Clowns Spread Cheer Amid War! Story

KYIV, Ukraine - Their costumes are put on with surgical precision: Floppy hats, foam noses, bright clothes, and a ukulele with multicolored nylon strings.  Moments later, in a beige hospital ward normally filled with the beeping sounds of medical machinery, there are bursts of giggles and silly singing.  As Ukraine's medical facilities come under pressure from intensifying attacks in the war against Russia's full-scale invasion, volunteer hospital clowns are duck footing their way in to provide some badly needed moments of joy for hospitalized children.  The Bureau of Smiles and Support is a hospital clowning initiative established in 2023 by Olha Bulkina, 35, and Maryna Berdar, 39 who already had more than five years of hospital clowning experience between them.  "Our mission is to let childhood continue regardless of the circumstances," Bulkina told The Associated Press.  The organization took on new significance following a Russian missile strike on Okhmatdyt Chiildren's Hospital in Kyiv in July.  The attack on Ukraine's largest pediatric facility forced the evacuation of dozens of young patients, including those with cancer, to other hospitals in the capital - and the clowns did not stand aside.  Together with first responders, Berdar and Bulkina helped with clearing the rubble after the attack and attended to the children who were relocated to other facilities. But even for them, the real heroes there were young patients.  "When the children were evacuated from Okhmatdyt after the missile attack, many of them, were in extremely difficult medical conditions, but even in this situation they tried to support the adults," said Berdar, recalling the events after the strike.  The hospital clowns, who use traditional clown noses and bright costumes, are now visiting multiple hospitals in the Ukrainian capitol region, including the National Cancer Institute, where patient numbers have surged after the Okhmatdyt attack.  Tetiana Nosova, 22, and Vladyslava Kulinich, 22, are volunteer hospital clowns who go by Zhuzha and Lala and joined the organization more than a year ago.  

Tetiana Nostova is a volunteer from the Bureau of Smiles and
Support, who plays a ukulele as she stands with Michael Bilyk, who 
is held by his mother Antonina and Kira Vertetska, 8 at 
Okhmatdyt children's hospital in Kyiv, Ukraine.

For them, hospital clowning is as challenging as it is rewarding.  "I volunteer so that children don't think about their illness, even for a short moment, so that laughter replaces tears, and joy replaces fear, especially during medical procedures," Kulinich said.  In her practice, she stays together with children, sharing all their feelings, whether they are fear, pain or joy.  For Nosova, the process itself is what made her start clowning.  "I am motivated by joy.  I simply enjoy it.  All my life I studied to be an actress, all my life I enjoyed making people laugh.  That's enough motivation for me," she said.  In a city grappling with nightly air raid alerts and power outages, overworked doctors say the presence of the volunteers brings a much-needed distraction, often helping children who'd been undergoing painful medical treatment to feel happy again.  "Clowns play a very important role in the treatment of children.   They help distract the children, they help them forget about the pain, they help them not pay attention to the nurses or doctors woh come to treat them," Valentyna Mariash, a senior nurse on the Okhmatdyt cancer ward, told AP.  Despite hospital clown initiatives like Bureau of Smiles and Support across Ukraine, the need for their work grows exponentially.  "Then I see how our work is needed in the large children's hospitals located in Kyiv, I can only imagine what a great need there is in regional and district hospitals, where such (clown) activity, as for example in Okhmatdyt, to be honest, simply does not exist," Berdar said.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.