WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE?
The group of 6 people (now 5 cause one of us decided to come back home) from USA, UK, Ireland and Poland is training with acrobats and youth in circus space called Sarakasi. The project we take part in takes place for 13 years already and each year different crew is coming here to share their knowledge with local artists and street children in the slums.
Kenyan acrobats have an amazing drive to train and they seem to have no fear and never get tired! During our everyday warm up at 9a.m. they are doing front rolls, back rolls, cartwheels, walk-overs, handsprings, hand to hand and two-high on a floor without any matress or spotting. For me it was shocking in the beginning HOW CAN YOU NOT BE SCARED? But after 3 weeks of working with them I understood that this is just how they are used to train. And the fact that they have any safe space to do all these crazy jumps is better than having nothing. Working with them is teaching me to appreciate all the comfort of an european life. Moreover, their attitude during training is unbelievable. "JUST TRY" - we hear it each time any doubts about our acrobatic skills are filling us with fear. This is how they learn here - if you don't have a coach that will teach you the technique,you have to keep on trying and at some point it will work. Seeing everyday the inner power of those extremely strong acrobats is giving me a lesson of pushing myself to achieve the impossible and never give up.
During the project we are focusing on sharing with them our knowledge about professional performing, building the characters and preparing a show. We are teaching them clowning, hooping, staff, Theatre, juggling and proper acrobatics technique. It is challenging and interesting at the same time. Importance of our cooperation is based on bringing parts of the artistic world that for us is an everyday reality to the performers that have really minimal contact with anything else than building complicated acrobatics pyramids.
Except the acrobats training, we are working with few organisation that provide after school classes in slums and are working with street children - educating them, taking care of their health and reclaiming them. This work for me is an experience that is changing the way of looking at all life aspects from completely different perspective.
When it comes to running classes with street children it is easy to notice that they have gone through some strong experiences in their lives. Some of them have many scars and burns. Some of them are glue addicts, so during any activity they would stay with the coca cola bottle filled with shoe glue in their mount or in their pockets.
Some children in the slum areas are only walking barefoot, wearing very dirty clothes that you can tell haven't been washed for a long time. All this from distance looks really miserable. However, we are coming there with the power of circusy happiness that is giving us the access to these children's Play Space, to their world of fun and laughter where the conditions don't make any difference.
Seeing these children rolling in muddy ground, running around in the area surrounded with trash and playing with each other regardless the age is a great confirmation of the fact that our happiness depends only on our perspective. Because of someone from outside of those poor areas or from richer countries, the conditions that Kenyan children are growing in might seem terrifying. But for them it is just everyday reality that with all it's dirt and hunger does not exclude enjoying the time with friends.
While teaching these children juggling and playing circus games they are sharing smiles and hugs with everyone around. Their laughter sends sparkles all over and reminds us of our biggest purpose: to start the fire of smiles :)
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