Contributed photos

(Top) Brynn White uses her bubble blower necklace in a Sri Lankan hospital to play with a shy child. The child ran behind a door when he saw the clowns from the Gesundheit Institute. White used the bubbles to ease the child’s anxiety. (Right) Brynn White and other members of the Gesundheit Institute make an unscheduled stop during their trip to Sri Lanka. The small refugee camp was happy to see the visitors and the group was more than happy to play with the kids.

For many tsunami survivors, aid came with a camouflaged uniform, steel-toed boots and a rifle over the shoulder, but for a lucky few, aid came with a bright red nose, chunky sneakers and a bubble-blower necklace.

“I always wore bubbles,” said Brynn White, Overland Park sophomore. “It always broke the ice if someone was shy.”

Brynn and other members and volunteers of Patch Adams’ Gesundheit Institute spent spring break on a clown trip to the coast of Sri Lanka. The focus of the trip was not to heal the wounds of the people, but to heal their spirits by bringing laughter and joy to those who have lost everything.

On the first day, Brynn and the rest of the group, chartered a bus and drove to refugee camps.

One of its first stops was a school for the deaf in Colombo. Some of the clown’s routines involved music or other noises, which these children were not able to hear.

Volunteers overcame the sound barrier as well as the language barrier.

“Clowning is a language of its own. Kids know how to play,” Brynn said.

And play they did.

At each stop the group walked out fully dressed and was ready to run, play, hold and laugh with the children.

One of Adams’ requirements for doctors on these clown trips is to create a clown alter ego.

Bowen White, Brynn’s father, played a proctologist with a balloon-enhanced backside.

At first Bowen refused to become a clown, but after a little coercion, he took the risk and became Dr. Jerko. Now he would never go back, he said.

Dr. Jerko is sensitive about his name constantly being mispronounced. “That’s Yerko, if you don’t mind.”

“Most of these trips aren’t about bringing stuff, it’s about bringing ourselves,” he said. “We’re there to be with the people.”

Bowen has been clowning with the institute since the early ’90s, traveling around the world.

He invited his daughter on a trip to Cuba last year where they visited mentally disabled kids. That was when Brynn put on her first red nose.

“She had kids slobbering on her and she just stayed with it. It made me feel great to see what kind of kid Brynn has turned out to be,” Bowen said.

Brynn hasn’t yet developed her own clown persona, but knows that one day it will come to her.

But traveling with Adams’ institute isn’t all fun and games.

Even her experience in Cuba or television coverage of the tsunami could prepare her for the devastation after she arrived in Sri Lanka.

“The media doesn’t prepare you,” Bowen said. “You just don’t understand it until you see it.”

Brynn’s night arrival kept her from seeing the damage as they flew in.

“Everything looked normal, then in the morning it’s like ‘boom,’” she said. “There was just nothing there. I had no idea the degree of devastation that was there.”

The worst feeling came for Brynn when she was on the beach looking at the debris, including clothing that was still left from the tsunami. Stranded on the beach was a fluorescent-colored child’s flip-flop.

“That was the first punch in the stomach,” Brynn said.

With all that the people of Sri Lanka have lost, she said it was amazing how they could pick up the pieces and go on with their lives.

The group traveled the coast for a week.

Wherever they went the clowns were welcomed; and wherever they went they would try to bring smiles to faces. People would even smile and wave as the group passed in a bus.

Near the end of the trip in one of the refugee camps, Brynn and Bowen had an experience they would treasure.

While the clowns were spread out having fun, Bowen spotted one child who was standing on a pile of rubble with his head down and crying. He noticed that the child had skinned his knee. Bowen, as Dr. Jerko, scooped up the boy and took him to Brynn so that they could patch up his knee.

“That’s what he needed. He needed some attention,” she said.

Brynn said sometimes the children just wanted to be held. She said it was hard to let them go.

Brynn will continue to travel around with her father and the group. She said in the future she wanted her sisters to get involved too.