Man Dressed As Clown Is Delivering Smiles In His Van While Rescuing Refugees In Ukraine

Jan Tomasz Rogala¡¯s alter ego has taken on a new life, whisking his brightly coloured ¡°Doctor Clown¡± van into conflict hotspots and trying to cheer up evacuees.

There are three things Jan Tomasz Rogala never forgets when he drives at full pelt into Ukraine¡¯s worst conflict zones ¨C a helmet, flak jacket and his bright red clown nose.

His previous life

In his previous life before Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, the 55-year-old Pole was a professional hospital clown, working with child cancer patients and their families in the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro.

jan clown

Jan, who is Polish and moved to Ukraine 15 years ago with his family, had been clowning in hospitals here and there before realising how much good it could do for ill children, but also for their stressed parents.

He set up a non-profit hospital clown training programme, as part of a larger Ukrainian charity, which meant that he and a new cohort of clowns could go daily to hospitals across Dnipro, where they became such familiar faces that they were given a special room to store their costumes and props.

When everything changed...

Then three months ago, everything changed. Instead of fleeing to his native Poland, Jan, his colleagues, friends and family have been driving his clown van and hiring buses to carry out rescue missions.

jan clown

They pick up unwell children, their families, children in orphanages, the disabled and the elderly from invaded cities such as Kharkiv and Donbas, and bring them back to Dnipro, which has so far been relatively safe.

¡°In Dnipro food is scarce and resources are limited,¡± he says. ¡°But we have no bombing or shooting yet. But we are surrounded by the war 200km [124 miles] from three sides, so people don¡¯t want to stay here for long.¡±

Drives them to safety

He brings them to an old school building, which he used as a refugee centre in 2014 during the Maidan revolution, where teams of volunteers are helping families while they wait and pray for transport to get further West, or to Poland, which he says ¡°is the dream¡±.

jan-regala

At a refugee centre in a village near Dnipro, Ukraine, hospital clown Jan and his team are using the tools of their trade ¨C big red noses, painted-on eyebrows, funny dancing and magic tricks ¨C to make displaced children laugh.

Helping children smile

Yesterday morning a mother told Jan that the clowning had helped her nine-year-old daughter, who had been having panic attacks since arriving there from their bomb-strewn home of Kharkiv.

¡°It¡¯s so beautiful to see the kids laugh,¡± he says. ¡°It is just finding some joy for them, and it is so special for the parents to see their children feel happy in a nightmare situation like this.¡±

jan-clown van

For most of the day Jan is driving to dangerous towns and cities to fetch people in need. ¡°This is about saving lives,¡± he says. ¡°I looked at my wife when the attacks began and we agreed we can¡¯t leave for Poland, we have to stay here. We start at 6am and get home around 8pm, and I am scared in those cities when I hear explosions but the people we are picking up have spent seven straight days in bomb shelters with 70 people with often no electricity, it¡¯s crazy.¡±

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