Joanne had been to Uganda a few times before, but decided this time at 68 she would try clowning to make children laugh but also teach them at God is where Joy really comes. My experience with clowning comes for a little different place, but I totally bonded with Joanne over this. When she first moved out of ICU we brought down her medicine bag, it wasn’t until the next time I visited her that she made fun of us for bringing her clown make-up. So I borrowed her bright orange nail polish for a rainy day.
(There actually weren’t any rainy days and haven’t been for months as it is the dry season.) But we used some face paint from the World Cup and Rachel and I ended up painting our faces to clown in the clown’s hospital room. The nail polish I put on earlier and we are talking brighter than orange highlighter. In fact I woke up frightened a few times.
Jen distracted Joanne as we finished getting ready at the mirror in her room and we had a wonderful time laughing with Joanne when she saw us. And the hospital staff and other patients in the ICU for days asked me where my face was after that.
Dressing up as a clown did more than cheer up Joanne however, and give me a much needed chance to be goofy. We had originally been getting ready in a bathroom off the ICU, when another American and a woman from the state department needed the room. Jen said of course we could leave and asked for just a minute as Rachel and I needed to collect our clowning make up. The American said ohh my son went to Haiti clowning once to which I poked my head out of the bathroom and asked, “With Patch Adams?”
Turns out her son, Seth is my age and went to college with a bunch of my friends from High School who I know go clowning with Patch Adams and had done the trip to Haiti. My best friend Becca had gone on a trip to Venezuela clowning as well. Margaret had just flown down with Seth from Lilongwe, because the family had gotten into a bad car accident. Seth had just spent a year working in Malawi after college at a hospital in Lilongwe and his family was taking a vacation to visit him at the end of his time. Margaret was very excited to see me clowning and brought me to meet Seth during night visiting hours at the ICU after I spent time with Joanne. She and I met up in the waiting area first where I became friends with other family members of people in the ICU. Seth was pretty out of it, but over the rest of my time there I got to visit them daily and meet his Dad and brother when they finally got a commercial flight down.
I am so pleased Margaret and I could make the connection and I got a chance to know their family. The grace in which she handled everything amazed me and the family’s kindness but knowledge of the world made me feel very at home.
Through Margaret and visiting Seth I also got to more of the ICU and hearing other people’s stories and spending everyday in the ICU is quite an experience. My heart swelled in ways I couldn’t expect. Some days I felt like as much as I wanted to be there for the family’s I was visiting, I had to go run off to catch my breath. Other days I just kept going on autopilot until I was with Joanne, or Emily, or Seth, or Margaret or Jen or Matt- with them I could be fully present. And Joanne would give us a hard time if we weren’t around her much, unless I was visiting Seth, she asked about him everyday and got to meet his family and the day before she left got to go to the ICU to meet him after seeing Emily.
So in silly make-up I got to laugh and cry and meet people that will forever change and be part of my life. The journeys after our three weeks of immediate contact will be long. And as I pray for my new family and friends, know your thoughts and prayers would be appreciated as well.
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