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17.04.25- Tosamaganga, Tanzania – Paolo Mazzinghi
From April 8th to 16th, thanks to the support of CUAMM – Doctors with Africa and the willingness of the management of the Tosamaganga hospital, I had the opportunity to carry out Clowncare activities in places where, until then, they had never been carried out.
Clowncare’s activities consist of playful and relational interventions performed by clowns in social and healthcare settings, and beyond, with the aim of providing emotional relief, encouraging greater willingness to care, humanizing the hospital environment, and offering support to patients, their families, and medical staff through comedy techniques, games, improvisation, and empathetic relationships.
During this experience, activities focused primarily on the pediatric ward of Tosamaganga Hospital, but also included the Watoto Varima Orphanage, the Migoli Health Center, and the associated kindergarten. There were also spontaneous interactions in the villages, with games and improvised gags.
Unlike the usual working methods, where we typically work in pairs to ensure mutual support and facilitate play and relationship dynamics with children and parents, on this occasion I found myself working alone. Adding to this was the difficulty of the language barrier, my almost nonexistent knowledge of Swahili.
However, thanks to nonverbal communication, active listening training, empathetic relationships, and the use of clown techniques—such as juggling, magic, music, and group games—it was possible to foster moments of lightheartedness and collective participation. These situations brought clear benefits not only to the children, but also to their mothers and the medical and nursing staff.
An intense and precious experience that confirms, once again, the universal value of smiles and human connections. In just a few days, becoming a point of reference for the department, feeling sought out by children and parents, called by name, filled my heart and confirmed the small contribution we made.
Graduated from Florence in 1984 in History of the Performing Arts with several publications on the relationship between theatre and music in the 16th century and a book of poems in 2007. Until December 2022 responsible for an IT structure of a large Italian group. He has always been involved in the third sector (for years on the board of the AIMA Alzheimer’s Association and collaborations with Lega Tumori, Fondazione ANT, Telethon, Emergency, CISS, … ), since 2007 he has started the clown experience with commitments and collaborations in hospitals, RSAs, associations for the disabled, missions in earthquake zones, exploitation camps, Saharawi refugee camps, Palestine – Gaza, Gomel (children of Chernobyl), scriptwriter and actor of two plays, one of which he took to schools to develop a reflection on the themes of suffering, resilience, caring, war and peace… for years he has been teaching for various associations and projects as a trainer of volunteer clowns. Since 2016 on the board of ARCI Città Visibili with a commitment focused on the issues of landless peoples (Sahrawi, Palestinians, Kurds and in particular with several missions and projects in the Sahrawi refugee camps). For years with ARCI, the group In cammino per la pace e il disarmo and the World March for Peace, engaged in various initiatives for the search and development of peace and disarmament, for the defence of rights, through the construction of a new humanism, based on dialogue and relations, as concrete acts and not purely utopian declarations.
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