Orphans get healing touch for tsunami traumas
BY BILL Tarrant
Kavidevi, 14, cries as her uncle begins to register her and her
three sisters at a government centre for tsunami orphans in
Nagapattinam, in southern India, in this January 17. file photo. The
December 26 tsunami had a calamitous impact on children. At least a
third of the 232,000 people who were killed or are still missing
across a dozen Indian Ocean nations were children. Hundreds of
thousands who survived are coping with the loss of family members,
teachers and friends. REUTERS
|
NAGAPATTINAM, India (Reuters) - Seven-year-old Stephen Raj belts out
a Tamil pop song, striking poses and swivelling his hips like a
Bollywood star. Tamilarasan, 10, shyly shows a visitor the trophy he won
in an art competition.
The children in this school assembly bear the marks of poverty, but
while their clothes are shabby, they are eager and laughing. All have
one thing in common. They are tsunami orphans.
The Annai Sathya orphanage in the south India town of Nagapattinam
organised puppet theatre and magic shows when the children began
streaming in after the Dec. 26 tsunami. Yoga and karate teachers were
brought in along with trauma counsellors.
"We try not to remind them of trauma and flashbacks of sorrow," said
Surya Kala, a social welfare officer at the orphanage. "We're
entertaining them so they eventually forget."
The tsunami had a calamitous impact on children. At least a third of
the 232,000 people who were killed or are still missing across a dozen
Indian Ocean nations were children. Hundreds of thousands who survived
are coping with the loss of family members, teachers and friends.
An unprecedented humanitarian effort mounted after one of the world's
worst natural disasters especially targeted children, averting the
second wave of deaths from malnutrition and disease that many experts
had anticipated would follow.
Now hundreds of activists have joined international groups, such as
Save the Children and the United Nations Children's Fund, to help deal
with their traumas, get them back to school and try to keep them safe
from abuse and exploitation.
Child trafficking, always a problem in India, has risen in some
fishing communities where parents who lost everything have been
persuaded to send children to work in sweatshops.
"The agents lend parents money and, when they can't pay it back, they
send their children to town to work in the underwear industry, which is
labour intensive," said R. Manivannan, coordinator at AVVAI Village
Welfare Society in Nagapattinam.
"They are vulnerable to sexual abuse. There is a chance for
exploitation," he said.
Psychological problems are compounded by life in the overcrowded
temporary camps - around a million people are living in tents or wood
and corrugated tin shelters around the tsunami region nine months after
the catastrophe.
Social workers have fanned out to affected villages in India,
Thailand, Sri Lanka and Indonesia to give counselling to men, women and
children.
Volunteers and aid groups have set up "Tsunami Learning Centres" in
fishing communities in Thailand's hard-hit Phang Nga province on the
southwest coast, where children receive counselling through after-school
art programmes.
"Sometimes they still think about the wave, the damage it did, the
people who died, their friends," said Nattakan Songpagdee, a 24-year-old
Thai volunteer who runs the "Learn from Tsunami" programme in Khao Lak.
The emphasis is on positive thinking, looking to the future, she
said.
"We believe the child can be the centre of the family and can
influence the rest of the family," she said.
While most of the rubble in coastal communities has been cleared,
psychologists and social workers are worried about the wreckage left in
people's minds.
If anything, the children may be more resilient than adults.
The tsunami killed a disproportionate number of women and children,
leaving "bachelor villages" of men struggling to run homes. Mothers
guilty about surviving their children are battling depression. Fishermen
are taking to the bottle rather than face the sea again.
The World Health Organisation says most survivors go through the
grieving process and recover. But about 5 to 10 percent develop
persistent problems such as depression and chronic post-traumatic stress
disorder. Severe depression, with suicidal thoughts, hits 1 to 2
percent.
"People just want to be heard," said A. Radakrishnan, the
administrative chief of Nagapattinam district. "They want to know that
the reactions they are feeling are normal."
Many mothers in India who lost children had been previously
sterilised under the government's family planning drive. The
Nagapattinam government has offered to pay for surgery to reverse the
operations, bringing fresh hope for families despairing of never having
children again.
"About 120 couples have expressed interest and 37 have undergone
recanalisation so far," Radakrishnan said. He did not know the success
rate for the operation.
"It's a very important psycho-social measure in that it removes the
feeling they are helpless. It rekindles hope."
For Viyarseeli Nadarajahlingam, 32 and living in a temporary camp at
Sri Lanka's northern tip, hope battles despair as she copes with the
loss of her six children.
"Just imagine how it is to lead such a lonely life," said
Nadarajahlingam, who tried to kill herself after her children drowned in
front of her eyes.
She had a hysterectomy just before the tsunami, so all she can do now
is pray that her husband makes good on a pledge to find a child to adopt
to help her move on.
|