- Title: LEBANON: Clowning around in a time of war
- Date: 4th June 2014
- Summary: BEKAA, LEBANON (JUNE 2, 2014) (REUTERS) SYRIAN REFUGEE CHILDREN WALKING OUT OF SCHOOL BUILDING TO COURTYARD WHERE CLOWNS ARE PREPARING THE PERFORMANCE SYRIAN REFUGEE CHILDREN WALKING VARIOUS OF CLOWN PERFORMER GETTING CHILDREN SEATED MORE OF CLOWN PERFORMERS SEATING AND WALKING AROUND CHILDREN AS THEY FORM A SEMI-CIRCLE CHILDREN SEATED AROUND CLOWN PERFORMERS (SOUNDBITE)
- Embargoed: 19th June 2014 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Lebanon
- Country: Lebanon
- Topics: Conflict,Entertainment
- Reuters ID: LVA7G74FDMYDV903PZN68I0ZKBVI
- Story Text: International performance group begins tour in Lebanon aimed at cheering up thousands of Syrian children taking refuge from their war-torn homeland. There's no food, no aid, no medicine.
But there is a lot of laughter.
Or at least that's what they try to give.
'Clowns Without Borders' is an international non-profit organisation that uses laughter to relieve suffering among children in refugee camps, conflict zones and natural disaster areas.
And most recently, the group began their tour in Lebanon, which hosts one million refugees from Syria - tens of thousands of them children.
Many of them have fled cluster bombs, chemical weapons and al Qaeda militants in a war that has killed more than 160,000 in three years.
Lebanon has not allowed official refugee camps, so many families live in unfinished buildings and wooden shacks.
"We visit children living in houses other than theirs, not feeling safe, sad and have lost a lot of people in their lives. When we see them smiling and 'wow' seeing something beautiful, when something changes with them even within this half an hour or hour we spend with them, that's it. What could be better than this?" said Sabine Choucair, the team leader of the group.
Choucair has organised this tour of 'Clowns Without Borders' in Lebanon where they will be performing for Syrian refugee children in the Bekaa and the Lebanese capital of Beirut from June 2 until June 13.
"The objective is to go to conflict regions with wars or passing through a certain crisis and pass joy to children so they have fun and laugh with the sorrow they are living through. We are all clowns or circus performers and work for free so we come as volunteers to 'Clowns Without Borders' and go for between two weeks and a month touring around and performing," Choucair added.
American David Clay, a former construction worker from Oregon, is also a member of the group. He describes himself as a humanitarian, working in disaster areas like Indonesia, the Philippines and Haiti.
In Haiti, where a 2010 earthquake killed more than 250,000 people, Clay said other aid groups were originally suspicious of his work, dubious of the results in a high stress situation with limited resources.
He said doctors were initially reticent but their attitude changed distinctly, as he prepares for the show at a school in central Lebanon, multi-coloured handkerchiefs hanging out of his back pocket.
"Well, all over the world in different place where there been disasters and wars, 'Clowns Without Borders', our motto is 'no child without a smile'. So myself personally, I have worked in Haiti after the earthquake and continuing follow-up work with the recovery there. 'Clowns Without Borders' has gone to work in the Balkans, went to the Philippines recently, so it is pretty much kind of allowing for psychological relief, letting kids smile again, feel joy in their lives when there is not a whole lot," he said.
Clay said the locations where they perfom may vary, but the reaction is almost always the same, everywhere.
"We had a good time, everywhere it is always a little bit different, but it is also the same a lot of the times. So kids are kids, they run around, they get crazy but that's what, that's why we are here to do a bit of, just let people have a good time," Clay said.
This trip is sponsored by Layan, a Kuwait-based aid group, and the team will take their stilts, Hula Hoops and blue trombone to camps over Lebanon during the next two weeks.
During the singing and the dancing on Monday (June 2), Clay pulled a young boy, Ahmed, from the audience up from the crowd and gave him a wooden mop to ride like a horse around the dusty playground.
The boy's teacher said Ahmed was exceptionally shy in class and had fled from the Syrian city of Raqqa to get to Lebanon.
Raqqa has been repeatedly bombed by Syrian air force jets and is also a focal point of fighting between Islamic insurgent groups. Al Qaeda-linked fighters have carried out public executions in Raqqa's main square.
Ahmed did not appear to like the attention as he followed Clay around the audience, but the other clowns asked the children to encourage him.
A broad smile slowly filled his face and he picked up speed as his friends shouted: 'Ahmed! Ahmed! Ahmed!'
One million Syrian refugee children live in the region, millions are trapped by conflict inside Syria and public health researchers and aid workers say they are displaying symptoms of psychological trauma. Aid group Save the Children says one in three children it surveyed last year had seen a close friend or relative killed.
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