Dear Folks,

Here we are in India on our last days before heading back to the dull world of unfriendly looks, taxes, and winter. We will of course be glad to see our children Adam and Lea who we miss dearly. It feels like a 6-month trip packed into two and half weeks with the intense touring, very human relations, understanding of the culture, and creating laughter (the whole point of the expedition) not to mention dinner with a millionaire and a snake in the dormitory room.

We arrive to a riot of noise and visual stimulus. The city of Ahmedabad (home to Gandhi’s Ashram) is a hellish mix of honking horns and traffic. We close our eyes as we drive through the streets since there’s no way that the bicycles, camels, motorcycles, donkeys, trucks, and cars can weave together without colliding. Every moment is a miracle.

The team from Clowns Without Borders is made up of Vaishali Kathak dancer, Mehdi Algerian musician and singer, Ramesh the tabla player, Janie trapeze artiste, Julian the clown and technical director, Kevin and Rachel the Angloeuropean clowns from Belgium, and Edith our ultra capable tour manager, and finally the Magnum style super photographer Eric.

We are a mixed group and the show reflects the variety of talents. It’s a great show for the conditions…Inter communal (Hindu-Muslim) violence means that thousands of people are killed every 5 years or so as the tensions flare up. There were terrible earthquakes in 2001 that killed over 30,000 people and, the floods and drought just add to the mixture…how do these people keep their optimism?

The show is set up with a 7 meter high trapeze rig and a giant carpet with a backdrop. We look like a mini circus with an Anglo-Indian orchestra. Circus Lotus-masala-chapati-pepper. We have fun with the audience with singing and breathing games. Will they understand our gestures and the ideas behind the play? The presence of Arabic and Hindu influences in the show seem to be a positive aspect for our mixed audiences. The three strong women are also a good message to present and the laughter of the children with the unicycle number from Julian as he almost crashes into the audience or the elephant number (Moto Hati or big elephant) is a real joy to hear.

We are touring the Kutch region where the epicenter of the earthquake was and are playing in Dalit or untouchable villages. They are very tribal looking people and both men and women have enormous earrings even the kids. The fact that we are visiting them is very welcome and positive. We were invited for tea in a Muslim house with a blind father and a 16-year-old girl who spoke very good English. She gave us all little presents and we took photos that we will send. If you want to create a riot take a group picture of 30 kids on a digital camera and then try to show them the picture!

We visited a slum area on our day off with a mini show of magic and music to see if there was a way to go to the heart of the poor sections of the city. There are no schools there so the usual infrastructure used to find audiences for our CWB shows doesn’t work. We were quickly surrounded by over excited kids and when the goat ran through the audience during the magic act the whole place got crazy. We ended with a little parade through the winding streets of the very clean ghetto (divided muslim or Hindu) with the kids following. It seemed like potential future project to work with the kids (mixed group?) and parade through both the communities. In the end the kids asked me to sit on a donkey and when I did some joker slapped his bottom and he took off like a rabbit.

Our last show is across the street from the old Gandhi ashram. We get our first mosquito bite as it’s by the river and the kids show up in impeccable school uniforms and sit in neat rows like checker pieces. They love the show and since it’s our last we are especially sensitive to each other and savor our favorite moments. Gandhi’s ashram is a Zen style place on the river and yet this humble group of buildings was the epicenter of the Quit India movement, the renouncement of untouchability, the independence movement in spinning and wearing only hand make cloth, and the beginning of civil disobedience that brought down the English. What a powerful human being in a little man’s body.

We’re off to Belgium tonight and even though a few of us had the gastric gremlins we are all feeling good in the end. Our hammered bottoms from 300 miles of bumpy roads are finally getting back to normal and most of us are looking forward to a cold beer on the plane. The Gujarat is the only dry state in India another legacy of Gandhi’s influence. So goodbye and farewell Namaste. We are heading home and all the best,

Love,

Kevin and Rachel and all of us here in Ahmedabad