We went to Kosovo for our 4th annual trip to this low scale war zone. We
stay in the recreation room on the first floor of one of the residential
buildings on the Serbian side of Kosovska Mitrovica. This is the 3rd time
that we have stayed here and it houses the children we are most close to.
Kids down there say that we are their clowns, just like we say they are
our kids. When we walk around the town, children point to us and
say,"CLOWNS" in both shouts and whispers. It has been really interesting
doing this long term project. Its like we are uncles to all of these
children and we are watching them slowly grow up. The first kid that we
had taught down there how to juggle 3 years ago is now almost as tall as
me. He has lost his blond hair and traded it in for a more subtle shade
of brown.

We are always trying to bring Serbians to this area. Many Serbians
consider it a lost cause and have turned their backs on this entire
region, even though there are still many people down there suffering from
the poor economic and social conditions. The Serbians in Kosovo feel like
they have been left behind. On this trip it really looked like things
were getting better. The people in our building told us it was ok to walk
around the streets at night. The previous year we were told to be in
after sunset due to the amount of robbers in the neighborhood. For the
first time ever we saw the bridge in the middle of the city open for foot
traffic and car traffic. On the three previous visits we have made to the
city, there has always been bunkers guarding and blocking the bridge.
Only UN vehicles had gone over this bridge. On Saturday evening many
people were in the streets walking around.

Here is a brief description of Kosovska Mitrovica. It is a split city
with a river running through the middle of it. It is located mainly in a
valley between two large mountains. There is a really nice bridge over
the river that ironically hardly anyone uses.

We made numerous shows in Kosovska Mitrovica, Gracanica, and Zvecan with
the circus consisting of Celavi, literally hairless one, Marko, and me,
Joe Mama. Our shows had juggling, rope walking, fire performance, stilt
walking, unicycling, mini-bicycling, and of course a whole lot of
clowning. This year a Serbian film maker decided to make a documentary of
our works in Kosovo. Stay tuned for more details.


A little update. 2 days ago a bomb was thrown by a 16 year old Albanian
into a crowded cafe hurting 9 people. 6 had to be hospitalized. He will
probably only recieve 30 days in jail due to the fact that he is a minor.
What really made us think is the fact that we had sat and drank coffee in
this cafe numerous times only 2 weeks ago, and that could have been us.
We have all agreed that when we go back to Kosovo, we will not be
patronizing that establishment.


We are still looking for a grantwriter, but thanks to Vinnie and Jimmy
Riley, we may have found a matching funds program where all donations will
be matched by a helpful philanthropist. Please feel free to forward this
to others you think would be interested in hearing about this story. I
lost alot of emails recently and so am unable to contact everyone I would
like to. If you do not want to recieve updates from my World Circus just
send me back an email saying so and I will remove you.

Peace,
Joe Mama the clown