Some of the pioneering Trauma Tappers in South Sudan. Trauma is a big problem in the country after 50 years of war.

TTT has been planted in the world´s youngest nation South Sudan. Peaceful Heart Network was invited to do TTT workshops during a training of 200 peace mobilizers organized by Initiatives of Change (www.iofc.org)  and the government of South Sudan.

The people of South Sudan have lived with war the last 50 years. A majority of the population has experienced violence and atrocities at close range. Trauma is now a big problem. The fascinating thing is that the authorities openly talk about it and eagerly want to do something to help those traumatized.

A group of 20 of the 200 Peace Mobilizers got extra training in TTT so that they should be able to teach the technique to others in their communities and states where they come from. In the deep shadow under a beautiful mango tree just beside we discussed experiences of trauma, symptoms of trauma and practiced the TTT. It was too hot to be inside. 

This group is the Trauma Tapping pioneers in their country. Maketh Kuot Deng – one of them sent this email some days after the training was finished.

“Dear, I hope God has guided you safely back home to meet your family. I will be happy to hear from you.

We are working well with TTT in our state Jonglei . People enjoy it, they see it as the best way of killing trauma in South Sudan. It is welcome.”

Maketh Kuot Deng and Nyakun Peter Koang, two of the Trauma Tappers in South Sudan.

One of the participants – Ajing Chol Giir  – made a song for the tapping. We performed it for all the other participants. Music is one of the new components we encourage trauma tappers to use when teaching TTT. It makes the healing more powerful. Music and dance is one of the traditional ways of healing in many cultures, especially in Africa.

Ajing´s song is in the dinka language – one of the biggest languages in South Sudan. 

Ajing Chol Giir explains the text of the TTT song he has written “If you wake up with war nightmares, just tap …..”

We got an email from Ajing the other day:

“Hey dear Ulf, I am very glad to connect with you at this time.   I am also very lucky and proud that i have got to know somebody like Gunilla Hamne who amicably taught me a very important technique. I am using it now on many war traumatized people. My trauma song is doing great and the children are now using it in their playing in my home village. I will send u guys a video as soon as i put it together.” 

 Watch Ajing´s song here

Amandu Night Joy and Angelina Paulino Rial.

Nyabika Ruei Kuang

TTT training with 200 Peace Mobilizers in Juba, South Sudan. Also several of the 25 facilitators learnt the technique.

When Murigo Veneranda started her multiplying effect experiment together with the refugees in Kigeme camp she trained 8 people. She told them to train five people each. After a couple of weeks they called her and said. “OK, now we are 40….” That was a month ago. 

“It is now over 500 refugees who have been trained in TTT” she says over the phone. “They will still teach others. Imagine if we could reach almost everybody in the camp!” 

There are 17 000 living there… How far can we reach?

As we wrote here in the blog before Murigo Veneranda has started a multiplying scheme of TTT in the refugee camp of Kigeme in the southwest of Rwanda. There are 17 000 refugees who have had to flee the violence in the neighbor country DR Congo. The plastic houses look like sugar cubes on the hill where they have been placed by the UN refugee commission UNHCR . 

Murigo started out by training 8 people, among them the president of the refugee committee Benjamin. When I came with her some time later they were 40, since she had told them to train 5 people each. 

We met in the local bar, since we are not allowed to enter the camp itself without special permit. Squeezed on benches all managed to get in, sharing some soft drinks and chatting about what had happened since Murigo was there last time.  

Mr Safari translated for me from French to Kinyarwanda and Swahili. His name is Safari which means Travel. He got this name because he was born when his mother was fleeing from Rwanda to Congo. And now he has been forced to flee……back to where they came from. Forced travels. 

All those who had come were very enthusiastic and eager to know more about how to deal with those internal images of violence and atrocities that many of them live with after being attacked in their villages back home. They demonstrated how they did the Tapping. We showed some videos and did our best to answer all their questions.

“Can we use TTT for children? Some scream of nightmares almost every night”

“Are those who just talk to themselves like a crazy traumatized?”

“Some don´t eat at all, can that be a symptom of trauma?”

“How often can we use TTT?” etcetera

Since then the multiplying effect has continued. Now they are more than 500 Trauma Tappers in Kigeme refugee camp. We will see how Murigo will manage to meet them all. She is planning to go there soon. 

Murigo Veneranda (left), Chairman of the refugee committee Benjamin (right), Safari (with the cap).

Like sugar cubes of 3×4 meter, are the plastic houses for the 17 000 congolese refugees placed on a hill top in the southwest of Rwanda.

“We are very grateful for TTT” wrote our colleague Margherita Zilliacus from Finland after teaching TTT in Senegal and Sierra Leone.

One of our Tapping colleagues, Margherita Zilliacus from Finland, has been doing TTT training at a rehabilitation center for drug addicts in Dakar in Senegal. The social workers who participated found the method useful and gave it a new name: Nioko Bokk which in their language wolof means “This is for everybody”.

Already after the first couple of sessions they said that it had helped them with symptoms like pain, congestion, tiredness, sleeplessness, stress, headache etcetera. They will now continue to use the TTT for the clients at the center and in a prison for women.  

Margherita also went to the neighbor country Sierra Leone volunteering for Fambul Tok – a world renowned organization known for their community approach to reconciliation,  restoring trust between people after the ten year long (un)civil war (www.fambultok.org)

Me and our colleague Robert Ntabwoba worked with them a couple of years ago doing TTT trainings with their groups of Peace Mothers, i.e. widows of the war.

After her visit Margherita wrote: 

 ”I went with Liliana (one of the Fambul Tok staff) to the village of Woama in Tankoro chiefdom. The chairlady of the Peace Mothers told me they still use TTT since you were there, every time they meet and also for themselves and others. They find it very helpful. They send greetings to you. Liliana is great. She really appreciated your work here. We also did TTT trainings in other villages.”

You can see the chairlady Sia James doing TTT in our video from Sierra Leone.

We got an email from Joseph Ochieng, an activist and
TTT trainer from Kibera, supposed to be Africa´s largest shanty town,
telling about his initiative to reach out to vulnerable women and children
in an other neglected part of his country Kenya. He himself was trained in TTT during a workshop in collaboration between Initiatives of Change (www.iofc.org) and Peaceful  Heart Network in Nakuru, north from Nairobi in Kenya:

“Jambo,

I trust that you are doing fine. 

I recently went to Nyanza province near Lake Victoria to meet a group of women at Bar-Ober in Siaya county that I know since an outreach program of our organization Pillars of Kibera (pillarsofkibera.org). I am humbled to let you know that the Trauma Tapping Training has come to be a tool of great help to the vulnerable women and the youth in Siaya. 

They suggested that if we could do a short documentary on Trauma Tapping Technique, it could be screened in their communites during meetings, in schools and in other institutions.

I also got opportunity to meet with the principal of Butere primary school and had a lengthy discussion with him elaborating the concept of TTT and how it could be of use in schools in the rural areas, where children have a lot of challenges that affects their studies.

I must say that i am very touched and honored by your efforts to contribute to some solution to the challenges that many people are going through. The TTT offer an opportunity that I wish we had more of.

Thanks once again for the support and opportunity that you offer to me by standing with us. Best greetings Joseph of Pillar of Kibera.

Murigo Veneranda, (in the middle) one of Peaceful Heart Networks Trauma Tappers in Rwanda has done a great scheme of TTT trainings for refugees in Kigema camp at the congolese border. After training eight of the responsible people in the camp, she has obliged them to train five people each in the camp till next time she comes. And then those 40 are going to train five each and so on. That is how you create a movement! If you have seen the film “Pay it forward” this is similar.

Will it be possible to reach all 14 000 in the camp? 

The refugees fled from DR Congo to Rwanda last year during the attacks of rebel groups during the M23 offensive.

Murigo and myself will go to Kigeme tomorrow.

I find it truly inspiring to visit and see the work done by the Trauma Tapping teams we support in DR Congo. The other day I went to see  the Trauma Tapping Centre in Bukavu. To get there you go from the centre of the city  towards the port, then turn up one of the hills overlooking Lake Kivu, passing the Psychiatric Hospital Sosame  and then you go down on a local unpaved road leading through the community called Kalele. All along the way people are moving, children on their way to school in their white and blue uniforms, others carrying loads on their heads, minibuses with the conductor hanging out the door to get more passengers, motorbikes… 

The TTT centre is just in the centre of the community in a small whitewashed house. The doors are open to anybody and somebody from the team is  present  more or less every day except sunday. People come by having heard about the centre from somebody, having heard that here is a place where you can get help when you have heavy thoughts, can´t sleep, are feeling sad or have thought about suicide because of problems and events you have lived through. Nobody has offered that before. But the needs are there.

I am welcomed by the Trauma Tapping team: Germando, Sylvie, Duni and Batu. Before we sit down to talk they receive and treat some clients who have already come to see them: a young girl of 17 who has difficulties to concentrate in school because of thinking of her parents who have died. A woman who suffers from insomnia and headache after losing her husband. An old man on crutches having amputated  his leg after an operation who says he feels useless and often gets angry for nothing. He has tried to hang himself twice.

“You know even a small problem for one person can destabilize a whole family and that family can destabilize the  whole community”, comments Germando after treating the old man. “That is what we see happening here. So many are living with traumas after years of conflict, difficult economy and frustration.”

The others agree and confirms how needed this centre has shown to be. When approaching schools and churches talking about trauma, how it shows and that it can be treated, they always get the same comment:

“Oh yes, you are right trauma is a big problem for us.”

“There should be centers like this everywhere to help people”, says Batu. “Then people would understand of what trauma is  and how it affects people and the society. And learn how to deal with it. The whole world should learn TTT, that is my opinion after experiencing this technique.”

“Yes, it is such a great feeling to see a smile from somebody who was so sad and traumatized before getting treated”, adds Germando. “Imaging if we could stop worrying about financing the center and focus on starting a new one in for example in Nindja where people have experiences so much violence from all the armed groups. I just hope people understand how much every dollar they donate means here. Even the smallest contribution is one more day of work made possible for us.” 

I met legendary Peace Builders Pastor Wuye and Imam Ashafa from Nigeria and the filmmaker Alan Channer, who has filmed documentaries about their work, a year ago in Canada. We all soon realized how well our different missions fit together. At a later point we reunited in Chad under the black Saharan sky, and continued our discussions how to work together. In November it came true in Kenya.

Imam Ashafa and Pastor Wuye were enemies, one being part of a muslim militia and the other of a christian one. Finally they realized the futility in being enemies and started working together building a platform to be able to assist groups of people to build peace.

Because of the documentary of Alan Channer, their work got known worldwide. Today they are invited all over the globe to assist people in reconciliation and peace building processes. Their method is well received because it has given positive results in many places.

Imam Ashafa and Pastor Wuye recognize the work of Peaceful Heart Network and the methodology of Trauma Tapping. During our joint workshop in Kenya they introduced the method to the participants who came from different ethnic groups:

“This Trauma Tapping is a new and universal method. The method crosses over all the borders of spiritual traditions, nationality, gender and race. And it is so simple. We need such an approach to help those who are traumatized and to be able to build long lasting peace.“

We held the TTT training as part of the reconciliation work, showed our videos from other workshops and exchanged experiences on symptoms of trauma and what makes people traumatized.

One of the participants, the tall Chief Zephaniah Lekachuma from the cattle herders in the north west of Kenya, was very keen to learn. I asked him to demonstrate his new knowledge to the others and have them to follow the procedure from him instead of me. He was more than willing.

I asked how he found the Tapping:

“I feel very relaxed”, he said somewhat surprised. “Specially when tapping on the chest and on the eyebrows. I will definitely use this in my area. So many people come to my office and tell they are traumatized for different reasons.”

Everybody applauded him and laughed in the relaxed atmosphere that mostly settles after a trauma tapping training.

After the workshop Pastor Wuye wrote:

“Thank you for what you offered to the people of Kenya. Many said you have given them a life long gift.”

http://www.anafricananswer.org/node/67678

————

Here is a trailer to the film “An African Answer” about the work of Imam Ashafa and Pastor Wuye:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnfJnrtXliU

“For anyone who wants to do holistic peacemaking, you need to recognize and know how to handle trauma — because conflict is about causing injuries to people.”

These words come from the manual on Peace building that comes with the film “An African Answer”. These words that made me happy, because this resonates with the thinking of Peaceful Heart Network: “you need to address the trauma to be able to build long lasting peace!”

It is a dream coming true to work with these committed people and be able to move trauma work to being part of reconciliation.

The workshops were arranged in a collaboration between Initiatives of Change (www.iofc.org) and US Institute of Peace (www.usip.org)

In the community of Mumosho, just outside Bukavu in Eastern DR Congo we have been supporting a Trauma Tapping Centre since early 2012 (pls check earlier text in the blog). There are three persons managing the centre on a regular basis, receiving clients and giving trainings. The response from the community has been very positive. Mr Amani Matabaro, our contact person and organizer wrote the other day a mail about the importance of the work:

Amani Matabaro, responsible for the Mumosho Trauma Tapping Center.

“Mumosho is one of the war affected places in the Eastern Congo which has remained with no humanitarian assistance. During the wars of invasion against DR Congo, Mumosho has served as a port of entry to foreign troops and prior to that the area has hosted a huge amount of the refugees after the 1994 Rwandan genocide, hence Mumosho has been affected on several dimensions.

Several attacks by armed groups have terrorized people in Mumosho. Not only these have been the problems but also SINELAC, a Great Lakes Region power company and Pharmakina, a German company known for their Quinine Malaria medicine project, have put all the fertile lands in Mumosho on a compulsory purchase request order.

All this together have left almost everyone in the community so poor, desperate, frustrated, living with everyday fear, traumatized, sad, angry, jumpy, anxious….

Soon after the TTT centre had opened in the area, most of the clients who have attended and taken TTT as a treatment have gradually been recovering from their symptoms which for a very long time have affected their thoughts and emotions. Many of those who come to the center tell that they have recovered from insomnia, everyday headache, fatigue and many other PTS symptoms.

There is need to disseminate the TTT treatment at a very large scale, make it sustainable at different community levels and this includes schools, health facilities and other places with large populations. TTT in Mumosho has shown it is an efficient treatment, and only requires an effective dissemination approach to reach those in need! It is necessary also with more trainings in schools for teachers to become able to handle war affected kids.”

TTT training for men in Mumosho.

Mr Safari Maneno, headmaster of one of the primary schools in Mumosho.

Celebrating TTT certification at the Trauma Tappig Center in Mumosho. 

Bukavu Tapping Centre

Another Trauma Center of Peaceful Heart Network is in the city of Bukavu, also this in the conflict prone region of Eastern DR Congo.

TTT training at the Bukavu Trauma Tapping Centre.

The reports from the Bukavu Centre, like from Mumosho, keep telling us: Healing IS possible! It also tells how many symptoms of trauma people live with and how it affects their daily life. There is truly so much value in helping the population in this sensitive area. Please check for yourself the results form Bukavu: click here

The results from the Bukavu Centre would not be possible without the hard work of Germando Barathi and his two colleagues. Germando was one of the first to be trained in TTT in Eastern Congo back in 2008. He and his colleagues are constantly finding new ways of spreading the Trauma Tapping to individuals, organizations and communities.

Right now the team at the Bukavu Centre is planning for a workshop in another community called Nindja where people have suffered attacks from different militias. They will also make a TTT introduction to IRC – International Rescue Committee – one of the biggest international humanitarian organizations in the area.

The Bukavu Peaceful Heart Network also belongs to a coordinating group of initiators working on mental health, including the internationally renowned Panzi Hospital, the Psychiatric Hospital Sosame as well as international organizations like Warchild and IRC.

For those who want to learn about the situation in Eastern Congo please check: www.enoughproject.org

Initiative in Rwanda

In Rwanda there are several organizations using the TTT after the trainings we have conducted there. There are also individuals committed to spread the method. One of them, Murigo Veneranda, who was in the first group of young survivors of the genocide that we educated in 2007, has recently taken several initiatives.

She is conducting trainings in TTT in refugee camps at the border between DR Congo and Rwanda called Kigeme. There has recently been large number of people fleeing to Rwanda from North Kivu in DR Congo because of violence and rising conflict around the mining areas. In the Kigeme camp there are approximately 14 000 refugees.

“People in the camp love the TTT and how simple the method is to learn. They say it helps them in their daily life and enhance their health” writes Murigo.

Murigo Veneranda knowns very well by her own experience how much the tapping can change in a persons life.

” Without TTT I don´t know if I would be alive today”, she says. “This method is very good because you can help also those who have a lot of problems but do not want to talk about them. I am ready to work with TTT everywhere I go.”

Making it happen – a well needed and used donation

Last August we received an email from Rob Nelson the organizer of an EFT Gathering (Emotional Freedom technique – the most widely spread version of Energy Psychology) in California, US. The email said in brief:

“The participants of the EFT Gathering will make a contribution to a project working with Tapping. We will probably raise between 2000 and 3000 dollars. We have decided to donate the money to Peaceful Heart Network. Thank you for all the great work you are doing.”

In the end we got 4000 dollars! This donation will help us to continue running the Trauma Tapping Centers in Bukavu and Mumosho in Estern DR Congo and also fund some other projects during the coming months. If you have any ideas about how we could find other similar opportunities for funding our work please let us know.

Help us make people get out of their prison of trauma and laugh and be happy again! 

Conversation a Saturday afternoon in the office of Human Rights Without Borders, downtown N´djamena, the capital of Tchad. Lawyer Daniel asks me:

“What did you know about Tchad before coming here?” 

 ”Not much,… I knew that Lake Tchad is shrinking and that there are a lot of refugees from Sudan …. that´s all….” I answered feeling somewhat ignorant.

“Not bad at all!” lawyer Daniel exclaims happily with a broad smile. “When I came to the international airport in Japan last year the passport control officer stared at my passport. Then he looked up at me and shouted:

“Ha! Did you make this passport yourself??!!! Tchad!! where should that country be ?”

“We here in Tchad, we know that Japan exists…” laughs lawyer Daniel.

*********

I fell in love with Tchad

After two weeks in Tchad I thought of making myself a T-shirt with the text: I <3 Tchad – you know with the heart between “I” and “Tchad” – like ”I <3 NY”. 

 Few have made me feel so warmheartedly welcome as the people I met in Tchad.  I could not resist being taken by this country in the middle of Africa –  the breastbone of the continent.

Tchad is very hot. And dusty. Semi desert. Everybody asks somewhat excusing: ”Comment ça va avec la chaleur?” How do you cope with the heat? 

Governments have treated people badly in Tchad. You could think you would meet “victims” but they are all “survivors”. This resilience keeps fascinating me. Be it here in Tchad or in Congo, Sierra Leone or Rwanda. People who have been through so many hardships, still they are  smiling and caring  for others. And accepting and trusting even a stranger like me.

I was invited to Tchad by the lawyer Hassan Abakar. One of those gentle and compassionate Tchadians. We met at a conference in Switzerland last summer. He asked me about meditation and how he could practice. We started talking. We soon got in to the theme of trauma. He told me that there was no help to be found for those traumatized after the terror executed by a dictator, the Hissein Habré regime. No clinics. No therapists. No mental hospital. 

“Gunilla, could you come to Tchad?” he asked. That is how this initiative started. A meeting of serendipity. 

After one of the TTT trainings in N´Djamena I join the group of women resting outside the hall. We all have dresses in bright colours. We sit down in the shadow.  

“Thank you for coming so far,  to us here in Tchad”, they say.

“Nobody has offered us peace of mind before. We didn´t know it was possible. Now we know.” 

We chat. One of them brings dried dates and newly fried peanuts. The peanuts are so good. We also need water…. lots of water. A young boy brings a bucket of water as we continue to chat. The women are survivors of torture, but I wonder if anybody who saw them now would guess…