Report from Miss Me a.k.a Strong Man Annie
Cairo, Safaa and 'Happy Famalies'

This year the Boomchucka Circus met up in the mental city that is Cairo, I mean really quite a crazy place! it' s highlights for me involved a vast and amazing selection of handbags and sparkly ties, figuring out how to cross the road which is basically chicken with six lanes of traffic, (we all survived unscathed) the strange mix of old and decrepit modern like the fly over that stretches over the city but threatens to collapse immanently all this to the constant chorus of ' English? welcome to Egypt'. We had a good reason for starting in Egypt, and that was to catch up with the Theater group "Happy Families"
Happy Families are a group that operated in Iraq before the invasion of Iraq, Circus 2 Iraq and Happy Families worked together on the first and unfortunately only tour of Iraq two of their members were assassinated (please see our website for further info). The group has since fled Iraq to become refugees in Egypt.

After a hard weeks practising the show on a hostel roof top in Cairo we made arrangements to meet up with Happy Families to do an afternoon of games, circus and then a joint show. We arrived in the suburb of Cairo to be met by Safaa, we then travelled to a games arcade which had to be hired from the Egyptian owner for the afternoon. The arcade was filled with families both Iraqi and Egyptian, we then ensued the chaos that is parachute games and " circus workshop" I say in inverted commas because there were so many excited kids that there really just wasn't enough of us.. an exacted and happy chaos ensued for the next hour and half. we then retired to drink strong coffee and regain our composure before the show.
We were all pretty nervous because it was our first show .. I was particular nervous because I wanted it to be as perfect as possible for the kids and the whole group because this is the first Circus they have received from us since they were in their homeland, I desperately wanted to forefill thier expectations.. I soon realised that in fact just to have visited was special.. we had a fantastic afternoon and our first show went down really well despite some technical hitches. (chilliboo chillibahh) the show culminated in a pretty special rendition and dance of Barbie Girl and a very long conga line headed by the Happy Family clowns and joined by Boomchucka clowns.

After the show we heard first hand the situation for Safaa and the community of refugees he lives with in Egypt, Safaa talked of being unable to earn money, and the obvious fact that the Egyptian government can't provide monetary support as they are a poor country themselves. I got the feeling that they were working their way through their savings in order to survive and a big question mark over what to do once that had been spent.
Saffa also talked of cultural divides between Iraqi's and Egyptians, inequality between the two communities the difficulty's this caused. also of the psychological damage done to children taken from their cultural roots in violence. Saffa talked of wanting to use theater in order to help children come to terms with their sudden new reality's.

I was frustrated to feel that perhaps we were losing vital information in translation.
However we all felt Safaa's pain as he talked of Iraq and the Iraqi peoples situation now
We left Saffa with tears in our eyes and humbled hearts and an overwhelming desire to visit again soon.
We plan to return to Egypt to work with Saffa and his group for a longer period of time.

missme, 25th Feb 08