Day 11: The Youth Club

The morning starts with one of the rowdiest shows so far. At times, I worry that there's going to be a stage invasion - the kids are getting so caught up in it. The audience sprawls laterally as everyone clambers for a better position to see the show and so the girls quickly adapt to an encompassing 360-degree audience. The difference between how disciplined schools are is obvious.


Above: They are pretty spent after each show



There are the UNRWA schools, funded by the UN which are excellently equipped but places are in high demand. There are private schools where the parents pay up front each term (but due to the poor economy, lessons often continue where parents have been out of work and cannot pay) and also there are the government schools. Here, it's not uncommon for teachers to go for months without being paid due to the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority Government. (Just one of many by-products of the Israeli-imposed fincancial sanctions)

In the afternoon, it's another show, this time at an after-school youth club. Kids of all ages in the community have rallied together on a beautiful afternoon. To my irritation, I seem to be getting a lot of attention. Up until now I thought I'd been doing a pretty good job of not distracting from the Circus activities, but here the kids are surrounding me, touching my hair and posing more than usual for their photos to be taken. I soon discover why: Mohammed, one of the youth leaders has told them I'm Jackie Chan's cousin.









It's customary and respectful to spend plenty of time talking and socialising with your hosts, so after the show, we're there for a couple of hours getting to know more about the youth club and the organisers. (Compares directly to a Subsource gig, where it's customary to get completely shitfaced with the organisers after a show.) The main guy is a teacher and describes how he has to cross a checkpoint between his home and the school where he works. Sometimes, he's held there for hours. As he continues about how he has to smuggle schoolbooks in to avoid confiscation, my eyes drift upwards and around the room. From the massive hoard of football trophies on the wall, this appears to be a very active, organised youth club (I'm sure when I was a kid, we turned up, then just snuck round the back alley to neck Diamond White til our parents came) In centre-place, there is a modest printed A4 mono poster of a serious-looking boy who presumably went to this thriving group at some point. It's unmistakably a martyr poster. Like the scores of faded, weather-beaten posters I've seen in the towns, I don't understand the arabic that goes under the face, but it's shown as proudly as the rest of them. This one does not look like a gun-toting guerilla or a stern man in a suit. In the context of all the other laughing and jovial kids today, this is a much more real 14-year old boy in a formal jumper who probably did better in science than in P.E., had a crush on the girl over the road and I've no doubt he would have been belly-laughing like the rest of them at the Circus clowns. Instead, I'm looking up at his face with a plethora of tangled emotions with my imagination running wild about who he was and what rite of action he took in order to earn his posthumous place amongst the glittering sporting achievements.

I get to know Mohammed better - he has a wicked sense of humour. The Circus alreadys knows that comedy is a universal language. I'm 5'3 and he towers above me at 6'6 and we have laugh about the difference and the problems. Since I've been here I've been very attentive to the music around me, not entirely convinced that music is as universal a language as comedy is, with foreign scales and instruments with heavy overtones causing a language barrier in itself. Mohammed at least is very into Santana and is one of the few Palestinians that would very much like to learn guitar. (I get the impression that Western music is not quite trusted which to me is no bad thing since it means that MTV will not penetrate it's way here any time soon) I offer to teach him a lesson or two if the chance ever arises and he says he will save up to buy an instrument. He pats me on the back and I ask him if I'll see him again when the Circus performs at a local school later in the week and he says he can't. Because of the checkpoint.

On the way out, I'm cornered by some kids keen to practise their English skills. "What is your name?", and "How old are you?". Then they try something a few times in Arabic before they run off to fetch a translator, who says helpfully, "They want to know what hair product you use".

In the evening, Jo and I slink off to pig out on a huge plate of overpriced Chinese junk food. The food here is damn tasty, healthy and very affordable, but it's been a long day and it seems like a reward to chow down on something familiar, dirty and overpriced. Veal fried rice for me - it's like beef but naughtier.


Above: Who wants VO5 matt clay?