Well.
To think it´s been a week since I last wrote something is bizarre. So much has happened. I nearly had a fist fight with one of the kids, I got severely lost in Cali trying to get the bus on my own, I have started a personal battle against mosquitoes, the current score is Mosquitoes 532 Greg 5, but I can feel a miraculous comeback surfacing anytime in the next week or so, and the kids organised a big crisis meeting for the house all on their own.Oh and two more things, had my first barbecue and went on my first fiesta Colombian style.
Pero, before I commence, check out this link, its the graduates from the circus school and the show is just incredible and its going to be in london in March!! Oh my how lucky for everyone in London, it was a sell out run last year so hurry and book now to avoid disapointment.
Pero, before I commence, check out this link, its the graduates from the circus school and the show is just incredible and its going to be in london in March!! Oh my how lucky for everyone in London, it was a sell out run last year so hurry and book now to avoid disapointment.
It was an absolutely brilliant night. We started off by going to a show called Delirio. Oh my god what a show. It´s four hours of Circus, Salsa and live music.It´s partnered with Circo Para Todos, the circus school I am working with out here, so I had many friends in the show and managed to get back stage and watch them all practice. Fabian the man who I was staying with when I first arrived in Cali was one of the main acts and truly brilliant, the man is a great teacher but it was very exciting to see that he is also an incredible technician, he did one areal routine with a very beautiful woman called Melissa that was fairly spectacular. I had no idea what to expect from this show so when I heard it was four hours long needless to say I was a little bit worried. However along with 1´000 other people I was on the edge of my seat for four hours. With Salsa!! I was wowed for four hours by Salsa!!! I was also pleasantly surprised that every break the majority of the audience would get up on stage and start dancing salsa as well. Please reference picture above. I turned to a woman I was with and said wow isnt that amazing everyone is dancing in the interval and she said "well of course, you see the salsa it gets in your blood and you need to dance as well" I said that would never happen in England "why not?" she said, I started to try and explain in my quite limited spanish the social constraints that might limit mid show boogying but fortunately the show started again and all was forgotten in the melee of legs flying and hips girating. The speed and skill with which these people dance salsa is absolutely unbelievable. . Oh my lord I have never seen so many beautiful women in one place at the same time. I am seriously considering becoming a professional salsarer.
So when that show finished at midnight there was a few hours in the big top with a dj where everybody danced salsa. Obviously. And when that was finished we went off to a bar and danced the salsa, the chacha, meringue and I threw in a bit of techno just for good measure. There was a point where I tried to go home and Fabian took me by the arm and said "why are you going?" well I´m teaching all day tomorrow and I don´t know how long it will take me to get home etc etc etc he stopped me and said "sit down and enjoy yourself, you´re staying at my house and you can go home tomorrow when you need to start the class" I sat down. I thought here I am, in Cali, with a really lovely group of people, I can either worry that I have work tomorrow and try and reserve energy or I can just enjoy the moment. I poured another beer and had an absolutely brilliant time. You can see from the picture we all had a great time. We danced and danced and danced it was lovely. I think because I am out here for such a specific reason I often need to give myself permission to kick back and relax. Which now I write it down is a little bit crazy. I have lots of work to do but I need to keep myself sane as well. One thing is for certain Calenia´s (people from Cali) definitely know how to party, wow.
So on to the reunion. Last saturday we were having the most epic clean up of the theatre. When I arrived it was in a real mess as you can see from the pictures before and so it´s been a long road to cleanliness ever since really. As you can see I spent a long time underneath the stage sweeping. There was a point where I looked at where I was, hunched over in the dark with a really small broom and I couldn´t stop laughing, and then one of the kids who was under the stage with me starting doing frog impressions and that was me gone I was a complete mess. And yes you are right that is a toilet under the stage, don´t ask I have no idea, there was all sorts of nonsense under that stage. It was all going really well, lots of joviality, lots of children helping, we had just about finished and set up the projector for the saturday night film. Every saturday they set up a big screen and show a film for the kids. Before this alot of these kids had never seen a film before, its quite special. Nia one of the women volunteers said "where´s my phone?" and fortunately it had been stolen. I say fortunately because what followed was really really special. John Hairo the director of the theatre went balistic, apparently it was the fifth item that had been stolen alongside three other phones, a camera and a part of a computer. "No more classes no more nothing until Nia has a new phone!" Well the kids came up trumps.
In the picture from the left is Jonathon, Alex and Nia. 
In Alex´s hand is a collection box for a new phone for Nia. Jonathon and Alex had decided something needed to be done and that they were going to be the ones who did it. They single handedly organised a meeting with John Hairo and as many of the kids as were available. We were all sitting up in the theatre the younger kids and John Hairo in the audience and the older kids on the stage. To my extreme annoyance I understood very little of what was being said, everybody was talking very fast. However the translation the came round to me at the end was this. Child after child gushing about how important this place was for every single child that was in that room. How it has affected their life and how they want to help keep it running. The meeting ended with round after round of applause and what was close to hysteria. The photo´s don´t really do justice to what was a very special athmosphere and one that I hope I will remember for a very long time.
In Alex´s hand is a collection box for a new phone for Nia. Jonathon and Alex had decided something needed to be done and that they were going to be the ones who did it. They single handedly organised a meeting with John Hairo and as many of the kids as were available. We were all sitting up in the theatre the younger kids and John Hairo in the audience and the older kids on the stage. To my extreme annoyance I understood very little of what was being said, everybody was talking very fast. However the translation the came round to me at the end was this. Child after child gushing about how important this place was for every single child that was in that room. How it has affected their life and how they want to help keep it running. The meeting ended with round after round of applause and what was close to hysteria. The photo´s don´t really do justice to what was a very special athmosphere and one that I hope I will remember for a very long time.
Some of the older kids. Pablo is the boy lying on his back. I will come back to him later so keep him in your mind.
Once the general meeting had finished the older ones all stayed behind with John Hairo to agree a plan of action. They all decided that they would team together and organise the repairs that needed doing and raise the money for this new phone. All fairly special from a group of kids who have next to nothing. Jonathon on the far left is a really special young man. I don´t know the story fully with his dad but when I asked if he missed him he said no, its much better now he is gone. He has a younger brother and a mother who seems to work non-stop, the younger brother had epilepsy so is permanently with his mother just incase. Jonathon is 19 and so generous and hard working it is unbelievable. He applies himself so fully to every little job and cares so much about doing it well. He has a level of respect for everything that I am finding inspirational, he is teaching me about what it is to do something properly. I like him alot and it gets to me that there are no opportunities for such an incredible young man. I want to give him as much confidence and skills as I can because if anybody deserves a better life it is him. It´s so frustrating because I feel this so strongly but just can´t put it into words, I hope you get the gist.
So, Pablo. I´ll start at the very beginning. There is a boy. His name is Pablo. He is 16. He is an extremely physical young man, good looking, impressive physique, a brilliant acrobat, always has cool clothes, generally cool. All of the younger kids look up to him, all of the older girls fancy him and all of the older boys laugh at his jokes whether they like them or not. The problem is this: he is very violent and lacks any idea of respect. At the beginning he was fine and I don´t know entirely what has happened but we have got to a stage where he was coming into the theatre where I am working, pushing other kids around, stealing things, messing the place up and generally trying to provoke a reaction. When he got the reaction he would then speak really quickly in spanish and say what all of the kids here call a grosseria (naughty words) which is a much bigger deal here than in England. This was going on for a while and I was trying all sorts of different tactics to deal with it, some of them working but some of them complete failures. He was rude again the other day so I said no stilts. This is where the problem began. He proceeded to get stilts and to put them on so I said to him, "you put those stilts on and I take everyone else off, no more unicycle no more stilts for anybody today" he looked at me, looked at the worried faces of his friends and made the decision. They have a phrase in spanish which translates as testing the oil. When you are around somebody new you test the oil, see what kind of a person they are. Pavlo decided to test the oil. What resulted was a scuffle which ended with me bending this kids thumb back and kneeling on him so that I could get the stilts back. I then walked round like robocop taking disgruntled child after disgruntled child off their stilts. No one was happy. I found Pavlo later and took him up to the theatre just me and him. I said "Pavlo I´m not going to go on like this, you do all of this because you want a reaction, cause you want a fight but I´m not going to fight you" (I said this but I was umming and erring as to whether the best option wasn´t to just catch him on his own and fight him once and be done with it) He pleaded his inocence saying he was never rude, I reminded him how he had told me to fuck off the night before swore at me this morning and threatened to shoot me the day before. He was silent. I said to him "either fight me or stop all of this because it´s not what I´m here for, I can´t teach anybody else when you´re like this". He started to say something quickly in spanish, I didnt understand, we spent a while trying to understand eachother, me sure he was trying to wind me up and him getting more and more insistent until eventually I understood that he was saying he was going to stop. I don´t know how long this will last but since then he has been brilliant, calm, respectful even sometimes apologetic in his manor. He has helped clean up, repaired seats and helped me teach stilts. He is still violent with other kids and rude but that is just his way, turns out he has a very abusive father which makes sence for alot of things. He is also 16, very strong and going through alot that he doesn´t really understand. Hopefully from here on in he will be fine but you never know, I´ll keep you posted.
Below are a set of fairly arty stilt photos and a home made barbecue that was absolutely delicious.
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