Thursday 22 March 2012

Newsletter Number 34 - March 2012

Newsletter No. 34! (from Gulu)

March 2012



The last time I wrote, in January, I informed you that Vincent Okuja, an art counselor, would be joining the MPM team with his very up-to-date and relevant experience of working with people in very difficult circumstances.  His previous client groups include not only the Acholi people affected by war-trauma, but those of the Karamojong tribe living in very traditional cultures with all the dangers and difficulties that entails such as changing values and severe droughts.



Gulu Remand Home

I am in Gulu at the moment visiting Vince and helping him find his feet.  Having already worked in Gulu, though, Vince has not only found his feet but is already learning to fly with MPM!  I visited his second art therapy session in the remand home I had mentioned in the last newsletter where he had 25 teenage boys and a teenage girl.  The session involved the teens drawing a poster advertising themselves either as they see themselves or as they want to see themselves.  They then discussed the results, sometimes with much hilarity (“you want a square head, then?” mocked one boy!) and with much seriousness (“my brother was cut – that’s why I have drawn him that way.”)



The remand home is basically a juvenile home where children are kept as they go in and out of court awaiting verdicts, or where they stay as a result of their verdicts.  They stay at the very simple residence for between a couple of weeks and six months.  Some are there for simple theft because of being unwelcome at home for a whole host of reasons and therefore having to make their way on the street.  Some are there for defilement or aggravated defilement and some are there for murder.  It is heartbreaking to hear the stories and to find these teenagers (mostly boys but there are a handful of girls) living on the edge of society in a government institution where there is no funding for activities for them to do.  They have either been disowned by their families or they lost their families during the LRA war.



The money given to the remand home by the government is only enough for food and the director was asking me for funding for them to improve their sanitation as they don’t have enough money for soap of any kind.  I have put them in touch with the Ugandan Christian Lawyers Fraternity (UCLF) which is supported by the Baptist Union of Uganda (who I am currently working with in Kasese) in the hope that they can help lobby the government for proper funding for the remand home.  The staff also face the obvious challenges of violence and aggression in the home but, as visitors and people who have something fun and constructive for them to do, we didn’t witness any of their aggression and we saw that they could be friendly and sociable young people.  It is good for the staff to see them this way too.  Vince is doing two morning sessions there per week and when Betty returns to Gulu she will add music therapy to the program,  either combined with Vince’s art therapy or on alternate weeks or days but with related themes.



Prison Primary School Special Needs

I also visited Vince’s art therapy group at Prison Primary School’s Special Needs Unit (remember it’s not a prison, it’s next to a prison!)  The children have such diverse needs ranging from children who are pretty capable educationally but socially unable to fit in to mainstream school, to those who are profoundly autistic and struggle to participate even in the special needs unit.  Vince was doing an activity with the whole group.  They had to draw what they could based on what they wanted for their future.  Again there was the comedy (yet with underlying sadness) “I want to be a smoker” then the more serious “I want to be a nurse” juxtapositions.  Vince discussed the outcomes with the children and gave space for them to vent their frustrations at being forgotten in a society that gives very little attention to children with special needs.



A Marriage of Arts

Vince, Betty and I have talked about how art and music can work together to complement each other and how that will work practically.  It is exciting to watch as the two have ideas about how they can combine live music with live art.  Betty is not yet back from maternity leave but when she is I will be avidly watching this space to see how they both get on.



Kony 2012

Some of you will have watched the “Kony 2012” video that has been causing news around the world.  If you have seen it, regardless of what we think of the controversy that surrounds it, you will have learned something about the horrors of the LRA’s conflict in northern Uganda.  It is those children who were traumatised by Kony’s rebels that MPM has been working with since 2008.  I have to stress, though, that the LRA are no longer active in Uganda and have not been since 2006, but are now committing similar atrocities in the vast jungles of the Central African Republic (CAR), South Sudan and the Democratic Repupblic of Congo (DRC).  MPM is working hard to help people return to good mental health in Gulu, but I certainly have in mind that there are other places where MPM could be useful.  Whilst chatting to Vince today, he revealed he is keen to chase up a contact he has in the new Republic of South Sudan to try to do some peripatetic work under MPM’s name with ex-child soldiers there.

As usual:

Due to the additional member of staff, I need to continue to find more funding and new supporters as the cost of employing another therapist is around £100 per month.  If you are willing to contribute a one-off donation or become a monthly supporter, please get in touch with me to find out how (either at my normal email address or at musicforpeacefulminds@yahoo.co.uk).  Thank you to everyone who has contributed, and especially to the current monthly supporters for your support.  You can visit http://musicforpeacefulminds.blogspot.com for more background information and pictures.

Friday 6 January 2012

Newsletter number 33- January 2012

Newsletter No. 33! (from Kasese)
January 2012
In the last newsletter I wrote about Ana Navarro, a volunteer from Spain who stayed in Gulu for almost three months.  She has now returned to Spain, after having worked hard to help a tired and very heavily pregnant Betty to learn new skills and ideas and at times fighting the apathy in schools to help MPM keep time and boundaries of therapy.   I don’t think she’d mind me saying that she found it exhausting to be constantly reminding both Betty and the schools that timing, consistency, privacy and good referrals and evaluations are important for therapy and that just because it rains doesn’t mean you don’t turn up for work/school!  However, she was able to offer new ideas to a distracted Betty, which she can use once she comes back to work in the new year with a new baby.  She also enjoyed working in the schools that are much more supportive of MPM such as Laroo Adra, the school with the deaf unit.

Betty and Ana went to Kitgum to check on the staff that Jantina Bijpost and Neysa Navarro-Fernandez trained in 2010.  They were pleased to find that there was one man who had been championing the cause of Music Therapy in the special needs school by running regular music sessions for the children.  Evidence of this could be seen when Ana and Betty ran a group there and the children clearly knew what to do and expect.

When MPM has volunteers it helps me not only to offer Betty a companion and colleague, but to also re-evaluate what MPM does and how it does it.  Here are some thoughts that Ana, Betty and I have had throughout Ana’s recent time in Gulu: 

Length of groups:

The groups had run for one term each since we started in 2008.  Ana found that out of her potential 10 weeks of therapy, she saw some of the groups only twice!  This was due to typical Ugandan things such as national holidays springing up without warning; heavy rains causing children and staff not to turn up to school; exams and revision leave; inability to pay school fees or wear correct uniform so being sent; the man with the key to the music room has gone; the room has not been cleaned amongst other things, some more believable than others!  We agreed that, in order to benefit the children’s need for small-group time with a counselor and to give them the familiarity and space they need to get to the deeper problems facing them at this time in this place, they should meet for a whole school year.  As I wrote in the last newsletter, we will also change the referral system so that the most needy children are being referred by the teachers or parents.  (This is difficult because teachers with over 100 pupils in their class can’t know everyone individually so some children may fall through the net and others may have therapy when they don’t have much need for it.)

New MPM therapist

Our new art therapist is going to join MPM in February, which I’m very excited about.  He is bringing to the table art therapy experience from having worked in Gulu, Karamojong (a very interesting and complex pastoral tribe in the north-east facing many types of problems) and other parts of the country.  He is around the same age as Betty (30s) but has more energy (that also comes of not having three children!) and a much more modern outlook in terms of drawing information and ideas from online reports and websites and really understanding issues of the youth he will be working with.

New place of work

When Betty was at hospital for a scan of her baby, she met a contact who worked in what I believe to be a centre for children with social problems (I’m unclear as yet but more information will follow).  In the new term Vince will go and get more information and details from this place and see if it is possible to work there.  It is good timing that this opportunity has presented itself because one of the original schools that MPM works in (Laroo Boarding) has failed so many times to help and offer support to MPM staff and it has become impossible to work there.  Corruption and discontent among the staff and a lack of care for the children’s well-being has been worrying (and in two cases fatal when two children died of malaria because of lack of staff attention).  Betty has been trying so hard to keep the work going, and Ana also pulled her hair out trying to care for the children, but we have come to the conclusion that the problem is firstly too bit for MPM to work with and secondly is out of our hands and needs to be dealt with directly by the government (it is one of only a few government secondary schools in the country).  We gave the teachers warnings about how they need to support MPM staff but nothing has changed so MPM will no longer work there.  It is so sad to not be able to reach the children, but as a tiny CBO there is very little we can do.

 As usual:

Due to the additional member of staff, I need to find more funding and new supporters as the cost of another therapist is around £100 per month.  If you are willing to contribute a one-off donation or become a monthly supporter, please get in touch with me to find out how (musicforpeacefulminds@yahoo.co.uk.  Thank you to everyone who has contributed, and especially to the current monthly supporters for your support, and please continue to stand with me at this time of exciting change.