Kids ‘draw and tell’ to heal wounds

14 January 2007

By Ephraim Aguilar

LEGAZPI CITY—CHILDREN’S drawings in refugee camps here vividly illustrate the tragedy that Supertyphoon “Reming” brought to Albay.

The simple crayon strokes on white paper convey fear, sadness and hope.

After the typhoon, dubbed by residents here “as the worst in history,” Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) sessions were conducted in various evacuation centers by the Department of Social Welfare and Development-Bicol and by nongovernment organizations.

“Draw and tell” was the method used by social workers in dealing with the traumatized children in evacuation centers after the supertyphoon destroyed their belongings and homes, and killed their loved ones.

The drawings vary depending on the children’s experiences. Some show dead bodies floating on floodwaters while others depict toppled trees and roofless houses.

Crying for help

Some drawings show human emotions such as women and children crying and desperately shouting for help.

Ma. Corazon Pitero, social welfare officer at the DSWD, said social workers would first let the children narrate their experiences during the disaster by drawing.

The social workers discuss the drawings with the children, asking about what they drew, why they drew it, and what they felt when they were in that disaster situation.

Pitero said it was important to give these children an outlet to release their emotions after the traumatic experience to prevent adverse effects from haunting them (See table on the effects of trauma).

Stress

The dominant feelings of the children affected by Reming were fear and grief because many of them almost died or lost their relatives and friends, Pitero said.

Lea Loma, 11, temporarily housed in Binitayan Elementary School in Daraga, Albay, said that after the typhoon, she saw the bodies of “Tiya Loleng and her friend Richelle” before they were picked up by retrieval teams.

“My mother and I went to the village to check on our house after the typhoon, until I saw their bodies on the ground. They were people I knew,” Loma told the Inquirer in Filipino.

“Richelle was my playmate. I feel sad that I will never see her again,” she said.

Almost all the children told the Inquirer that they heard people crying when the floodwaters rose and torrents of loosened sand and rocks from Mt. Mayon swamped their village.

Some children, who stayed on rooftops, told of having seen old and young people and animals drowning or being carried away by the strong current. They also saw galvanized iron sheets and objects being blown away by the winds.

John Christian Yohanon, 8, said he saw his mother almost die from the cold. They were wet all night and were rescued the day after the typhoon. He also pitied their dog that was left on the roof, the only part of the house that could be seen while the rest was underwater. These details were shown in his drawing.

Terrified

Most of the children said they were terrified at the height of Reming and wished that no other typhoon like it would ever hit Bicol again.

After the social worker’s interaction with the child, the last stage of the stress debriefing session was “processing.”

In “processing,” the social worker gave inputs to the child to make him or her understand the disaster and, more importantly, to tell him or her what he or she would do if the disaster happens again, according to Pitero.

“We make them understand that what they felt during the tragedy was just a normal reaction of a person to an abnormal situation. We also help them create a contingency plan in preparation for other disasters,” Pitero said.

After the session, the social workers identified those who need follow-up and those who have to be referred for further psychological evaluation.

Closure

Stress management is part of the social services in First World countries and is normally offered even to people who suffer from the loss of loved ones who died of natural causes. In the Philippines, it is associated more with disasters.

The DSWD started using CISM in the country during the killer earthquake that devastated Baguio City on July 16, 1990.

CISM has been a mainstay in disaster operations of the DSWD in Bicol for more than a decade now—the region being prone to natural calamities such as typhoons and volcanic eruptions.

It was first used in Bicol by social workers during the 1993 Mayon Volcano eruption that left some 100 people dead and thousands displaced.

Pitero said CISM was meant to open the wounds of disaster victims, heal them, and help them find closure to enable them to move on.

(Ephraim Aguilar, a resident of Legazpi City, is a correspondent of Inquirer Southern Luzon.)