Yesterday was no thin line along the edges between rich and poverty. Deep into the rough edges: the women’s and young woman’s prison in Pétionville in the morning, and the afternoon teaching six of the juggling kids at the Foyer Lakay down near the port.
Walking through heavy solid iron gates of the prison into a rough dirt and broken yard with prison cells right there, bars facing out, women looking at us as we walk in. We meet the prison director first as she has just been assigned there three days beforehand. She had been a formateur (trainer) for prison guards at the Front National, which I confess I have no idea exactly what that is. Her office is as barren as the rest of the prison, a skeleton of a fax machine, and some ancient computer machinery off to the side of the desk. She takes notes about everything on a yellow steno tablet, that seems to be the extent of officialdom there.
I am with Elizabeth, the child protection officer at Unicef who has been my main liaison this week, and Dalogene Talogene, who has been driving me everywhere in our spiffy Toyota land cruiser.
We go through several blue painted bared doors to access a full sun paved courtyard where the younger woman are hanging out. They all have a large bowl of some kind, plastic or metallic and we are told that they are waiting for their meal. It is 10 in the morning and I fail to ask just which meal it is. There are two men there as well, one holding four new glitter sparkly hoola hoops. The women are mostly sitting in desk chairs lined up along one side of the yard where there is shade.
WE are told it is best to wait awhile until they have eaten. I ask Elizabeth if she knows how to hoola hoop. She did as a kid. A little dialogue of inquiry leads to a few of the more outgoing women to try their hand at it, none succeed. Elizabeth after a few tries gets it going. No big fanfare from the girls but one tries again afterwards. The man who has been holding them doesn’t seem too interested though he obviously has a great rapport with the women as I see him in casual conversations with them.
Finally we decide that I should go ahead because it doesn’t look like the food is going to be ready for a while. It is Saturday and it seems that there are only 3 guards on duty in the whole prison. I have no choice but to play in the full sun, which is bright and hot as it has been all week. This is winter time, I hate to feel the rage of the summer heat. Luckily I have the sunscreen at ready so I douse myself liberally. I am chiding myself because I have forgotten my baseball cap go pug on after the show hat comes off. I can’t really juggle or balance the cigar boxes with my head, nor can I slab sunscreen on top as deep sweat will cause extensive stinging of the eyes. That won’t work, forget the fact that the sun is directly ahead shining right in my eyes, that is relatively a minor inconvenience. The solution comes when I spot one of the women wearing a blue bandana over head pirate style. I realize that I can do the same with my yellow bandana that sits in my pocket.
Elizabeth has warned my that the young women might not be too into the show, demanding to know why they are bringing in a clown when they have yet to see a lawyer or appear in front of a judge. Some are in for no good reason, or do to some corruptive situation. Imagine the worst and you are probably close. The Scottish videographer yesterday was telling me a story of one girl who had yet to appear in front of a judge after 4 months in prison, yet the crime she was charged with carried a three month sentence. He also said that many of them have a quality of life inside then they would outside. Getting food on a regular basis, and some forms of education, courses in cosmetology and the like. This is due to the efforts of Unicef and an Italian organization whose Acronym escapes me now.
I am so impressed by the contentiousness of the Unicef child protection workers and their deep commitment to their never-ending work. When I asked earlier in the week how many young women were in the prison, she turned to ask a coworker across the office “ how many are there at Pétionville now, 30 or 31?”
The show goes great guns. Several of the women jump out of their chairs in excitement after various actions on my part. One woman particularly is jumping up and running into a dance of kinds and howling in glee. I can’t rest playing the moment. After a few of these she gets more bold and engages me directly, we go into an improvised back and forth movement imitation dance where I try but fail miserably to replicate her moves. It is magical, wild and sends everyone into a joyful place.
I play a good forty minutes, ending with singing ‘Love is a Rose’ on the ukulele. It is the first time the whole week that I pull out the instrument but if anywhere’s I feel this is the place. I rock it , sing the second verse with straightforward heart-full voice. I figure that it is important to offer that side for a moment. I can sense that the meal is near when I finish. Some ten of the thirty gather round, one asks for my smoke, referring to the fake cigarette that I had earlier disappeared and sneezed out of my nose. They are all surprised that it is made of plastic and not real, something that I have witnessed quite a few times. I have barely seen any cigarettes being smoked during our journeys. The largest prevalence being the expatriates at the Unicef office, and that was a grouping of three smoking outside the office.
One of the young prison women offers her thumb to me. I meet it with my thumb. Our thumbs touch with light pressure and then she rotates it and I do the same in the other direction in some sense of handshake. This starts a slew of thumb shakes that develop into more and more elaborate handshakes. Then there is commotion in the next yard where the older women have gathered in line for the meal. That is the signal for our time to depart as well. I gather my things, and Talogene takes my suitcase for which I am truly grateful for I suddenly become aware that my body is a little wobbly and I am pretty much drained of energy.
We are 5 going to Foyer Lakay in the afternoon, the morning trio has been joined by Tim and Sarah. Brendon has a deep stomach ache and Elisa volunteers to stay with him in case it gets words. He is definitely looking pale. Elizabeth, joins us, and of course Talogene is driving.
This is our second day that we have an afternoon training session there. We had one at the beginning of the week where we had the most amazing time working with about thirty of the young men land one young woman living there. The Canadian Clowns without Borders have been coming there for something like 4 years, and a good number of them are quite proficient in their juggling. They are highly motivated to learn new things and were quite excited to get up on stilts as well. It is vacation time now, and many have gone home to their families which is a great thing, Most of them are street children who have elected to move out from their home for a number of reasons. Unicef’s big focus is on reinsertion, working to get the kids moving back towards a normal lifestyle. So that so many are going home for the holidays seems to be a good thing.
We have a great afternoon working with about 10 of the Lakay jugglers. WE do a lot of juggling, and we get many of them up on stilts. We also get Elizabeth up on stilts, and Talogene tries his hand at juggling. We all start together in a circle under the roof of their cool open air gathering place. What seems to be flies at first turn out to be a most ferocious brand of mosquitos. Even a strong wind blowing fails to halt their agressive attacks. We move the activities into the afternoon sun where the mosquitos won’t follow. It is a relatively cool day. We split the group into two working a stilt walking station and a juggling station. We are all excited by the enthusiasm and quick learning that the Lakay group embody. I am teaching the juggling, and one juggler in particular, Franz, is quite accomplished and is absorbing every ball trick I can throw his way.
Moshe
