AND NOW TO THE FAIRYTALE...
Orphanage in Uganda
when I first visited Africa it was a
completely new world opening up to me.
We started out in Uganda, where we went to
see schools and orphanages to perform for the children. The people were very
interested in this, but I was heedful with the contrast between rich an poor
people. Not just in the manners of their life standards, but also in their
manners of hospitality.
In a smaller town the rich Europeans lived
on one side of a mountain. They had large, beautiful houses with fences, pools,
satellite on the rooftops and nice garden furniture on their grand terraces.
The hospitality in this area was on the contrary hard to find. A common gesture
like a salute seemed hard for them to do. Only a few hundred meters away, on
the other side of the mountain, lived the locals. Families with 7-8 members who
lived in clay cottages without windows with just two rooms. There were off
course no furniture except a bed, which took up the one room. In this the
parents slept with some of the children. The rest slept on a mat on the floor.
Above the bed there would typically be some laundry and kitchen wear. The
families in this area were, opposite the rich, white people, extremely
hospitable. As soon as we came walking down the street, we were met by people
yelling ”Mzungu-weelcome” - welcome white man.
In their faces a broad smile would appear, when we accepted
their invitation and went with them inside. Fast the reputation of our presence
spread, so neighbors gathered around. This was an excellent occasion for me to
open my magic suitcase and perform some tricks. People gathered closely around
me and yelled out loud. Everyone wanted to see, but no one wanted to be in
front. But it turned out to be the most interesting experience for them when we
showed them the footage of themselves and their friends in our small camera,
that we had brought. They had never seen anything like that and cheered every
time they saw someone they knew. Funny enough they didn't cheer, when they saw
themselves. They had never before looked upon themselves in this way through
the eyes of “others” and they couldn't identify with the picture.
When we one day performed at an orphanage it got pretty
wild as well. For them it was an amazing experience that a Mzungu visited them
and acted funny. They lived in a locked up, poor home with a large fence around
it. But my magic tricks didn't mean as much as the fact that something suddenly
was going on in their world. When I performed my tricks in their courtyard, the
people of the village could hear, that something was going on in there, and
they climbed the fence to see what was happening. Normally it was the other way
around – the children looking out at life on the other side. This time the
roles were reversed for a few moments, when the outsiders tried to sneak a peak
of what was going on in there.
Visiting an AIDS hospital in Tanzania
From Masaka we drove with a small, local
bus - a so called matatu. We drove along an extremely bumpy road, which indeed
was made of asphalt some places, but not the plain kind. And most of the time
the road consisted of the dusty, red earth.
In the matatu there were seats for 15 people. Do I need to
mention, that we were 27 besides
the sacks of rice, topped suitcases, bananas, chickens and a goat! On the way
we changed vehicle and got squeezed into the cargo area of a pick-up, which
drove with 120 km/h – about the same speed as our hearts raced, when we thought
we would fall of the truck.
In Bukoba we found an old ferry, which could take us across the Victoria Lake.
Up to this day I still don't know, why I indulged in this practice. On the
other hand we had no other options.
We had arrived to Tanzania, but the journey was far from
over. In an old train, quite the same age as the ferry, we drove several days
through all of Tanzania and we could see the landscape changing through the
open doors in the train. The dusty fields and poor lands changed to green
areas, where people clearly had more money.
We shared a small compartment for six people with four
local men and we had a great time. They didn't speak any English, and they knew
just as many Danish words as we knew in their language: None. But we enjoyed
each others company, played cards and I did some magic tricks. We prepared the
food on our small primus, while we during the night tried to sleep, which was
not easy. Either the springs were not present at all or they were uncomfortably
poking up through the seat, which made it impossible to sleep more than a few
minutes at a time. Furthermore we had to deal with the unbearable heat, that
were driving us mad.
After some days traveling in this manner we made it to the
capital of Tanzania, Dar E Salam, where we performed at various schools,
orphanages and hospitals. Especially one visit at a hospital in the country
made a strong impression on us. One thing is that the beds are often crowded
with both four or five children in them, but it was worse, when the doctor
showed us an insane patient, who was tied to the bed.
When we entered the room with the paint peeling of the
walls and flies everywhere, we could see that the patient were not mentally
retarded. Unfortunately she was a spastic, not able to use her body or a
language to express herself. But you could see in her eyes, that her brain was
working, and she looked completely desperate. The doctors probably didn't know
this illness and had just signed her up as an insane, which meant that she was
kept k´locked up and tied down in the small room.
There were also a great amount of patients with AIDS, and
it was a tough job to do tricks and be funny in that place. But on the other
hand it is liberating to give joy to someone, who need it the most. It is sad
to perform in front of an audience like that, but at the same time amazing to be able to give these people a
laugh.
Snake-magic at the Masai warriors
After a few days with a safari and a short
trip to the bounty-island Zanzibar, we headed for the Masai, which is a proud
people from the east of Africa. We spend some days traveling among small
villages, where the Masai people greeted us with open arms, no matter if we
visited hospitals, schools, performed in fields or in old barns, where the men
gathered for a cozy time. Often it started out with an official welcome from
the leader of the place: The inspector of the school, the chief, the mayor or
others. Afterwards the show began, which was something that people in these
areas were not costumed to. They jumped several feet back and yelled, when my
empty boxes filled up with balloons, cigarettes, candy and a lot of other good
stuff, and they reacted the same way, when my magic flowers grew from my
suitcase. They were astound by my vase with water, that could be empty one
moment and full the next. The next time I emptied it, they talked out loud, the
third they got scared, and then they started laughing, when I emptied the
apparently empty vase again and again.
But what made it into magic history was an
experience, that caught both the audience and the magician by a surprise!
One day the rumor of the Danish magic show
had run all across the savanna, which meant that about 1500 Masai people from
here and there came to see the show. They had walked up to 15 kilometers to see
Danish magic. In Denmark the audience often sits in front of the performer, but
in this case they both stood in front and behind me. They sat on rooftops or in
the trees. They were everywhere. At one point in my show I wanted to do a joke
with a long fabric snake, which jumps
up a small can.
When this happened the audience got so
scared, that the ones in the front row turned to run away screaming. They then
knocked over the ones, that were standing behind them and this continued down
the lines. It was chaos. Everyone was screaming and yelling, and the dust
started to whirl, when they all tried to get a way from the completely harmless
stuffed snake!
I stood in the middle of the gathering and I almost got just as scared seeing
their reaction. Luckily it didn't take long before the calm was restored and
the audience came back. The most frightened ones had run more than a hundred
meters to get away, before they turned around again.
The best thing about this incident is that
everyone was roaring with laughter afterwards. Even those who were lying on the
ground, who had been stepped on, when everyone else wanted to escape. They
laughed and laughed and the best part of the show turned out not to be the
magicians abilities but on the contrary a toy snake from Denmark!
