve into smiles and then full on laughter. Though in many of the classes the children started off shy and almost skeptical of the oddly dressed westerners, by the end they were more than ready to join in.

And join in they did.

BCP Kindergarten; Goblek, Munduk

The rice field across from Sanda House

About the BCP: "For more than twelve years the Bali Children's Project has been quietly touching the lives of young people and their families. It grew from a simple desire to give back to the Balinese people, as a gesture of gratitude, something tangible in return for the joy and delight their warm welcome and rich culture have given to us. BCP programs are designed to integrate the demands of economic progress with the island’s traditional values." Over the years, they have created rural kindergartens and pre-schools, provided ongoing teacher training, provided classroom materials and enhancements to the schools they support, and more. They are always looking for volunteers who are independent and adaptable, self-motivated and energetic. Particularly welcome are those with special skills and who are able to stay for a prolonged visit. Experienced teachers, particularly those with ESL and Montessori training are always in demand, as are health and dental professionals.

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.