Menu
“I was haunted by terrible nightmares. Each time I went to sleep, I was reliving the day I saw my parents killed. I was afraid to go to bed. But since I started coming to the counseling sessions, I feel more positive about my life. I’ve stopped asking why I survived while so many other people died.”
Those counseling sessions are thanks to support from the All Saints Outreach Committee.
Marie is twenty-eight years old and lives in Rwanda. She was only four when the genocide swept through her tiny but beautiful African nation. She has struggled to stay in school or hold down a job or form friendships ever since then.
It is common to hear people in Europe and North America remark that the genocide was a long time ago. “Surely they’ve got over it by now,” they say.
If only it was that simple. Rwanda is a poor country without the medical infrastructure to counsel the hundreds of thousands of children who were made orphans in the 1994 genocide. All Saints Outreach Committee has supported the charity Network for Africa with a simple but effective program: Dr Barbara Bauer and Shelly Evans, two volunteer professional psychotherapists from Missouri, have trained four bright local Rwandans to become trauma counselors. The four counselors have, in turn, trained twenty-four local Rwandan peer support counselors. Each week, the peer support counsellors go to towns across Rwanda, holding group therapy sessions with genocide orphans. Altogether, 510 orphans are participating in regular counseling sessions. They also give individual counseling to people who are so paralyzed by grief that they find it hard to leave their homes. In all, the team has held 476 group sessions and made 168 home visits.
One thirty-four-year-old client, called H.J.D. to protect his identity, sat through his first group sessions in silence, with his eyes on the floor. Like many Rwandan men, he kept his feelings private, trying to look strong and tough. Finally, he opened up, sharing his experiences during the genocide, when he was ten years old. “I have learnt so much from this counseling group. I have gained coping skills and made new friends. I don’t feel alone anymore. I have taken time to think about my life in the past, and I am planning my future. I’ve realized that I have lost too much of my life by thinking pessimistically.”
Since the project began, 101 of the 510 beneficiaries have started their own small businesses. They are generating income to help themselves and their families, playing a useful role in the community. As a result, their self-esteem has improved, and they no longer consider suicide. Most of the other beneficiaries have joined agricultural cooperatives, where they work on the land in mutually supporting teams. Network for Africa thanks All Saints for its support. With help from our friends in Santa Barbara, we are helping hundreds of people find a way out of the darkness.
