One day we traveled to an orphanage that Tiploo and a Bangladeshi-Amercian friend of his, Tarin Anwar, have supported for years. They have made many improvements to this very poor orphanage, that still has mostly dirt floors and little plumbing or electricity. But this poor place is filled with delightful young girls. During the show, the girls laughed so loud that there came a knock on the front door. A couple of boys from an orphanage down the road were there wondering what all the laughter was about. They were told and we ended up doing a performance later that day at their orphanage. In the Bangladesh gallery there are pictures from both performances.

Perhaps the most wonderful performance was in a very poor neighborhood in Dhaka. The neighborhood was only a ten minute rickshaw ride from Tiploo’s apartment building. The ramshackle houses were improvised hovels all leaning against each other surrounded by an open sewer. Rotting garbage was piled and strewn everywhere. There was a small vacant lot where we set up our trunk. Quickly word spread and kids began to gather from all over the neighborhood. When a few hundred people had gathered we did the magic. Soon laughter filled the air and faces lit up with smiles and wonder. Magic brought joy to this poorest of places.

Some thing about the show just happening and the crowd just showing up felt like magic to begin with. These kind of shows where we just show up and bring magic to a most unlikely place -children living in a garbage dump in El Salvador, a group of street kids living under a bridge in Odessa, children in a neighborhood in the poorest slum of Dhaka, Bangladesh. This is magic; this is Magicians Without Borders, without boundaries, without barriers. We might show up anywhere and magic happens. Out of thin air magic appears, the impossible becomes possible, perhaps even hope is awakened and dreams begin to stir. Magic is alive.