We began seeing schools, the schedule increased its business as this happens, school of homeless children one day, orphans the next, the next a hospital. My Burmese and Thai increases as I learn “how are you” and “thank you” in each language. I have starting stilt walking at this point and it becomes the highlight of all of my time. Ariel has mentored me through this process and I have been able to conquer stairs, mountain sides, gravel, the dark, getting up from the ground and turning around quickly!

Alas, we had a special day that was gracious to us. Our team went to a temple school where we performed in front of a Buddha. The children were kind and gentle and sat down, and almost afraid of play! (Compared to the violent school we had days previous this was a blessing!). The monks were hooping, the grounds were surrounded by beautiful lands… What a beautiful moment with out team.

That brings us to yesterday, where we had another amazing day with wild children who mobbed us for facepaints… I learned how to say “line up” and “back up” in Burmese and it is helpful. We were dug out of a pit of children when we were leaving, for all the kids wanted their face painted.

I tried my contact juggling act last night and everyone loved it. Also, I get the chance to MC for the first time and I tried the fire umbrella! I get to play with it tonight in the show.

The team is getting ready for our largest show tonight (except the actual refugee camp) and our rehearsal is in 5 minutes. It will be a football stadium for the whole town, and we are expecting thousands of people. I will MC the show with that crazy umbrella and get to do a CJ act framed by fans. It’s hot and muggy and I need more coffee. We leave in 2:30 hours to set up and it will be a very long show!

I wake early enough to see the sun rise every morning on my commute the the local restaurant, Casa Mia, which serves an amazing array of wonderful food that they miraculously do all international and local dishes better than anywhere else in the world. Of course, the meals cost nearly pennies and considering the quality and generosity of service, my life is filled with luxury.

Luxury and poverty, in fact. After these glorious meals, we get dressed in clown outfits and see some of the worst poverty I have ever been witness to. Shanty towns and orphanages, schools for the homeless children. Last week a village burned to the ground in less than 45 minutes as the workers worked for pennies in the fields. We visited their school last week, of course, the children were not present this year, they were rebuilding their homes.
Some days are hideous, children beating on eat other, breaking up fights, cleaning blood and trying to work through mobs of children who know they can’t all have one toy each and are barely interested in sharing. Pile ups for friendship bracelets and stickers, trying to ensure no one sees your one on one moment with a child in the field who’s avoided all contact with the circus before the others come running towards you because they saw you give him something.

Other days, you are in a quiet temple with monks, performing in front of the Buddha, trying not to offend by lifting your feet in the wrong direction (offensive to the monks and Buddha). The children follow your every word and move and would not dare be free on their own. It takes all of your effort to get them to express themselves naturally for one moment of joy with them. They would not dare ask for something, but if you place it on the ground in front of them, they will take gifts lovingly with gratitude.

These roads are composed of hair pin turns on steep cliff faces and are well known for its bad drivers often taking the wrong side of the road when coming around corners. It is the most treacherous part of our journey indeed. The 20 of us packed all our gear, got into 3 songtaos with our comfy blankets and pillows, and set off. Jonny, April, Fleassy and I were in the smallest songtao, but we had the least amount of people, so it was quite cozy. We were only 1/4 of the ride up as I vomit out the back of the truck. Thank god songtaos are open air vehicles. I did feel better, if not for slightly embarrassed. Lucky for me it allowed me to sleep for the next 4 hours, not having to deal with the absolute terror that my fear of heights brings me as you watch the valleys pass by underneath you.

The heat of the day is hot hot hot, and the grounds are dry, red sand dunes that stain your face and lungs with every breath. Clouds of dust form under every step you take. The whole team looks like they’ve entered an apocalyptic Mad Max film with their dust masks, goggles and hats. We arrive to a group of locals who have obviously been cooking lunch for us all morning long. Everyone stumble out of the trucks, doped up on travel meds, groggy and sea legged. They place matts out for us as we sit in a large oval and they place various local dishes in front of us. Most of these dishes are mostly mild, mostly vegan and awfully strange looking.
We feasted on a beautiful meal all together, with some kindness of these people who had given us this luxury. Plain versions of local foods, it was quite delicious and tasty. The chickens walk around us, our drivers sit at the table next to us, it was a serious family moment of us all enjoying time together in a relaxed manner before our next show. We had actually had that satiated look of fullness in our laid back posture. We carried our bags to the church that we sleep in, and we had 30 minutes to get make up on and began to join the town to start playing with the kids.

A cold crowd, it took us nearly all day to get these children to warm up to us, but by the fire show we really had them. Jonny and I had really started to create an act out of our MCing with some epic lighting of the torches and a stilt walking piece that included me stealing his fire and him running after me to get it. This was a particularly nice show, no dangers, no problems, just nice times with good people.

When we bowed the crowd all at once got up and walked away simultaneously. The only people they left behind was 20-30 men with ak-47s in uniform. The Thai army had come; we were on the boarder of Burma after all, spinning flaming balls around our head. They began speaking with the Thai drivers as we packed up our kit, and Andrea thought maybe we were in trouble. She decides to go investigate. She speaks to them in Thai and they tell her that they believe what we do is scary and then they ask her if it hurts!  They meander away after a time. We go back to the locals who fed us a lovely meal for a second time, and batten down the hatches in the Church, getting ready for the early morning in Burma.

We meet a man who drives a flatbed with 20 children in it, he will lead the way. The three trucks turn down a dirt road and we enter what looks like Mars. The land is scorched with black marks from the recent fires. The road is red and dry. The horizon includes jutting rocky cliffs, almost misplaced for the flat barren land that surrounds them. These rocks hold the only signs of life, covered in green palm trees in the flat spaces they could find. Everyone is still groggy and have cloth masks on their face as they try to sing songs with the ukelele. We reach a check point. It’s barely discernible from any other buildings except its existence in this barren land. There are no guards; there is no one except us. We continue on through the open gates without hesitation.

It takes approximately an hour for us to reach the village. It is only 8am and the sun can just be seen over the trees that surround this place. I take a photo. I am quite amused by the piglets on the hill with their mama. We get out and stretch and wait for the two trucks to catch up. There is a sense of confusion in the air, no one knows what is happening, or where we are. Apparently our presence was a surprise to most of this village. We all get together and allow Jo to lead the way winding through the road framed by stilt houses. We take photos of the goats and chickens we pass, as they flock to the villagers like puppies. They stare. We stare back with smiles and waves. “Naylagay” is the word we use to say good day. We are lead into a house, unlike the others, this one touches the ground. We are lead up the stairs to some singing children and others sitting in a circle. I find a spot in the back corner, Ariel and Jonny join me as the other Sparkles find their way around the 10 X 10 room and find a space on the bamboo floor.

They speak Karen here, as this is specifically and Karen village. They speak in turns, sometimes singing. We are all confused as to what is happening, until, of course, she states in English for us “let us pray together”. Of course, I am in Sunday mass. Now, I have never really been into sermons, but ones in languages I don’t understand are even more difficult to consider. I am patient, the others are not. We endure (and probably embarrass) ourselves for an hour. Then they cook a meal for us, served in the same room as the sermon. Fish paste and rice with deep fried chick pea brittle is our meal. They give it graciously; I eat what I can forcefully and with a smile. I finish off most of my food, and they hand us pamphlets in Burmese to convert us to Christianity.

We begin our trek back towards the vehicles. We rummage for props, Jo tries to decide on a stage. We find an empty house that is perfect. The “shave and a haircut” call is made; we are all on one page. The show begins….

There are only those who saw us unload our trucks whom are with us to watch the show. There are maybe 100 people, but more hear the music and start coming around. We all try to disperse through the crowd as we normally do. I look up to see sayings above our heads, most of which I cannot understand, but one in English stands out. The paper is brown with age, almost like it’s been on fire and reads “Tide and time wait for no man”. I wonder what it means to me in this moment, here in a Karen Village, and I wonder what it means to them.

Garret and I MC off the top to get them excited while last minute ideas are shared among the team. The set list is stuck up and Curly is on. His magic act is so cute and has so many silly jokes in it. The formula is classic, but he pulls it off with style and confidence. They love him. He emits this air of “the cool guy”. He makes the magic cube appear with his volunteer and he’s off. Jo goes on with her super energetic sticky hoops act (I can’t get it off, oh no, get this thing off me!) and the room begins to feel smaller. People keep coming in, making our front row closer and closer. It is a good thing the hoop act was at the beginning! People start hanging off the rafters and completely closing the door by sitting in the entrance. I make a call out to everyone, we all have to come in to stand on stage the whole show or we wouldn’t get on stage. Anna-Lena and Thomas do their partner poi act. They begin with the chase to get the hat, and then steal each others swinging poi. They eventually have two pairs and and rocking it side by side. Andrea is sitting among the audience and is getting really upset. As our audience encroaches on our space it is difficult to gage how much space one has. Thomas was a millimeter away from them!

This tight space brings the energy of the room up a notch. Everyone is dying to see now and is pushing into every last spot of the room. Floor to ceiling there are people and more out the doors, then more at the windows in the back. They laugh at all our jokes, they are with us all the way! As shy as these people are, they have caught the excitement in the room and are with our every step. The whole sparkle crew is in the back clapping hands, blowing bubbles or holding puppets. The love every move, and, oh I have to get my things, I am on!

I am a little shakey off the bat, as my hat distracts me as it falls off with my head throw. I still got it, but I have to keep my energy up! I enjoy the flow of my act. I have done this so many times this month that it feels just like something I do. I start my 2 ball sequence. This is a bunch of isolation’s with stage balls, and for once, the crowd gets it! The clap and cheer, they think it’s hilarious! Wow! Great! Then to 3 and 4, and I do my joke hesitations for the end 5 ball trick. The scary part is I don’t always land it. This one I DO! YAY. It was totally fun and exciting. I felt the love when the clapped. The spotlight is passed to Ariel and her heart hoops. Wow, she is uber cute. Giving away her hearts until she is too sad and needs them back (but can’t get them!)
.

We end off our show with the usual, Americano choreography and everyone is so excited! Thunderous applause was followed with a dance party (getting everyone up and dancing). Of course, this is the difficult part as people are so scared of play in these regions. The super shy “get me out of here” face when they are forced to have fun is a juxtaposition to my theory of life.

We pack up and begin to drive again. This time we are going to our second show of the day, but we are tired. After the second show we take a long drive back to our guesthouse in Mae Sot. We take a long awaited luke warm shower (a luxury!) and return again to eat at Casa Mia. It is like a home away from home at this point, and I was quite happy for the day of rest that followed.

We had a few more schools to attend. Again, all of them were fun, all of us were tired, many of us sick and all of us really on the edge of burn out. We had one last destination which we all looked forward to: Nu Po refugee camp. This camp is an 8 hour drive from our Mae Sot locations, up the same roads we took on the ride to Burma. I slept a good chunk of the way.

We stopped 2/3′s of the way up at a small hotel, so we could get to the camp in the morning. All of the hoopers had received their new LED hoops and were rocking out with their new toys. I was on my computer, editing photos and videos to go online.

After one hour of leaving our hotel the next morning, we arrive, dusty and motion sick at the gate of the camp. Everyone at the gates stare, our response is to blow bubbles through the “windows” as Jo takes care of the details. We drive our truck in way past the point where we stayed last year, and the people stand and stare at the clown cars. What freaks we must be! So white, yet so colorful as a group. I cannot imagine what they think of us. NeelaGay (good afternoon in Karen) is all we know how to say. We smile, wave, say hello. They are shyly waving back as we drive through.

Our site is reached. We will stay segregated, boys in one room, girls in the other. Even the husband and wife are split up! We set up our sleeping gear; we put on our clown face and prepare for the day show, the night show and lunch and dinner. We have a big day ahead!
We walk as a large group through the camps. We walk through windy hard packed dirt paths behind the houses on wooden stilts. We immediately attract a large following of children whom walk with us. The path meets the larger road we came in on, and our host leads us to a cafe near to where we came in. Our crew takes over nearly the whole cafe and we sit on baby chairs at a small table on a dirt floor. The hosts are very happy to see us, and we order a slew of very foreign deep fried foods. I eat very little and try to take in my surroundings.
Everything is covered in dust. There are old posters of kittens in baskets on the bamboo walls, and this place has no doors or window coverings. The roof is thatched with brush. I am reminded of my grandmother’s barn, where she held all the old items from my mom’s childhood. This is not unlike the dust covered 60′s memorabilia I found as a child. We are certainly the shiniest thing found in the camp.

We take a walk from the cafe to the sight which we performed last year. It’s a large open soccer field, with mountainous walls and huge trees surrounding it. There are 2 stages. One is to the right, its cement and had a back drop of a bamboo wall. The other is a dirt mound to the left, next to the mountain. We use the dirt for our day show. Unlike last year, our area is surrounded by garbage, broken down plastic and glass. It looks although this area has had a few camp fires. It is rumored that this area is where people go to party/cause fights at night, and the look of the site reflects this. The children whom have followed us seem to have no trouble playing in it, shoeless and all. So we continue to play as safe as we can as Andrea and Jo make the next decision on when to start the show.

I am sent onto the dirt stage to start warming up the kids. I give them everything I have got in the form of the Chicken Dance, Americano and cotton eye Jo. I teach them these dances and try to break them out of the shell. We have a very small audience compared to the year before, only a hundred. That’s about when a goat herder went through the field and crossed over our audience with 100 goats!
The actual show begins with Garret and Fleasy doing a strange version of a native style of hooping. The stage is in the round, but most of our audience is on the side facing the mountains, and many of the children are climbing the hills to get the best view. Off and on again on stage, I am breathless and filled with joy. I laugh backstage to myself. I enjoyed watching the kids enjoy the show.
We split the kids into groups, I begin in the juggling workshop, but because of the lack of kids I am able then to get up on my stilts with Ariel. I LOVE Stilting! It’s super fun. I went to each and every workshop and played with each toy while on stilts. This is about when a herd of cows came through the workshops! They really don’t like devil sticks. They had their backs up at us, but seemed to find their way through the new found maze we’d given them to the other side. The kids thought the stilting was be great and took great pleasure in throwing as many balls as they could up so I could catch them, or not. At nearly 4pm, our call had come, it’s time to pack up and go to get ready to spin some fire! WOOT.

This show was our longest, most fun and most beautiful show met with thousands of new faces. I had many parts in it because of MCing with Jonny. It was great working with him, hyping up the crowd, trying to get them to make noise. We had a translator too, which is always fun. This one in particular was very helpful in the fact that he joined us in our excitement, yelling with us, helping us to get them all to chant the word for fire! There were a few confusions, but everyone was super happy to be performing on the team, and everyone was super happy to watch the crazy people with fire. The people were so far back that apparently and they were asking how they found such tall women to be a part of their circus!
Here is a video of our finale which shows how grand our show became.

We jammed for many hours on that stage, as it is a safe place to play, we have the fuel and we are still pumped and ready for action. We play and play until we can’t any longer. We pack up and head back to our bunker for the night.

About half of us stayed in the camp for a few days. We played music and hooped and danced and played. Approx 30 children followed us everywhere. In particular, we befriended a little six toed girl whom shadowed our every move. One walk with Ariel through the camps and she followed us the whole way! We tried to suggest she stay behind, but language barriers do not bode well for this type of situation. She was super sweet, and when we returned she disappeared! Oh wait, no, there is her mother scolding her for wandering. Oops.

She found us again at dinner and we gave her some food. She was ravishing! She ate all she could, and we gave her all our leftovers for later. She had 2 shirts she wore the time we were there, both ragged and dirty. They got cleaner, but it didn’t last long. She was the sweetest girl. She stood by the gates of where we stayed waiting for us in the morning or at night. She tried to come in many times. She was fully obsessed with us.
Once we had woken up on our last day, packed our trucks, donated the remainder of our items and began to drive away she followed. She followed through the winding roads to the gate. She waited for us to check out. She followed us past the gate, a bunch of stickers in hand, starting to run towards the car as it got faster. We got to the paved road and she ran and stopped then ran again as she became tired. We passed the last check point as she tried to follow. She was swallowed by a dust cloud and you could see her submit to defeat. We were gone. I swear we broke that child’s heart.

The drive home again, windy, but not as long as I had expected. I listened to old school jungle tracks all the way home. There was an after party at the bar next door. We drank and cheered. We played and watched videos of our acts. Most of the crew left at 8am the next morning to go to Chiang Mai. Fleasy, Jonny, and Team family were left with me until the night to go to Bangkok. Again, listening to music on the bus, I watched the burning forests pass by all night. We all arrived at a hotel at 6am and slept for days.

Having never worked with children with disabilities before, I didn’t know what to expect. But wow, what a day! The twelve children who were there were incredibly receptive, open and so excited to see us. Some children had obvious physical palsy, one little boy was blind, another had Downs syndrome…but honestly, they played and laughed and danced (break danced!) with as much energy and enthusiam as any kids I’ve seen.

One little boy, about 3 years old, would not stop hugging me, tugging on my skirt to pick him up, kissing me on the cheek and generally wanting to be with me at all times. Looking into his shining eyes and feeling his joy and excitement just completely overwhelmed me with a feeling of pure love.

In the last few weeks we have brought so much joy to thousands of children with our magical circus shows, our workshops, the toys we leave and the beautiful fire shows we put on. But often it is those small moments of connection – a hug, a blowing of bubbles, the tying on of a friendship bracelet or the blowing of a kiss – that gives these children the feeling of being unique, special and valued.

We have just one week of Spark Circus left, and it’s a hectic one. We’re going to a Karen village this weekend, which is actually in Burma, and from the sounds of things, it is extremely poor and very very basic. It’s a place where Karen and Burmese people have settled out of necessity, after being driven out of own villages elsewhere by the military junta. They can’t even return home when the military moves on, as the junta leaves land mines behind. It’s horrific and so commonplace – the most prevalent injuries seen in the nearby Mae Tao clinic is amputations of legs and arms due to land mines.

After doing a show for the village and the school there, we will head off to Nu Po refugee camp to do a show for the thousands in the camp. It will be another amazing, fun and heart wrenching experience, and I’m so so grateful I have the opportunity to be here sharing our skills, love and joy with the people.

If you have donated to Spark Circus, I thank you so much, your support is so appreciated. And if you would like to donate, please go to www.livelovehoop.com/spark and use the paypal link. We need funds to help us pay for blankets that we will donate to the village and camp after we leave.

Love love love to you all,

Jo

More than half our time has passed now and I am currently enjoying with passion my day off. We have been working our little bootys off to spread the bliss. Almost every day we have made visits to schools, hospitals, and orphanages, exploding from our trucks with stickers, bubbles, magic tricks and a ton of energy! Blowing their minds like a crazy alien species that just beamed down on a rainbow…we proceed to put on a 40 min show of all our wonderful circusy acts, then teach them a range a the circus skills including hooping, poi spinning, balancing, staff spinning, and juggling, skills which increases hand eye coordination and right-left brain communication. Some of these kids have been enjoying our visits for several years now and have been improving their skills with the donation kits of toys we leave everywhere we go, and they are bursting to show us their improvements. We paint faces, play games, have dance parties and much more. We connect, we show the kids that there is a big full world out there that cares about them not matter how small they may be or how hard its been for them, we look eye to eye with them as we tie a friendship bracelet on their tiny wrists to show them that the world has gifts for them, we inspire them to be more than their situation has told them that they have to be, we spread bliss. Our evenings are spent doing fire or light shows for some of the schools, the community, or upcoming shows in some of the refugee camps, we where even privliged enough to do a show in a temple last week with all the young monks as our audience! I have been brought to tears on a nearly daily basis in full gratitude to get to take part in such a special experience.

Imagine the most fun you ever had in your life, the games you played as a child, the toys that you had, your creativity growing and expanding and what figures took part in that expansion. Now imagine your life in a refugee camp, you where born here, everything is brown and gray scale. Your toys are nothing more that pieces of bamboo, dirt, and your imagination. Most of these kids will never know anything outside of these walls, and when we arrive in their lives we get to bring them tools to expand that imagination beyond these political, social, and physical barriers. Imagination can take them anywhere and we are bringing the fuel to ignite this in them. Yesterday after a particularly exhausting day at a school with over 400 hundred schools, a day spent chasing really high energy kids in blazing heat, I had a moment during our final dance party with the kids while I had the realization that it was the pure energy and joy of the kids was the only thing that kept me moving at that point on the brink of total exhaustion,  and that the pure intention behind this kind of work can assist in great things, one smile at a time.