Jamie McLaren Lachman may occasionally don a red nose, but he's not fooling around when it comes to spreading happiness. A performer-cum-academic, Lachman – who was born in South Africa but raised in the United States – understands that communities in crisis don't just need medical supplies and accurate reporting. Through Clowns Without Borders South Africa (CWB-SA), Lachman and his team have brought emotional relief to over 375 000 children in sub-Saharan Africa.
[Jamie McLaren Lachman] I went on holiday with my partner at the time; we travelled all the way through South Africa in a rental car. When we ended our trip in Cape Town, we felt that while the experience was great, we were quite empty. I decided that the next time I returned to my home country I wanted to do something productive, to contribute. I met the person who started Clowns Without Borders USA the week I arrived back in New York, and I realised it was exactly what I wanted to do in my home country.
So I got a bunch of friends together and we did a tour of South Africa. In 20 days we travelled from Gauteng, through Mpumalanga, down to KwaZulu-Natal, to the Eastern Cape…we basically retraced the steps from my previous trip, but this this time we were performing for kids in orphanages and vulnerable children who had been affected by HIV/AIDS. I got to see and connect to communities I would never have been able to connect to before, all through laughter and play. After that, each trip from the States got longer, and then, in 2007, I decided to move here and start CWB-SA, which is based in Durban.
We're not birthday clowns and we're not circus clowns. Sometimes we do use the red nose, but sometimes we're storytellers or facilitators. Our tagline is 'Allowing children to be children again'. A lot of times these children have been affected by various forms of trauma, so it's really about giving them an opportunity to reconnect to the life of a child through play, through creativity and through loving support from the parents.
We started off by bringing high-quality artistic performances to marginalised communities, but then we decided that the shows weren't enough. We also wanted to work more closely with the kids, so we started doing workshops for kids. Then we realised that it’s important for us to also develop family programmes.
Right now, we have a team in Uganda helping the Bantwana Initiative and World Education through our parents-and-teens programme for 25 000 families. We have another project in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, working with parents and teens, and we are adapting that programme and delivering it in the Philippines. We are also providing technical support to Catholic Relief Services on a project in Lesotho that will take the programme to 30 000 families. And, of course, projects all over South Africa.
When we're on tour we don't really get to take a break. I try to give myself one day to explore a place. For example, recently my colleague and I went to Egypt to do some consultation with UNICEF. We arrived on Sunday morning and didn't have anything planned for the day, so we went to the pyramids and then rode on horseback around Giza. We try to do something that's interesting, not always touristy. Once, when I was in Kampala, Uganda, I did a walking tour of the place with somebody I knew and we got to visit a clinic that I wouldn't have been able to see otherwise.
Probably all of them! When we are in Juba (south Sudan) or Kinshasa, for example, we don't really have much freedom of movement because of security issues. I would really like to explore the places in a different way and get to understand and experience them. And then there are places like Lesotho, which is one of my favourite countries in the world. The mountains are so majestic, the people sing when they greet you – it's wonderful – and people ride around on horseback. There is something magical about being up so high in that area.
The first time I went to the Philippines I spent the whole time in a hotel in Manila, and all the locals were talking about these beautiful islands with tropical fish and coral reefs. So when I went back recently I made some time to go and see them, and it was lovely.
Yeah. We were supposed to go to Juba in July but violence broke out…We just cancelled our trip because it wasn't safe. We never send clowns, artists or facilitators into places that are dangerous.
Children love to play, and that's just universal. Laughter happens everywhere, and when it happens it opens up people's hearts. And then you can really connect in some very fundamental ways; that's quite amazing. We've gone to places where there's been no concept of a clown, but there's a concept of laughter, there's a concept of play and there's a concept of humour, and that's what we're tapping into.
I was in a meeting with an unnamed deputy minister of an unnamed ministry in Cairo. It's an important meeting, so I'm not coming in as a clown or anything. At one point in the meeting we exchanged business cards. He looked at mine, did a double-take, and said: oh. I explained that we're clowns, but we also do parenting programmes and things like that. After a while he says: okay, this is off the record. It was one of our earlier meetings so lots of things were off the record. So I take out my phone and make a big display of turning it off to show I'm not recording anything. He laughs, and then he takes out his phone and puts it on the table too. Then I take something else out of my pocket and we start this impromptu clown playfulness. After a while, we were all laughing because it just became silly and ridiculous. But at the same time the reality was still there that some things need to be 'off the record' because you might be sent to jail.
We do really love it when people give us monthly donations because it gives us ongoing support and it goes to our Ubuntu Clown Fun[d], which funds our projects. People can donate via our website: http://www.cwbsa.org/donate.