My last stop on my clown journey through Cambodia is Sihanoukville on the south-west coast. This is fast becoming a popular beach resort with foreigners, but I am not here to lie on the beach and frolic in the water. I'm here to work with the kids of M'lop Tapang.
M'lop Tapang
is an organization helping street children with shelter, education and a future. There are tons of street children in Sihanoukville; you see them roaming the beach selling trinkets to tourists, begging for money or picking garbage. MT addresses itself to three kinds of street children: street-living children - who have been abandoned by their families, or have run away from home and are living alone on the streets; children from street-living families, i.e. children who live on the streets with their families; and street-working children, children who spend most of their time on the streets fending for themselves, but do return home on a regular basis. Many children are sent out by their parents to work all day or night to help the family survive. MT works with these families to counsel and convince them that the children are better off in school and to find ways for the parents to earn a better living.
M'lop Tapang operates a main day center where education and recreational activities are offered together with regular meals, medical care and counseling. There is also an outreach team with small centers in the midst of the slums where those children who can't come to the main center still have close access to schooling and recreation for a few hours a day. MT provides vocational training for the adolescents and also houses many girls and boys who are not able to stay with their families or have none to return to.
Tapang is a certain kind of tree also called 'umbrella tree' because of the extended branches. M'lop means shade or protection in Khmer. Everything got started with a bunch of street kids who were living under an umbrella tree on the beach and has since expanded to a large organization helping over a thousand children.
Clowning around
I play with the children aged around 4-12 at the annex center, which is being built to accommodate more creative arts activities. In the morning I have one group of around 30 and another one in the afternoon. The kids are really engaged and very creative, the boys a little more so than the girls who are more shy... I can tell which kids have already had a chance to express themselves, in creative play that has been offered before -- who are "warmed up" so to speak and jump into the games more readily -- and who are new to this and new to the center, and therefore more on guard.
We do workshops with creative movement and clown play, goofing around with our bodies and faces, making funny dances, and playing with exaggerating reactions like surprise! discovery! wow! how great! excitement and joy! ha ha ha! whoopee! woohoo! yey! or anger, arrrr! or upset, boohoo!, back and forth. Playing with rhythm and range. Warming up body, face and spirit! Together in a circle or in small groups. We work on being connected, having eye contact and responding off each other. The kids work together to each add interesting movements into a choreography. I am impressed with the kids' creative engagement -- I have them do an entrance and greet the 'audience' as three clown characters, with a funny walk, and do a little dance and then exit. And they're hamming it up! Funny stuff. We practice some juggling and stiltwalking too.
Xmas Thanks
Christmas Day, the center organizes a party (Cambodians are Buddhist but clever as they are have found a way to capitalize on Christmas -- it's a great excuse to party! And for Cambodian enterprises, it's another great way to make money, selling Xmas decorations. I fully expected to not celebrate Xmas this year, being in Buddhist country, but there's glittery trees and Santas all around me!) At the party I do a little show for all the kids and dance around the Xmas tree (a tropical leaf tree decorated with balloons) on my stilts.
Before show time, the director of the center talks with all the youngsters gathered to encourage
them to keep going to school and build a productive future for themselves. Then it's the kids turn to speak. They talk about what they have gained since they have had the opportunity to come to the center and how grateful they are. One girl starts to cry. I ask, "What's wrong?! Why is she crying?" It turns out she's crying because she is so happy that she has been saved from the life she had and is now at M'lop Tapang. Another girl, around age 6, stands up on in front of everyone and speaks in the microphone: she told us how when she arrived a year ago, she was so shy (traumatized) she was unable to speak -- and now here she is yacking it up in front of a crowd!The Slums of Sihanoukville
I also visited the children living in the slums and we had great fun as well.See for yourself!
Entering MT's center in the slums
The school house in the slums, and inside the classroom
Passing out clown noses
The path way to one of the centers, passing thru a slum area near the market
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