by Julie Knop
I participated in WCCN's US-Nicaragua Women's
Empowerment Project study tour of Nicaragua
in June 1999, when WCCN and Nicaragua's Network of Women Against
Violence co-sponsored a conference on stress and trauma reduction
techniques. About 100 women traveled from across Nicaragua to Managua
in order to attend.
I am a social worker and certified traumatologist, who has most
recently been working with women who are survivors of domestic and
sexual violence. As a former WCCN work-study student and Board Member,
and former long-time resident in Nicaragua, the study tour was a
perfect opportunity to reconnect with old contacts while, in response
to the most recent disaster, sharing new skills I have acquired.
It was also a unique opportunity to learn from Nicaraguan women
about how they are responding to similar issues to the ones my colleagues
and I dealt with daily in my previous work in a domestic violence
program. I was so inspired by my time on the study tour and our
encounter with the Network of Women Against Violence, and was so
aware of the overwhelming need for workers in the emotional recovery
of thousands if not millions of Nicaraguans, that I offered to return
as a volunteer. I am now here as an ongoing part of the WCCN Women's
Empowerment Project, and as follow up to the work we did during
the study tour.
I arrived in Nicaragua to begin six months as a volunteer with
the Network of Women Against Violence on October 4, 1999, in the
middle of a "Mini-Mitch" emergency. Heavy rain had been
falling for days. People were being flooded out of their homes,
reconstructed bridges were being washed out and roads cut off, and
many people were reliving the fears they experienced not quite one
year ago when Hurricane Mitch swept through Nicaragua. Some areas
not affected by Mitch were also being flooded, adding more traumatized
people to the list of communities requesting training with the Network
of Women Against Violence on emotional recuperation.
The meeting I had scheduled for the day after my arrival with Yamilett
Mejia, the head of the Psychosocial Commission of the Network, had
to be postponed as she had responded to an emergency plea for accompaniment
from the Women's Center in San Rafael del Sur. Many families were
dislocated from their flooded homes. They had been crowded into
a school for over 5 days and were again being removed from what
security they had developed.
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Julie Knop demonstrates the Thought Field
Therapy technique for a Hurricane survivor in Santa Maria.
Santa Maria is a resettlement camp for survivors of the Posoltega
mudslide. Still living in shelters made of black plastic tarps
and zinc roofing, it is expected that it will be October 2000
before they are relocated to permanent homes.
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As San Rafael del Sur had not been impacted directly by Hurricane
Mitch, and there were no other institutions working with the people
there, they turned to the Network for assistance. This community near
the Pacific Ocean just south of Managua will be added to the list
of places where the Network plans to train local women by the end
of this year to guide their communities through the process of emotional
recovery, if they can find sufficient resources to complete their
goals. So far they have about $10,000 of the $23,000 they need to
complete the present cycle of planned workshops, and will be looking
for more funding to bring their emotional recovery training to other
parts of the country as well. The new emergency has forced the postponement
of some workshops, and the addition of others, but currently emotional
recovery workshops are being planned or have begun in the departmental
capitals of León, Chinandega, Matagalpa, Jinotega, Somoto,
Ocotal, Puerto Cabezas, Bluefields, and Granada. Several other areas
have already completed their training.
The Network's Psychosocial Commission formed in the wake of Hurricane
Mitch, in January 1999, in order to respond to the crisis. The first
group of professionals forming the commission were trained by Dr.
Gilbert Brenson Lazan, a social psychologist from Bogota, Colombia,
and bases its emotional recovery workshops on the process Brenson
and Maria Mercedes Sarmiento D. developed in the wake of the disastrous
eruption of the Arenas del Nevado del Ruiz volcano in Colombia in
1985. The current workshop participants are all local leaders in
popular organizations: a few are professionals such as psychologists,
lawyers, nurses, or police officers, but most are lay organizers
or "social promoters."
Each of the series of emotional recovery workshops consists of
three stages. In the first two or three day workshop, participants
work through their own grief and trauma, and learn techniques of
self-care in order to be able to help others recuperate emotionally
without further jeopardizing their own emotional health. They learn
to express their emotions rather than hold them in, and learn active
listening techniques as they share with each other. They are introduced
to the stages of grief, and both normal and more complicated processes
of healing.
In the second stage, they review their own emotional process and
begin to learn the methodology for facilitating groups. In the third
series they learn more technical instruments for intervention in
their communities, which we first introduce as methods of self-care,
such as relaxation and stress reduction techniques, body work, and
other techniques such as the one I taught in the WCCN conference
called Thought Field Therapy. They learn other aspects of emotional
recovery group process as well.
I will accompany Yamilett and other professionals affiliated with
the Psychosocial Commission as they lead workshops on emotional
recovery in several different cities during my time in Nicaragua.
In mid-October, I co-led the first of a three part series of grief
workshops in León, and joined another team for the last day
of the first part of training in Chinandega.
In addition to the group workshops, it has been found that many
of the leaders who come for training have their own unresolved grief
and trauma to work through, and not only from Hurricane Mitch. Also
present are the memories of sometimes brutal domestic violence,
childhood sexual abuse, rape, other family violence or abandonment,
as well as traumatic memories of wartime losses or other recent
disasters such as volcanic eruptions, tidal waves, Hurricane Joan
in 1988, other floods, or even the earthquake that destroyed Managua
in 1972.
The Psychosocial Commission has found that many of the women being
trained also need and request individual sessions to help them in
their healing process. The Commission would be happy to provide
this, but in some cases does not have anyone with time available
to send to places where there are not local professionals available.
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Two women in Santa Maria practice the Thought
Field Therapy technique during a training provided by Julie
Knop.
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After the workshop in Chinandega last week, it was decided to send
me to do individual follow-up work with the women from the workshop
who request individual counseling. As a result, I will spend at least
the next month in the office of one of the Chinandega Network member
organizations and in nearby towns doing individual counseling-first
with the women in training and then with others as time allows. I
will be using similar techniques and methodology that the Nicaraguan
professionals working with the Network have been trained to use, including
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), and Thought
Field Therapy, as well as other more traditional techniques.
Several areas of the Chinandega province were deeply affected by
both Hurricane Mitch and the current rains, including the area around
the Posoltega volcano and flooded Puerto Morazan. Cases of domestic
and sexual violence, only beginning to be talked about, also seem
to be endemic. Fortunately, there are some very active, committed
and dynamic women working with Network affiliated organizations
in Chinandega.
The people in some of the rural areas are very poor, with few resources
to seek out professional help more readily available in the bigger
cities. Until more Nicaraguans are trained, and they themselves
are able to become free of their own traumas and grief in order
to help others in their communities, I am happy to play a part in
their recovery. The work of emotional recovery could hardly be more
needed than it is here and now in Nicaragua, and I am very proud
to join with the Network's Psychosocial Commission and WCCN's Women's
Empowerment Project to be a part of this important work!
For the future, Yamilett Mejia and others of the Psychosocial Commission
of the Network of Women Against Violence hope that another similar
study tour can come next year to do follow up training on the same
techniques begun this year, hopefully offering a full day of training
this time in each technique offered, so that the participants can
really feel they have learned to use the technique they choose with
competence. People who were not able to attend the first conference
also want the chance to attend a second one! The Network also looks
forward to other ongoing interchanges with WCCN and the Women's
Empowerment Project.
Julie Knop has a long history with WCCN, including having worked
as a work-study student in our Madison office and having served
as a member of the board of directors. She lived in Nicaragua for
six years during the 1980s and early 1990s.
