Return of the red-nosed!

Ooh, it feels good to be back! Today I finally started clowning again. Mamooo and I did the rounds at Philomena's, there were lots of little girls and boys ranging from 4 to 9 years old or so - Dolly, Pavan, Rita, Prashant, Giri, Akash and one little boy whose name I forgot to ask, mainly because he had a bar of Cadbury's in his shirt pocket so she kept calling him Chocolate Boy and pretending to steal his candy - and we succeeded in getting loads of giggles from them all. Mamu's fart-balloon was a huge success.

My favourite crotchety old cleaning lady was very happy to see us again, although she chased us out of one room where she had just mopped the floor. She talks to me a lot. As I don’t speak any Tamil, and she doesn’t speak any English, these conversations are always quite intriguing. I’m pretty sure she is asking for a dance, so I usually try to sweep her into a waltz. She was saying something about tomatoes at one point, and pointing at my nose. It must have been some traditional Tamil vegetarian compliment.

We also succeeded in drying some tears, which felt good. The first was Sakshi, a little boy in the ICU, having a drip put in. Screaming his head off. We didn't do much good at first, but then Mamu started singing softly and he actually calmed down. Meanwhile Sakshi’s mummy was getting equally worked up and she dissolved into tears too so I took her off to one side and we had a little chat and dried those tears off.

For me, the best part of the morning - the biggest compliment - was when we were heading back at the end of our rounds, and one of the senior nurses stopped to tell us that Akash, one of the kids we'd seen earlier was crying and would we go back and cheer him up? It really felt good, and meant a lot that she recognised the value of clowns in hospital.

Akash wasn't in pain, just cranky and unhappy. I think he wanted a cigarette, but as you know, there’s No Smoking in hospitals. However, the nurses had given him a funny machine called a nebuliser, which kept pouring out all the smoke he needed. All he had to do was stick a little mask over his face and inhale it. But you know these smokers. They want their cigarettes. So he kept pushing it away and crying, and making quite a lot of noise.

But once we arrived, we were able to calm him down and then he had lots of happy puffs on his nebuliser. It was wonderful to be there and see him soon go from screaming back to his delightfully mischievous giggling.

So - a lovely morning. Exhausting, of course. So I’ll stop here. I’ve a big day tomorrow at the Overseas Women’s Group’s Christmas Bazaar. Must get my cutie sleep.