MCC helps train trauma counsellors on Indian islands

Andaman Islands, India

With $13,000 in Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) funding, the West Bengal Volunteer Health Association has been doing health assessments and training trauma counsellors on the Andaman and Nicobar islands off the coast of India, hard hit by the Dec. 26 tsunami that killed more than a quarter-million people in south Asia.

Carolyn Holderread Heggen, a psychotherapist from Oregon, is helping train the counsellors there for two months.

While the islands have been described as "heavenly," Heggen said her first view of the Andaman capital, Port Blair, from the air, made it seem anything but to her. "The sight of reddish brown rice paddies, temples, shrines, bridges and buildings askew and crumbled, boats smashed and deposited far from the water's edge, quickly jolted me back to reality," she said.

While she found the 18 camps set up around Port Blair-each housing from 300 to more than 1,000 survivors each in makeshift plastic tents, Heggen said that the immediate provision of MCC funds to ship medical supplies from the Indian mainland helped the camp clinic and a volunteer local doctor (secured by the West Bengal Volunteer Health Association) provide for the basic medical needs at the camps.

"Because of the pools of trapped and brackish water and the destruction of many latrines at Port Blair, there is an infestation of mosquitoes and large flies," Heggen reported. "At camps people begged us for nets because they were unable to sleep at night or protect their young babies, the old and the sick during the day. We were able to place a call to [Calcutta] and thousands of brightly colored nets were put on the next ship. As we distributed the nets, people graciously thanked us," she said.

While some semblance of normalcy now pervades the camps-though they remain "quite challenged" to meet basic physical needs-the psychological needs are immense, according to Heggen.

"Most camp residents have a personal story of profound loss and nightmarish images trapped in their minds" she said. "Many children fight sleep and don't want to close their eyes because when they do they see haunting 'pictures.'" Distraught wives, who have lost their husbands in this very patriarchal society, wonder what will become of them and their children.

Heggen has been focusing her training efforts in the Andaman Islands on those who will help the child survivors. "I did separate training workshops with teachers at the elementary, middle school and secondary levels," she said. "We focused particularly on ways of using art, stories, play and drama to help students externalize and resolve the internal terror they have experienced."

She also met with nurses and the medical staff at the government hospital to conduct a workshop on healing responses to emotionally devastated patients.

"Sitting on the front row of the large lecture hall was a young nurse who frequently wiped tears from her eyes as I spoke," Heggen said. "She later shared with me her personal story of tsunami terror and shared how hard it is to help her patients and be compassionate with them when her own heart is so full of sadness."

Relief workers, emergency response teams and community workers have been working 14- to 16-hour days for over a month now in hot, muggy, mosquito-infested tense situations. While capable and committed, they are exhausted, Heggen said.

"I was happy to have a chance to hold workshops with them on compassion fatigue and self-care," she said. "They responded enthusiastically and emotionally to the invitation to set limits for themselves and to suggestions for ways they can help each other monitor and manage their workload and stress."

These people are key for the rebuilding of tsunami-affected communities, according to Heggen. Support for them will be vital in the months ahead.

"My heart is full already of images of destruction and stories of despair," she concluded. "But in the Andaman Islands I also saw enough expressions of human compassion, courage and generosity to renew my belief in the resilience of the human spirit and energize me for the work ahead."

-Ross W. Muir