“The Early Evening India Show”

7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 17

Oddfellow Theater, Route 117, Buckfield

All tickets: $20

All proceeds will go to the India project. To make a donation, see www.miclonvayda.com/india08.

From Buckfield with love
Two friends team up to help children in India

BUCKFIELD – Comedian and juggler Michael Miclon knows his newest project – collaborating with a friend to help teenage mothers on the other side of the world – will leave some folks puzzled.

“There’s a bit of, ‘Why are two white guys from Buckfield going to India?’ ” said Miclon, best known for the homespun stage show he runs in the tiny town north of Auburn.

His answer is simple. The father of three wants to help children born in a precarious place.

Miclon and his friend, Mike Vayda, plan to spend eight days in the northern Indian town of Fatehpur.

They plan to make a video that will be shown to new mothers that will give them some of the basics of breast-feeding, nutrition and grooming.

“The average mother there is 13 to 15 years old,” Miclon said. Mistakes such as giving babies polluted water are costing lives. “This is something we can do,” Miclon said.

The idea grew out of a trip Vayda made last year with a group from the East Auburn Baptist Church. Vayda and his 14-year-old son, Zack, helped renovate a hospital building and connect it to the Internet.

“It’s not that I’m an activist,” Vayda said.

In part, the trip was meant to give Zack a glimpse of life in another part of the world. He also hoped to show him a little about caring for others.

When they returned, Vayda made a video about the trip, which he shared with the church and Miclon.

“I started falling in love with the project,” Miclon said. The two men talked with Wendy Cowles, a Buckfield woman who works in the Indian town as a nurse practitioner. Together, they settled on the video.

The little hospital is part of a network of 20 small town hospitals, spread across a vast section of northern India. The Fatehpur hospital alone delivers about 300 babies each year. The mothers are mostly illiterate and often unskilled in child-rearing, Miclon said.

Diarrhea, a result of drinking polluted water, is the most common reason for infant death. And it could be avoided. Mothers can feed children exclusively on their breast milk for a child’s first six months.

It’s the kind of information Miclon and Vayda hope to share with the moms in the hours after they give birth.

Not that it’ll be an easy project to complete.

In only eight days, the pair plan to shoot, edit and produce a roughly 40-minute DVD with help from Vayda’s wife, Heidi, and Zack, who will turn 15 before the trip.

And the work will be done in a language none of them speak: Hindi. It may prove even tougher than one of Miclon’s old routines: juggling flaming torches.

All work will be done through an interpreter and narrator. And for the part of the video that teaches breast feeding, the men will be barred from the room during shooting.

And unlike every other Miclon production, there will be no jokes. Miclon’s alter ego, Moto Hoonchbach, will remain home in Buckfield.

Not that he won’t lend a hand.

As a fundraiser for the India project, Miclon will host a version of his popular “Early Evening Show” at Buckfield’s Oddfellow Theater, which he founded.

The show’s aim is to raise $10,000, enough money to pay travel expenses and the cost of TVs and DVD players for the hospital.

Scheduled for Thursday, Jan. 17, it will be titled “The Early Evening India Show.”