Clowns

Feast of the Clowns Festival

This past week was the Tshwane Leadership Foundation’s eleventh annual Feast of the Clowns Festival, which I”ve been told is the biggest festival in Pretoria. It began last Monday with a series of free performances in the park organized by t Art Factory. Art Factory is a part of the TLF’s School of Creative Arts (SOCA), which I will now be working with! After some confusion I found out that I will working at the Potter’s House in the mornings and SOCA in the afternoons. More on that once my internship has really gotten under way.

Zee, who runs SOCA asked me to make fliers for the show, which I did happily. Later Robin and I had fun passing them out to everyone in the park. I was amazed at how eager people were to take a flier. If I handed one to someone in a group, every other person wanted one as well. I feel like people here are pretty game to participate in whatever’s happening.

The performances were amazing! There was poetry, music, hip hop with marimba (yeah, awesome), drama and vocal performances. Many of the participants were students at SOCA. Monday was also a holiday to celebrate Women’s Day, which is a part of women’s month. This meant that the park was packed with people, even more than usual. Anyone know why we don’t have Women’s Day in the U.S.? Let’s get on that.

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday both SOCA and the Policy and Advocacy Unit of TLF held workshops. Robin and I helped Zee with last minute details (of which there always seem to be plenty) and held down the fort for the workshops that were held at one of the many museums nearby. There were percussion, poetry, pantsula dancing (which is one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. I’ll try to upload a video), keyboard, guitar and clowning. They hired a professional clown to come in and show us how it’s done, since we’d all be clowns on Saturday. Let me just say that my fear of clowns has only increased since that workshop. Wednesday morning Robin and I attended the Re-branding homelessness workshop as well. There were people from all over the city with many different connections to homelessness, including some people who are currently homeless. It was mostly a brainstorming session to talk about how to deal with the government’s efforts to clean up the streets for the 2010 World Cup and how to creatively address the stereotypes of homeless people and bring a new awareness to the general public of the issues facing these people. I learned a lot and am excited to find a way to be a part of it.

The highlight of the Feast for me was the evening performances. They were all held at the State Theater in the slightly fancier part of Central Pretoria. A group of us walked to and from together, laughing and playing the whole way. Have I mentioned I already have some really great friends? Rebecca works with Stevens (our housemate) at the TLF’s homeless program. She is amazing and tons of fun. Then there’s Quentin and Brian who practically live at our house, considering how much time they spend here. And Sandile, whois such a sweetheart. I’ll be working with him at SOCA. So the group of us skipped, danced and ran to and from the concerts, which were all amazing. Tuesday two bands performed: Kwani Experience, who had been touring on the theme of Living without Fear, and the Four Seasons, a young and talented jazz band. I will buy a Kwani Experience CD as soon as I can. They were amazing! I danced until my side ached! Wednesday was the Soweto Gospel Choir, who performed at the Academy Awards this year. There are no words to describe how amazing they are! Colorful costumes, powerful voices, lively dancing. They sang songs in many languages and closed with “Oh Happy Day.” Please check them out on You Tube. You will be amazed. I decided I want to become a part of the choir someday. So afterward I asked a few of them how I could join and they said there are auditions. I then gave them a little demonstration of some of my dance moves, making a complete fool of myself. We then continued dancing our way home. Thurday night SOCA students performed “Blinding Sight,” a play addressing issues of homelessness, family issues, violence and race. We were all sad when it was over that we didn’t have another event to go to the next night.

Friday was spent mostly preparing for the Feast. Robin and I spent a lot of time with this great couple, making the posters for the parade. The husband is from the Netherlands and the wife from Columbia. We already have a date to play games one night. When there aren’t events to go to every night, the evenings can get kinda long and boring since walking around at night’s not too safe.

Saturday was the Feast itself. We arrived at 6:30am with our clown costumes on. I painted staff members’ faces all morning. Then the parade! We clowns led the parade holding our signs that had blind-folded clowns and had slogans like “Am I a foreigner?” “Am I HIV+?” “Am I a woman?” They were meant to confront people with the labels they put on others and question the appropriateness of those labels. We were followed by marching bands, groups of students from all sorts of schools and programs, all dancing and making tons of noise. I hear there were about three thousand people in the parade, which marched from Burgers Park to Church Square and back. Once the parade ended, the festival really began. The park was full of people eating from the many food stands, playing games, listening to music and other performances at four different stages. And of course there was face painting! Face painting always is crazy when you offer it freely to hoards of children, but this was at times out of control. As fun as the day was, it was also a glimpse of reality. There were some incidents that made us realize the real threat of crime and the importance of being careful with guys. By the time I was done face painting at 5pm, I was ready to go home. But we all stayed through the evening performances and cleaned up afterwards. 10pm felt like 2am. We were supposed to go out with some friends afterwards, but Robin and I both decided we were just too tired. I have realized how different the rhythm here is. It’s going to take some getting used to this mix of hurry up and wait.