Newsletter No. 35! (from Kasese)
February 2013
Hello after
a long absence! I’m sorry it has been
almost a year since I wrote. That is
partly because I wanted to meet Betty and Vince, MPM’s arts therapists, in
person and hear in detail what they have been doing. It is also because I went back to the UK for
four months to give birth to our second born son, Jonah.
In February
2013 I had our first MPM AGM with both Betty and Vince. I will summarize, because the meeting went on
through breakfast and lunch and was very long and detailed! The sad news is that Betty is leaving us in
order to move back to eastern Uganda where her three children and husband live. She has served MPM for four years and worked
with four European MPM volunteers in that time.
I now have the job of trying to replace her from my home in western
Uganda, two days’ drive away from Gulu!
In other
news, Vince and Betty have done some ground-breaking art therapy and music therapy
collaborations with some wonderful results.
I will outline them below:
Cubu
primary school
Betty and
Vince were told by the teachers that a parent had complained about the therapy
sessions, saying that they were doing witch-craft! The reason is that there was a small
instrument in the shape of a chicken thigh (where do they get these things!)
that Betty was using in an imaginative-play game. The child had gone and told his parent about
it and the parent thought it was a fetish for witchcraft! After clearing this matter up Betty and Vince
were allowed to continue work but confined to large, open groups. They have therefore been working with a class
of 100 kids doing wide-open music sessions outside in the field combined with
related art sessions in the classroom.
It is challenging, but they are meeting the challenges as they come!
Prison
special needs school:
There have
been some problems with the school management that have meant that sessions
here have not been happening as often as we would like. These have now been sorted out and sessions
resume as normal.
Laroo Addra
deaf unit:
There are
some interesting ideas about how to use music and art with these deaf children
at Laroo Addra school. Vince is going
to put paint down in trays on the floor with paper directly after it, also on
the floor. Then the children get in a
circle and do one of their traditional dances, which usually go round in
circles. They will be accompanied by a
large cow-drum that some of them are able to hear and other can watch the
rhythm of it as they dance round. They
will them be able to see the music they created through the art, if not
actually hear it with their ears!
Gulu remand
home:
There has been
some very interesting work going on at the remand home including a series of
home-visits by Betty and Vince to try to mediate between a boy in the remand
home and his father. Through one of the
music and art sessions, the boy came to Betty and started talking to her. It transpired that he had fallen out with his
father, who had come to his wits end and handed the boy over to the police for
repeated thefts. Betty was able to visit
the father on the boy’s behalf, then talk again with the boy, offering the
father’s point of view. The boy’s story
needs a follow-up but it seems that he was let out after his short stint in the
home and now he lives again with his father, having built their bridges
again! It’s funny where music therapy
ends up!
Another
good art-music collaboration was when the children created a piece of artwork
in a session themed around personality and identity then at the end they were
told to take away the picture and compose a song to perform to their friends at
the next session. All the children did
it and the themes that came out were at times inspiring and challenging. One of the boys came with a song about how
much he hates his mother and why he will never be able to tell her – or anyone
– about his experiences in prison. This
led Vince to follow up with a session about anger and forgiveness and later, a
session about faith and writing letters to God (whoever they perceived ‘god’ to
be).
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.
For those who pray:
·
Pray for the
young people in the remand home as they go through this difficult time of
imprisonment, and for Vince and Betty as they works with them.
·
Pray that by
the time Betty leaves in April there is someone to take her place.
