We've taken a circus to Iraq.

What?

A small group of performers and activists are currently in Iraq performing and running circus skills workshops for the kids.

Why?

During the war, one of the most powerful things was playfulness when the bombs were falling - a birthday party, a football game, singing, blowing bubbles.

There was a four year old boy called Mohammed who was hurt in the bombing of the farmhouse at Diyala, near Baghdad. A lad called Shane from the US sat down next to his bed the day after it happened and drew pictures and blew bubbles. When Mohammed put out his hand and popped the bubble, he smiled for the first time since the bomb destroyed his home and killed his sister and his aunt. It was inspiring to see that healing and peace making were still possible between two boys from countries that were ostensibly enemies.

People are traumatised, tired and worn down by years of war and sanctions and are still without many basic necessities, despite the obligations of the occupying powers to provide humanitarian items. We're not aid workers and, in any case, Iraq is a wealthy country which doesn't need charity. We think the best thing we can do is bring a bit of colour, a bit of normality, a bit of playfulness and make people smile.

Who?

We're a group of activists and performers. One of us was in Iraq during the bombing as a humanitarian observer. Some of us have been involved with taking circuses or other performances to Bosnia, Serbia and East Timor. Several of us have done international solidarity work all over the world.

How you can help?

Anyone with skills, experience, donations or ideas to offer is welcome to get in touch. Visit our website for more details.

The Shu’ala kids came running out to meet us, arms out. The girls joined in with the parachute games this time, asked to be picked as cat or mouse, lying on the fabric to be lifted up and run around on it. The women watched through the reed fence of the house next to the concrete square where we performed. They wanted the scarves that are tied to the broom handle for twirling but I didn’t have enough for them all.

Yassir said his seven year old son Ammar saw our show at his school. “He talked about you the whole day and he does not only talk. He tries to imitate the clowns. Always when you give the children things to draw with, their pictures have tanks and aeroplanes and guns in, but now he is drawing pictures of clowns.”

The women watched laughing, babies cradled inside their abayas, none of them uncovered, asking me to take their photos with their babies, tiny Abbas, a month old, with a woolly bobble hat, beautiful Sabreen,six months pregnant, barely more than a child herself, with shining brown eyes and a dazzling smile.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

The doctors believe that there is not a single child in Iraq who isn’t suffering some degree of post traumatic stress, with a wide variety of symptoms. There is virtually no awareness about the disorder and its symptoms, so bed wetting, for example,is a source of shame rather than a warning signal that the child needs help. Parents are in denial, Dr Yousef says, because of the stigma attached to any kind of mental illness. “Parents think that people will thing there’s something wrong with the child’smind and say maybe he inherited it from me”.

The doctors believe that play therapy is the best, perhaps the only, way of diagnosing and rehabilitating kids with PTSD but there are no trainers in Iraq. “There are less than a hundred psychiatrists in Iraq, but more than 300 Iraqi psychiatrists in the UK.” Training for psychologists and play therapists is a priority. Effective play therapy needs to include some symbolic representation of the trauma the child has suffered, Yousef says, and there is no one in the country who can give the training. Far more people can be trained if some play therapy specialists come to Iraq than by taking people out of the country for training.

The “Safe to Play” and “Back to Play” programmes with UNICEF, for six to twelve year olds, came to an end when the UN withdrew most of its international staff after the bombing of their HQ. There are manuals and kits for training play therapists and for carrying out the therapy, but they’re all in Jordan.