Newsletter 37

Newsletter No. 37! (from Gulu)

February 2014

 

Hello MPM supporters!

I am just back from Gulu where I went (with Gareth and the boys) to run a parents’ workshop at the deaf unit of Laroo Primary School.  I also began the training of Layet Florence who is MPM’s new Music Counselor.  Vince is running MPM very well and is not only on top of the work but constantly looking for new avenues to explore.

 

The workshop first: There was a lot of not knowing about this workshop and it was with nervousness that I handed over £100 to Vince to go shopping for the lunch that must be provided if we are to hold a function in Uganda that is taken seriously.  The day should have begun at 8am but finally at 11.30 we began the lengthy introductions of all the ‘big’ men and women who were there.  I was very impressed by the people who had shown up: the director of an NGO for disabilities (himself deaf) and the PTA chairperson amongst others.  There were around 30 adults and 30-40 children, which is a miracle in itself considering that the school said it had tried to have parents meetings before and the first time one parent showed up and the second time no one came!

 

Vincent and I gave talks about how music and art can help deaf people to express themselves and help them in their academic work too.  We answered questions from concerned parents who were finding it very tough raising their kids, some of whom are violent or angry towards the family and neighbours.  We discussed how, since talking doesn’t help, communicating via any means –be it playing, acting, drawing, dancing – will help to show the child their value and worth within the family and help them to reduce their anger and violent outbursts.  One father was at his wits end as his daughter refused to talk to her mother or siblings and the father was the only one the daughter would try to communicate with.  He was thankful by the end of the workshop that he had some new ideas to try to communicate with her and had some answers as to why she was so angry.

 

On to Florence.  She is our new MPM Music Counselor in Gulu working alongside Vincent.  It turns out that she had been present at one of MPM’s training days in Hope North School two hours out of Gulu back in 2008!  Then in 2013 she heard the advert on the radio for the position of Music Counselor and applied!  She has a lot of energy and is bright, willing to learn and has the potential to be a very good asset to MPM.

 

The work that Vince and Florence are now doing in Gulu looks very different to how it all started.  Firstly, the groups are much bigger than they used to be as small group work is not always possible in the places MPM works due to various factors (anyone with an academic interest in Community Music Therapy?  I’m writing a paper about it with reference to MPM!)  Secondly there are now two counselors and consequently the children spend half of their sessions quietly drawing as well as dancing around playing instruments!  But there is no doubt that in a place such as Uganda where school is about learning by rote and repeating things that they might not understand, the creativity that MPM is bringing to the institutions is valuable and welcomed.

 

 

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:

·       Praise God for finding Florence who seems to be a good addition to the MPM team.

·       Praise God for safe journeys to and from Gulu – the road is terrible now and we saw four overturned lorries on route.

·       Please pray for God to continually affect the children’s lives, guiding them and helping them to grow into the people He wants them to be.

Newsletter No 36 - Rwanda!

Newsletter No. 36! (from Kasese)

September 2013

 

Hello MPM supporters!  I hope this newsletter finds you well.

It’s been an exciting month for MPM.  Music as Therapy International invited me and Vince to go to Rwanda to help them think about how to make the music therapy program they already have there more sustainable.  After a long battle with the Ugandan Immigration we got a special pass (work permits still being processed after seven months!) and were able to cross the border to drive all the way across Rwanda to Kamembe in the south west.  From here we could see across the beautiful Lake Kivu to Congo and we were a stone’s throw away from Burundi.  It was two days’ drive from south west Uganda and three days’ journey for Vince from Gulu but well worth it because we learned as much as we offered.

 

Music as Therapy International have had a relationship with two special needs centres in Cyangugu for some years now and are looking how to move ahead.  Since MPM is still running successfully after almost six years Vince and I were able to offer some words of advice as much including what not  to do as much as how to do things well!  In exchange we observed (and took part in) two ‘family days’ where parents were invited to the schools and offered advice on how to interact and communicate with their disabled children and the parents were able to ask questions and to offer their concerns.  Vince and I later discussed how this might work in Uganda (although Uganda is vastly less organized so it may take some time!) with the special needs schools we work in there.  The plan would be to offer a parents’ support day in Laroo Addra (the deaf unit) and Prison Primary (the special needs unit) to encourage the parents to keep working hard getting their children to school, to advise other parents with disabled children to get the support they need and not to hide them away and to teach them what music and art therapy are doing for their children and why it is important.

 

Meanwhile Vince continues to work alone in Gulu because we have not had any suitable musicians come forward for the job of music counselor yet.  A radio advert will go out this week so hopefully we will get some applications so someone can start in the new school year, next February.  Vince is still working in all the usual places but most of his time is taken up with the Remand Home because the staff there treat him as though he works there: he has become part of the furniture!  He is working through some very important topics with the young people, helping them to realize their mistakes that led them to be arrested and encouraging them to find ways of changing their behavior so that when they get out they will not be arrested again.  He also does sessions with themes of self-discovery, self-expression and how to live peacefully with others in the home.  He is currently writing a case-study about one of his sessions so you will be able to read that soon.

 

Sometimes he gets disheartened by his work: a girl in the special needs unit became pregnant and no one knows details of this and there are allegations of bad conduct from a head teacher at another place.  He is constantly being asked for things that he just should not have to provide like soap for the remand home that should be funded by the government.  Things like this can really drain him and that’s without even thinking about the children’s personal issues that he discovers through his therapeutic work.  But it just goes to show that his work is important and necessary in Gulu.

 

In Uganda if you have a meeting that people are expected to attend, it is normal and polite to offer lunch.  Therefore there will be a certain degree of added cost for the family days that we plan to hold.  In light of this, 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:

·       Please pray for a suitable musician to join the MPM team as a music counselor.  The logistics of hiring someone are difficult too, since I live two days drive away from Gulu.

·       Praise God for the opportunity to work with Music as Therapy and to share ideas and problems.

MPM in Rwanda

Dear All.
I am writing a short letter now to tell you that I have been asked by Music as Therapy International http://www.musicastherapy.org/ to go to Kamembe, south west Rwanda, to help them as they try to find a way of offering music therapy services to people in that area.  They have already been working in Rwanda for some time (see their website above for more precise details) but are now thinking about changing the way they work there.
Vince is accompanying me and I am going en famille with my two boys and live-in nanny (Gareth, my wonderful husband!) since Jonah is still too young to be without mum at the moment.
I will write more when I get back about how it went.

In the meantime, I will write that unfortunately MPM has still not managed to find a musician to fulfil the requirements of the music therapist post in Gulu so Vince has been holding the fort with art and other creative ways of working with children such as dance and role-play.  There was one applicant for the job but she was not a musician.  Although Betty was also not a musician, MPM has moved on since 2008 and now Vince and I decided that the role of music counsellor should go to a talented musician.  If we go beyond a year without filling the role we may look at this specification again since a lot of the work that happens with MPM is creative work that includes music rather than solely music in itself.  But in the meantime we are still being picky!

Vince has been working in the same places as before (see previous newsletter) and after I spend three days with him in Rwanda I will chat with him and find out the details in order to write a newsletter on our return.

I look forward to filling you in on lots of exciting news when I get back!

Bethan

For people who pray please pray firstly for Vince to be able to travel across the border with not hassle as he doesn't have a passport but instead has other forms of ID and although he believes he will be able to travel there are always people who will try to make life difficult.  Also please pray urgently for a musician to join MPM in Gulu as not only is it lonely for Vince to work alone but Music for Peaceful Minds cannot be so without music!

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.

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.

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.

A new employee

Good news!  An artist who I was head-hunting has agreed to take on a new post with MPM as arts therapist to complement Betty Acen, our existing Music Counsellor!  This is bringing much refreshment and a new sense of direction to MPM.  To be continued...!