South Sudan, Africa
UGA04f - Trauma counselling training for South Sudanese refugees: Partnership Reports
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Report Date: September 20, 2017
Update from BHW Uganda Partnership Facilitator
While in Uganda recently I spoke on the phone with Reverend Obadiah who attended the Trauma Counselling Training Course held in January this year.
Reverend Obadiah lives in the Bibibidi refugee camp which is a pretty harsh place. He previously lived and worked in South Sudan with his wife and children. In 2014 he “lost” his wife and then in 2017 his eldest child and only son. Although he has daughters, the death of his son left him “traumatised, suicidal” and with a “disturbed mind”. (I made a choice not to go into detail with him about the deaths of his wife and son or how he became a refugee because of time and the interruptions we experienced during the phone call).
He said that the training with Thomas and Joyce had helped him a great deal. He reports that he is now “strong”, has “regained (his) power” and considers this was due to the training he received.
He reports that others in the camp have noticed the huge change in him and this has meant that they are keen to speak with him and hear about what he learnt that made such a difference. He is now helping other people, is able to speak with them about the things he learnt and is helping to organise others. Because of this he was keen to organise training for others.
I asked him what his thoughts/ideas were in relation to helping his community and without any other prompting from me he spoke very clearly about what he wanted to do. He would like to first focus on providing the training for ‘elected leaders’ of the people within the camp as they are the ones the people approach first for help or advice. He said there are also women working in the church who are already counselling others in the community.
He considered that these two groups would be key people in that they are already sought out by others and he thought that the training would help them a great deal in providing trauma counselling and advocating for peace amongst the people. He then added that a ‘youth training’ would also benefit the youth and community.
He said he had been given enough copies of the material by Thomas and Joyce for trauma and peace training but thought he might need some funds for the cost of running this training.
Note: BHW has recently sent funds to Thomas and Joyce for them to run another trauma counselling training course with some of these people
