The Circus!

Wow...where to begin? The circus in Ukraine was definitely one of those Peace Corps experiences that you won't get anywhere in America. Sure we have circuses in the states, but like everything else in Ukraine this circus was just a little bit different.

For starters it gave me an idea of what circuses must have been like years ago when they went to small towns that didn't have that much else going on. The circus coming to town was a really big deal as it is today in Ukraine. Heather and I saw a poster up in her village and decided to go. There were many people from her village there, but also buses that had come from neighboring, smaller villages. Even with multiple villages in attendance it was still relatively small by American standards, there were only about five or six rows of seats.

All of the performers were also vendors. When they weren't performing they would come out and sell things, then go back to performing when it was their turn again. I'm sure it's not an easy life and they all worked very hard.

The balloons, popcorn, and cotton candy are pretty similar to what we're used to.

This is an example of where things get a little different. Believe it or not, this is a clown. There were two clowns at this circus. One of them was similar to our clowns, but in Ukraine there is always a place for a somewhat scantily clad attractive female. Clowns are not an exception to this rule. In Ukraine even Santa Claus has a sexy granddaughter named Snigaroshka that follows him around everywhere.

The tent was kind of small and sometimes the performers were limited by the space available to them, but they did a pretty good job.

This guy walked around on his ladder for a while, but also did some juggling. Honestly, he wasn't a very good juggler. He was dropping things all the time, but he didn't give up and he kept trying. He did keep us entertained, which is the most important thing. It's also easy to forgive his juggling after considering that he was also the magician, and of course a vendor.

Clown 1 and Clown 2. Like I said, in some ways things aren't so different from American and in some ways they are.


This guy had a giant cube he was spinning around to dance music. He also sold me my cotton candy in photo 1.

This guy was something of an acrobat. He was pretty good and also surprisingly young. Again, we have acrobats in the states, but they usually don't have mullets and they usually don't wear homoerotic costumes (as most of the male performers did). These things are normal in Ukraine.


More clown entertainment.

We started to get wary when this monkey appeared, but he seemed to be well treated and did not appear to be unhappy. And everyone likes monkeys!



This woman was pretty cool. She sat? on her chair like this and spun, bounced, and threw things around with her feet. There's a video of her in action at the bottom of this post.

This guy did a cool little balancing act. It doesn't look so hard at first, but he kept adding stuff underneath his little balancing board. By the end it was pretty impressive.

See? I told you!

When Ukrainians get really sad they say something that directly translated means "my soul hurts." Well, our souls started to hurt when they starting bringing the bears out. This one was a little guy, but they kept extremely strict control of him as they paraded him around. He was obviously a very unhappy bear.

More acrobatics, perhaps our favorite part of the circus.

Yes, clowns embarrass children even in Ukraine.

They made him stand on things and walk around and then they let him go back to his cage.


Oh yeah, I almost forgot about the scooter. My soul is starting to hurt again.



The video on the right is of a large bear they brought out at the end as the grand finale. They had him do some rolls and wave to people. This bear was also clearly very unhappy. There were several times when they were walking it around that it made very sudden movements and looked like it was going to attack its "trainer." They maintained control of the animal, but the message was clear. "I belong in the forest, not in the circus! I need to live free, not muzzled and caged!" I'm sad to say this message was probably lost on many of those that were present.

Heather talked with her kids at school about it the next day and some of them felt sad for the bear. I talked to my students as well and some of them just couldn't understand why having a bear in the circus was a problem. All circuses in Ukraine have bears, they always have. One thing I am certain of is that I will come away from my service with a much more developed view of animal rights.