[Peace] clowning in Cambodia

[parenti susan rose]

In December I went to Cambodia for 'humanitarian clowning'. This is an
account of the trip. Sorry for the long e mail.
-------------------------------------------------
Clowning, Not Swimming, to Cambodia *

36 hours to get to Cambodia from Washington DC(4 planes). I grumbled to
the other clowns: Why do we have to go so far in order to clown with
suffering people? Seems like the US is full of them, we can stay right
here.

Who are we? We are 'humanitarian clowns' which means we use the
antics of clowning for purposes of change.  Like activists and
medical practitioners, we try to change the condition of
suffering, going to hospitals and orphanages as well as checkpoints and
refugee camps.  In the airport we arrive in full clown costume, some accordions
and fiddles, and clown with the airline staff, waiting passengers, and  at
the security stations (NOT in the US, we'd be guillotined). Pain?
Boredom? Deadly serious power over? Here we come.  We try.
I'm an accordionist, a beginning clown.

On this trip, we were 13 people: 11 clowns(2 from Italy), 2 camera men
from chile(who couldnt resist clowning at times).

In the Phnom Peng airport,  a French journalist angrily said to our clown
group,"I don't know how you Americans have the nerve to come to Cambodia.
Are you aware the US bombed this country for 180 days, night and day? That
bombing ruined the irrigation system that had been so carefully set up
here for centuries??!!"

I recognized in his voice a performance that I would have done, too, if I
were him: helpless anger, accusation,  in confronting the revolting
innocence of the perpetrators. "Yup, yessirree, we're just a bunch of
carefree americans going on a tour of this here oriental country, heard it
was cheap, women are purty, gee did people die here, don't know anything
bout that, lots of old feuds I guess, barbarians fighting barbarians,I'm
an american, I pay alot for my ignorance, yup".

So the French journalist was right to be mad. Right on, brother.

Only in this case, I told him we WERE aware; we humble clowns went to
places to counteract the damage done  by our bullying country. He was
mollified, almost friendly.  I think the sheer fact that Americans KNEW
about the US bombing in the 1970s, was a relief to him.

When we finally arrived in Phnom Penh,  the country took my eyes: the
streets wildly busy with motorbike travel(up to 6 people on one bike) ,the
people seeming small to me, slender, graceful, and not pugnacious.  A
common  Cambodian greeting gesture: people put their hands together to
their chest in a prayerlike position,  which looks like a gentle "At your
service" gesture.

How could one out of four people have been killed in this country, mostly
by Cambodians themselves (Khmer Rouge soldiers), between 1970 and 1995?

Statistics I was told: In 2003, 60% of the population is under age 24;
and of that, 50% are under age 15, a consequence of the terrible last 30
years of the country. 1 out of 4 people were killed in the time period
between 1970-1995, partly as a consequence of US foreign policies( excuse
me, I mean the foreign policies that the US people do not know about but
the men in power do) which killed between 300,000 to one and a half
million people, and partly as a consequence of the dictator Pol Pot and
the Khmer Rouge.  24% of the women can read; 36 % of the men can read.
There is 80% poverty, with people living on 50cents a day.   Rachel
Snyder, our guide, said: Women and children have no rights. There is law,
but no justice. Cambodia is riddled with corruption (but who will solve
this riddle, who?).

Beggars all over, some sliding on the ground when without legs. The voices
of beggars , of shop women in the market, trying to get your
attention(your 50 cents, their food, their survival).

What if you were too shy to beg? To starve from shyness.

(There is a story by Chekhov of a starving father and son, and the father
too ashamed to beg, and starving son who on a dare eats oysters fed him by
rich men).

Financially, our trip was sponsored by the actress Angelina Jole(msp?),
mother of an adopted Cambodian child,  refugee camp visitor, and poster
child for UNHCR(United Nations High Commission for Refugees).
Organizationally, the trip was sponsored by Patch Adams and Wildman Adams
of the Gesundheit! Institute, who both did a huge amount of detail work
to bring 13 people to Cambodia, and who had the vision for it.

On the first morning of our visit, we visited the actual 'killing fields'
and the prison camp where thousands of Cambodians were murdered. I was
grateful to our guides Rachel and Paul for starting the trip this
way---showing us the traces of suffering created by power over and
violence. Though visiting hospitals also puts us into contexts of
suffering, illness is quite another thing from avoidable humanly-caused
misery. And that we witnessed. A detail I can't forget: we were shown
a tree against which babies were killed---in order to save
precious bullets, the Khmer Rouge battered the  babies against the tree
until they died. "In order to save precious bullet".

We visited children with AIDS(Cambodia has the highest rate of AIDS in
Asia)  people who had been hurt by landmines, children who had birth
defects(some a result of the chemicals used in warfare).  We clowned in a
huge school(formerly a factory) for street children where they learn
trades. The organization that runs this school has 3 parts: one part is
out in the streets trying to help the children, the second part is the
running of the school, and third part is follow-up work to keep the
children in jobs and not going back into the streets(they said this was
the hardest part---drugs, despair, and poverty working more quickly than
education).  We ate in a a fine restaurant, run by street kids.

The strangest sight, the one my eyes won't easily digest, was our clowning
at a school which is IN the City dump for the children who scavenge in the
City Dump.  As a huge number of kids spend their lives in the City dump
looking through the huge 30 feet high mounds of garbage for salvageable
things to sell, this French agency set up a school right there, IN the
dump. When our bus of clowns arrived, hundreds of smudged and semi-naked
kids ran towards us. Normally I bend down, accordion to my chest, to meet
the eye level of the kids. In this place, I was so overwhelmed by
anger(hiding inside was grief), I couldn't meet the eyes of the children.
I couldn't look at any one of them directly.In the background were the
mountains of garbage smoking with dust, with little figures on them (the
kids)  Who is to take care?

Eating a nice dinner in a hotel, and the dinner's cost is $2.00. What is
this? My stinginess gratified(wow, a bargain), my brain kept thinking,
What? What? What?

take care? maybe the garbage is taking care.

Who is to take care?

It's tricky, this 'humanitarian clowning'---my impression is so strong
when I'm there, the desire to help so strong, and then I come home, and
Christmas in this country is brewing, I get a stomache flu and
other things happen, and there I am. TV and newspapers smirk at me in
their slick grind of producing one more day of expensively calculated
ignorance.

Political Analysis/Paralysis
Why? Why did this happen to/in Cambodia? Why this genocide?

The question'why'arises strongly if you're thinking while you're
in Cambodia. Or if you think about it afterwards. The people seem
especially unwarlike.

The explanations that people give you constantly bring up Pol Pot and the
Khmer Rouge, and very rarely the US or other countries.

I don't trust the question 'why'.

Why?  (ahem,hmmm, errr, whoops, walked into my own trap).

see part two, in the next e mail: political analysis of Cambodia

*(reference to the movie Swimming to Cambodia,  made in 1987 by Spalding
Gray, while he was working on the movie, the Killing Fields. Swimming to
Cambodia is really worth seeing).