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Clowning Not Swimming to Cambodia |
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by Susan Parenti
Email: sparenti (nospam) uiuc.edu (unverified!) |
09 Feb 2004
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We are 'humanitarian clowns' which means we use the antics of clowning for purposes of social change. Like activists and medical practitioners, we move towards(not away from) suffering, trying to lessen it, clowning in checkpoints and refugee camps, as well as hospitals and orphanages. In the airport we arrive in full clown costume and clown with the airline staff, waiting passengers, and at the security stations (NOT in the US, we'd be guillotined). Pain? Boredom? Deadly serious power over? Here we come. We try. I'm an accordionist, a beginning clown. I consider what we do a political act. |
VIGNETTE 1: Clowning, Not Swimming, to Cambodia *
36 hours to get to Cambodia from Washington DC(4 planes). I grumbled to the other clowns: Why do we have to go so far in order to clown with suffering people? Seems like the US is full of them, we can stay right here.
Who are we? We are 'humanitarian clowns' which means we use the antics of clowning for purposes of social change. Like activists and medical practitioners, we move towards(not away from) suffering, trying to lessen it, clowning in checkpoints and refugee camps, as well as hospitals and orphanages. In the airport we arrive in full clown costume and clown with the airline staff, waiting passengers, and at the security stations (NOT in the US, we'd be guillotined). Pain? Boredom? Deadly serious power over? Here we come. We try. I'm an accordionist, a beginning clown. I consider what we do a political act.
On this trip, we were 13 people: 11 clowns(2 from Italy), 2 camera men from Chile (who couldnât resist clowning at times).
In the Phnom Peng airport, a French journalist angrily said to our clown group,"I don't know how you Americans have the nerve to come to Cambodia. Are you aware the US bombed this country for 180 days, night and day? That bombing ruined the irrigation system that had been so carefully set up here for centuries??!!"
I recognized in his voice a performance that I would have done, too, if I were him: helpless anger, accusation, in confronting the revolting innocence of the perpetrators. "Yup, yessirree, we're just a bunch of carefree americans going on a tour of this here oriental country, heard it was cheap, women are purty, gee did people die here, don't know anything bout that, lots of old feuds I guess, barbarians fighting barbarians,I'm an american, I pay alot for my ignorance, yup".
So the French journalist was right to be mad. Right on, brother.
Only in this case, I told him we WERE aware; we humble clowns went to places to counteract the damage done by our bullying country. He was mollified, almost friendly. I think the sheer fact that Americans KNEW about the US bombing in the 1970s, was a relief to him.
When we finally arrived in Phnom Penh, the country took my eyes: the streets wildly busy with motorbike travel(up to 6 people on one bike) ,the people seeming small to me, slender, graceful, and not pugnacious. A common Cambodian greeting gesture: people put their hands together to their chest in a prayerlike position, which looks like a gentle "At your service" gesture.
How could one out of four people have been killed in this country, mostly by Cambodians themselves (Khmer Rouge soldiers) in the time period between 1970 and 1979? (Violence did continue until 1995).
Statistics I was told: In 2003, 60% of the population is under age 24; and of that, 50% are under age 15, a consequence of the terrible last 30 years of the country. 1 out of 4 people were killed in the time period between 1970-1995, partly as a consequence of US foreign policies( excuse me, I mean the foreign policies that the US people do not know about but the men in power do) which killed between 300,000 to one and a half million people, and partly as a consequence of the dictator Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. 24% of the women can read; 36 % of the men can read. There is 80% poverty, with people living on 60 cents a day. Rachel Snyder, our guide, said: Women and children have no rights. There is law, but no justice. Cambodia is riddled with corruption (but who will solve this riddle, who?).
Beggars all over, some sliding on the ground when without legs. The voices of beggars , of shop women in the market, trying to get your attention(your 50 cents, their food, their survival).
What if you were too shy to beg? To starve from shyness.
(There is a story by Chekhov of a starving father and son, and the father too ashamed to beg, and starving son who on a dare eats oysters fed him by rich men).
Financially, our trip was sponsored by the actress Angelina Jolie, mother of an adopted Cambodian child, refugee camp visitor, and poster child for UNHCR(United Nations High Commission for Refugees). Organizationally, the trip was sponsored by Patch Adams and Wildman Adams of the Gesundheit! Institute, who both did a huge amount of detail work to bring 13 people to Cambodia, and who had the vision for it.
On the first morning of our visit, we visited the actual 'killing fields' and the prison camp where thousands of Cambodians were murdered. I was grateful to our guides Rachel and Paul for starting the trip this way---showing us the traces of suffering created by power over and violence. Though visiting hospitals also puts us into contexts of suffering, illness is quite another thing from avoidable humanly-caused misery. And that we witnessed. A detail I can't forget: we were shown a tree against which babies were killed---in order to save precious bullets, the Khmer Rouge battered the babies against the tree until they died. "In order to save precious bullet".
We visited children with AIDS(Cambodia has the highest rate of AIDS in Asia) people who had been hurt by landmines, children who had birth defects(some a result of the chemicals used in warfare). We clowned in a huge school(formerly a factory) for street children where they learn trades. The organization that runs this school has 3 parts: one part is out in the streets trying to help the children, the second part is the running of the school, and third part is follow-up work to keep the children in jobs and not going back into the streets(they said this was the hardest part---drugs, despair, and poverty working more quickly than education). We ate in a a fine restaurant, run by street kids.
The strangest sight, the one my eyes won't easily digest, was our clowning at a school which is IN the City dump for the children who scavenge in the City Dump. As a huge number of kids spend their lives in the City dump looking through the huge 30 feet high mounds of garbage for salvageable things to sell, this French agency set up a school right there, IN the dump. When our bus of clowns arrived, hundreds of smudged and semi-naked kids ran towards us. Normally I bend down, accordion to my chest, to meet the eye level of the kids. In this place, I was so overwhelmed by anger(hiding inside was grief), I couldn't meet the eyes of the children. I couldn't look at any one of them directly.In the background were the mountains of garbage smoking with dust, with little figures on them (the kids) Who is to take care?
Eating a nice dinner in a hotel, and the dinner's cost is $2.00. What is this? My stinginess gratified(wow, a bargain), my brain kept thinking, What? What? What?
take care? maybe the garbage is taking care.
Who is to take care?
It's tricky, this 'humanitarian clowning'---my impression is so strong when I'm there, the desire to help so strong, and then I come home, and Christmas in this country is brewing, I get a stomache flu and other things happen, and there I am. TV and newspapers smirk at me in their slick grind of producing one more day of expensively calculated ignorance.
*(reference to the movie Swimming to Cambodia, made in 1987 by Spalding Gray, while he was working on the movie, the Killing Fields. Swimming to Cambodia is worth seeing).
VIGNETTE 2: Cambodia, political analysis
Why? Why did genocide happen to/in Cambodia?
This question 'why' arises strongly if you're thinking while you're in Cambodia. The people seem especially unwarlike. The history is horrible. These last two statements, put together, don't make sense.
The explanations for the 'why' constantly point to Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, and very rarely mention the US or other countries.
I don't trust the question 'why'. Why? (ahem...errr, whoops, walked into my own trap). Herbert Brun was more interested in the results of the question 'when', than in 'why'. 'Why' is answered by means of 'because','when' is answered in terms of specifying conditions. ---not 'why was there genocide', but 'when does genocide happen'?
If it was Pol pot and the Khmer Rouge who killed all the people, then under what conditions could this have happened?
When does genocide happen? Under which conditions? ------------------------ Wilhelm Reich, in his book The Mass Psychology of Fascism, proposes that an analysis of a problem needs to contain (in its language and logic) a way OUT of the problem. (And he tries to tackle his own mandate, in that book. It's really something).
Visiting cambodia, hearing how peopIe talked about the terrible situation in the past, I was reminded of my previous year's visit to Israel/Palestine and, earlier, to Serbia/Croatia. In all three visits, I had been with a humanitarian clowning troupe of very good-hearted, intelligent people. Yet I noticed that we all accepted what I now call the 'evil leader/feuding groups' analysis/pattern.
About all three countries, there is one pattern to what's said by mass media, and thus, by most people:
(the following is NOT what I say, but what I've heard said); What's said #1: "In all three countries (Yugoslavia, Israel/Palestine, Cambodia) the trouble is internal,factions fighting with one another, with a long previous history that's terribly complicated". (kind of like a political version of the medical world 'pre-existing conditions' phrase).
What's said #2: "There is an evil man at the center of it, whose behavior can not be explained in any other way except to say he is an evil monster". (this is not said with Israel/palestine, but certainly with Milosevich in Yugoslavia, and Pol Pot in Cambodia)
What's said #3--or actually, what is NOT said: 3." While we're aware that the US, NATO, transnationals wield a huge amount of bullying power in the world, they have had played a minor role in the murderous conflicts in these countries. In the case of Yugoslavia, we were actually helping out those barbarous people".
------ I look at those two things said, and connect them to the last thing, unsaid. I maintain that things said #1 and #2 are said as plausibilities, to prevent people from investigating the role of US, NATO, transnationals. Things #1 and #2 are "cover stories".
Does the evil man/feuding groups analysis enable us to NOT repeat the situation in cambodia, yugoslavia, and the continued situation in palestine/israel? What do we learn from such an analysis and its langauge? Never to allow evil men to be leaders? Hmm, I don't know if it's just me, but looking at the current constituency of world leadership, umm...err...
In Michael Parenti's book on Yugoslavia, he points out that up til 1990, Yugoslavia was a thriving socialist country where all the so-called feuding groups lived relatively peaceably with one another. So why did the groups start feuding after 1990? He asserts that US/European interests wanted to destroy and divide socialist Yugoslavia, and accomplished that by initially seeding the feuds, arming the bullies, and inflaming the situation. Then US media bombarded the world with the evil man/feuding groups language, as a cover story that all the believers, I mean readers, would accept.
'Cover story' is, I think, short for the words 'cover-up' story. A cover-up story is constructed to be so plausible that people believe they've understand what's going on and thus don't need to question further. There's a look of satisfied understanding---a kind of "OK, I get it, you don't need to go any further". Thus what's actually going on, isn't looked for or at. Cover-up stories have to be plausible and believable. Herbert Brun wrote an article called Against Plausibility, pointing out the power of plausbility in preventing people from experiencing music composed under experimental conditions.
Joshua Meyrowitz, a media whistle blower/Amherst professor of media studies and friendly guy I met while stumping for Kucinich, writes, "Historically, US adminstrations have decided on military actions they wanted to take,and then invented the stories that the Congress and the public needed to believe to support the actions".
The stories that people need to believe to support the actions.
Isn't the evil man/feuding groups a story we need to believe?It's a plausible cover up that enables us to remain ignorant of the when--when, under what conditions, does a country become genocidal? Wilhelm Reich, Herbert Brun---help. And anyone else out there--help. What could be an analysis of this problem that can lead us to solve it, not repeat it? I'm not particularly looking for references for more books to read, but for ideas and formulations that you may have. Susan
VIGNETTE #3: TALKING WITH A WORLD BANK-MAN, in Cambodia (Slapstick!)
On a leisurely boat trip from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap with all the clowns, Patch, Heidi, and I met an American living in Cambodia who "works for the World Bank" he told us casually.
Patch:"What?? You work for that piece of shit organization? Are you aware of what organizations like the World Bank and WTO and IMF are doing to countries? Look, I'd better not even try to talk to you, I'll get too angry.â
Patch rushes off.
Heidi, eavesdroppingly sewing, and I, stay.
Patch's performance was one that I would have given, had he not gotten there before me: fury. I know few people reading this will agree with me here. There's an idea among those of us who oppose the status quo, that when you meet someone whose views(and work and organizations and values) you oppose, you should have a strategically friendly conversation with them in order to educate them etc etc.
Well, fury is OK by me. As ONE of the possible performances. It's not pleasant to be the object of, but it's pretty unforgetable. People who have boiled at me, I sure remember. Maybe it won't teach anything, but who says one has to be a teacher all the time? Maybe being an unforgetable âboilerâ is more desirable these days than being a forgetable teacher. Maybe itâs time for more fiery dragons, and not so many friendly dogs. (for those who know me, this reeks of self-justification!)
Conversation continues. (This next part could be labled, IT PAYS TO STUDY AT HOME)
As Patch had already performed fury(or left before it really burst open) I thought I'd try another performance: discussion.
In a mild voice (really)I took up the discussion with the guy(with Heidi sewingly eavesdropping). It helped to have Heidi there as a witness. I wanted to look good to her.
Susan:"The World Bank's structural adjustment programs are good for transnational owners/investors, lousy for the poor in any country."
World Bank Man:"I disagree. In Cambodia, there's been a huge garment factory industry here. Isn't it better for the poor people in Cambodia that they earn $1 a day working in the Garment factories, than have no place to work at all and have to prostitute themselves just to eat?"
--But you, see, I was READY for that example--I had watched the skit on Structural Adjustment written by Danielle and Sehvilla; I had studied the 57 page booklet called Does Globalization Help the Poor?(put out by the International Forum on Globalization--excellent) I was prepared!
Susan:"The garment industries aren't here to help the poor people, but to take advantage of their poverty: cheap labor".
WBM: "OF course, I know their motives aren't altruistic. I'm just saying , they HELp the economy".
Susan:" But in five years, when standards of living and wages INCREASE in Cambodia, the factories will move out to the next devastated coutnry and leave the country worse off".
World Bank Man:"Well, that is true. But the people could save enough money now to tide them over later".
Susan: "Have you ever been to East Lansing Michigan?--had those people saved enough money when Ford moved overseas?"
WBM:"But the GNP has gone up in Cambodia as a result of garment factories".
I had studied with Michael Brun at SDAS---I KNEW all this crap about citing rising GNPs and GDPs as evidence of improving the standard of living for people in a country. I WAS READY!!!
Susan :"GNP only measures the market value of economic production---it doesn't describe the effects of clear-cutting of forests, or the over-all distribution of wealth!!It's no indication of improved standard of living for all people in the country!!"
At this point, to my amazement, the guy agreed. He changed his position--instead of defending the World Bank, he joined in the attack. WHAT?? HUH??
WBM:"Well, I agree with that . I've constantly told my organization (World Bank, in case anyone forgot) that there's NOT ENOUGH structural adjustment---yes, structural adjustment, but FROM what, TO what?? Did you know that Joseph Stiglitz, who was chief economist and vice president of world bank from 1997 to 2000, had stepped out the organization, with severe criticisms of it?" Susan, a little slow as I was beschnoodled at the whole turn of the conversation: "Well, yes, I HAD read that--"
WBM:"One of the main reasons I joined the World Bank was that as an environmentalist in my former life---"
Susan, still slow: "What? You were an environmentalist, but---"
WBM: "Yup, I was one of the good guys. Well, I hooked up with the World Bank because I had discovered that in countries where the GNP went up, the soil erosion factors also went up--so what good was GNP? I was furious that no one was making the connection. So I completely agree with your criticisms of GNP, there."
Pleasant chat ensued. How confusing. He even asked if he could get Patch's autograph, as Patch had seemed to him(in his words) "pretty pissed off at me before".
Life, glittering with sweet jagged chards of surprises.
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