SATURDAY 20 JANUARY:

A later start than usual this morning as we are going to be running a performance as the culmination of a Parade and Speech Day affair for a couple of schools in the Lhoknga area.

Super-duper sound system

Amy of the Irish Red Cross comes to collect us at 10.00 am, and it’s already pretty busy with about 300 people waiting around by the time we get to the outdoor venue at 10.30. More and more children arrive, lining up in the road in parade formation in wonderful traditional costumes. Then they are off – we have no idea where they are parading to or when they will return, but we are assured that they will.

Quite a high stage has been built, and the Red Cross have hired in a super-duper sound system. Hags gets dressed for the show and I fiddle about with our tiny I-pod and the huge sound system and try to get the sound levels right (I am actually one of the worst sound technicians in the world – not only am I completely deaf in my right ear because of having had mumps when I was 30, but I am also a bit of a technophobe generally – but there is no one else to do the sound track and we generally get by just about OK).

Expectant hush

A VERY LARGE AUDIENCE FOR HAGGIS'S SHOW, BEFORE THE RAIN STARTS!

The children return, and by dint of spreading the parachutes on the ground, we manage to organise them into a good audience shape. There is a tented cover space for dignitaries to the left of the stage and large amounts of passing teenagers and adults standing behind the sitting children. People are making speeches through rather feed-back-ey microphones and large gilt trophy cups are handed out - and then it’s time for the show!

We can hear lots of microphone mentions of “circus” and “Scotlandia” and “Children’s World International”, and then in an expectant hush, I put on “Sweet Georgia Brown” and Haggis emerges and starts the show.

They are a very large audience, probably almost 700, and they are wildly enthusiastic. Despite a very strong wind, Haggis does a really good hat routine to Frank Sinatra’s “I Get a Kick out of You”, and then an excellent and very amusing1-5 ball routine. He has just chosen the perfect child volunteer and is starting on the spinning-ball-on-the-child’s-finger part of the show, when the heavens open and torrents of rain pour down. Indonesians really can’t bear the rain, and they instantly run for the nearest cover. Rats, rats and triple rats! This was our biggest show yet, and it was going down a storm! Hey ho, hey ho, hey ho.

Disappearing audience

The audience hasn’t actually disappeared completely – they are just all sheltering under various bits of cover over a very large area - but sadly they are really too far away and too strung-out to constitute a proper audience any more.

What should we do? Amy does a quick reccy and says there is a Children’s Centre just 200 yds down the road who would be happy for us to take the show and the children there. The rain eases and then eventually reduces to a slight drizzle, but it is far too wet for the children or adults to sit down. Poor Haggis is totally deflated – show interruptus, which is just as uncomfortable, I’m told, as coitus interruptus! He is sitting head in hands in his dressing room, muttering, “They were a huge, great audience – it was going to be a wonderful show!”

Pied-Piper fashion

“OK”, I say, “This is what we are going to do – you are going to lead the children Pied-Piper fashion 200 yards down the road and we’ll finish the show in the Children’s Centre!” It’s very hard for performers to stop and start again, but he’s a real trooper nowadays, thanks to having had to be in all sorts of difficult situations with Children’s World International, so he leaps up and sets off to gather children and lead them down the road.

Amy and I follow in the Irish Red Cross jeep, desperately trying to make the I-trip work, so that we can play the I-pod through the car radio speakers, as it is not possible to move the big sound system fast enough. We succeed and open all the windows, encouraging others to follow us as we drive to the Children’s Centre. We lose most of the audience, but at least 300 get to the Children’s Centre, and we fit them all in OK.

A television crew turns up

We position the open boot of the jeep right by the main door. I sit in the very back of the jeep to run the ipod and after a few minutes realise that the car engine is still running and I am drowning in exhaust fumes – oops! Not a good idea to carbon-monoxide ourselves and 300 children, so we switch the car engine off. Haggis ploughs on valiantly, but it’s very hard and it’s not one of the best shows – but he does jolly well considering the difficult circumstances. This, of course, would be the time when a television crew turn up, and a man from the BRR and various other dignitaries!

After the show both Haggis and I do interviews with the man from BRR, who are the Government body responsible for the reconstruction and rehabilitation of Aceh. He seems to think that our working in schools nest time might be OK – that would be great. Most of our gigs this time have been at barracks, but we sincerely hope that there won’t be so many of those still running when we return next – so schools would be a great way to reach children in the mornings, then barracks and temporary housing shelters and dayas in the afternoons maybe.

CLICK IN TO SEE THE LOVELY COSTUMES SOME OF THE CHILDREN WERE WEARING!

We did our best

Hags feels depressed after the show, as it could have gone much better – but I try to remind him (and myself) that we really did do the very best we could. Everyone loved the beginning – the rain was a pain, but we didn’t give up, we girded our loins and physically moved the audience and managed to finish the show. It wasn’t perfect, but at least 300 children really enjoyed it. We definitely did save what we could out of the situation. Poor Hags - performers take it all very personally, which is natural, I suppose, as they really do put their “all”

We head with the Red Cross to say our thank you’s to the village head man. Coffee and soft drinks are brought. I take 3 huge swigs from an ice-cold can of Sprite and suddenly my whole stomach and chest area seize up in the most alarming way. I rush outside, not knowing what is happening, except that I am in a lot of pain. To be continued…….Don’t worry – I’m fine!

Later: It's now Monday 22nd and we are just off to catch the ferry to the Island for another show. May not be able to upload any more diary till Friday - all dependent on access to internet, which is very iffy there. Love to all.

Jan 20th continued.....So there we were, with me stupidly taking 3 huge swigs from an ice-cold can of Sprite and suddenly my whole stomach and chest area seizing up in the most alarming way. I rush outside, not knowing what is happening, except that I am in a lot of pain and have to spend about 10 minutes gasping and panting – afterwards I realise that it was probably just a mixture of too much cold liquid hitting my stomach at one time, and trapped air, but I really thought at the time that it might have been a heart attack or a stroke. When I felt a bit better about 10 minutes later, and went back in, Haggis hadn’t even noticed I’d gone and was chatting away politely to the head man of the village. “Where were you when I thought I was dying?”, I hiss at the poor guy as I walk past him. We really do need to keep our eyes open for each other out here.

Amy and the Red Cross driver take us back to the Green Paradise, and on the way I start getting strange black swirls in my right eye and then lots of black dots, like insects or black dots of soot. It’s very strange, and we can’t work it out. A bit scarey, actually! Hags thinks that maybe I have broken a blood vessel in the right eye, and that I am seeing tiny droplets of blood inside the eye. Who can say? (Later: Fadlullah told me he thought it was probably a tiny bit of detached retina, and wasn’t seriouis – but that I should check it out when I get to Australia as it can be dangerous if one has glaucoma – which I don’t think I do.)

A PHOTO OF SOME OF THE AUDIENCE FROM THE BADGE TABLE (I WAS STILL PUMPING THE MACHINE DURING THE SHOW).

THE AUDIENCE WAS ACTUALLY MUCH BIGGER THAN IT LOOKS - THEY SPACE THEMSELVES OUT A LOT IN DIFFERENT AREAS - STREET PERFOERMERS WOULD HATE THIS SORT OF PLACEMENT! WE TRY TO MASS THEM TOGETHER MORE, BUT IT'S A BIT OF A LOSING BATTLE!

We have a quick rest at Green Paradise, and then Linda and her lovely Yayasan Lamjabat driver collect us at 3.15 to take us to our show and session halfway along the same road we travelled for the first session with them, two days ago, to another Gam village towards the northernmost tip of Aceh. More bumping and jolting along the hardcore but pit-holed road, and eventually we arrive at the school.

We do the badge-making in a classroom with desks, and the good venue and the help I receive from the excellent Yayasan Lamjabat staff makes it pretty easy, despite the large number of children, teenagers (and adults) who design badges. Haggis takes the children off in relays to a grassy patch the other side of the road. After about an hour we start the show for an audience of about 220. We move the badge table outside, next to the sound system, so that I can keep making badges while putting on the music tracks, and probably make 250 during the course of the show. Hags is in particularly fine form and the audience love the show and are screeching with laughter the whole way through – a lovely afternoon.

We drive back to Linda’s house, with more and more flying black dots in my eye. Even though I know it is probably just a bit of blood behind the eye, because we are in the land of insects and mosquitoes, I keep thinking the black spots are insects and that I am about to be bitten. (At the school venue we have just come from, it became very confusing because there were absolutely huge black ants in REALITY as well as black spots in the eyes! Very confusing telling which were which!) Linda gives us a simple but delicious dinner – rice, tuna fish and a wonderful vegetable stew – I have really been feeling the lack of vegetables – this stew had carrots and potatoes and cauliflower and cabbage in it, and was absolutely what my vitamin-starved body was craving. We are driven back to Green Paradise (where our insect-free room seems to be full of insects thanks to my wonky eye!) and clonk out for the night.