the strengths cafe

 

Tales of the Pocket

The Day After—Playing the Stone Game

 

It was only twenty-four hours since that I had been introduced to the stone game by Russell Deal during a St Luke's training session. A game with no rules, no set direction and no specific aim! Who would invent such a game? For what purpose? I doubted if I could use it with the people with whom I worked, but I appreciated the concepts and self-awareness that it brought.

 

It was around midday when I received a call from my service manager that would change my day. Alison (not her real name), a mother with who I had been working with was at the Nerang Neighbourhood Centre intoxicated and extremely upset. I cancelled my engagement and returned to the centre, to be confronted by one of those moments of uncertainty that face human service workers. What to do with a highly agitated, depressed and intoxicated client? Alison is a 32 year-old mother who had experienced ongoing abuse from an early age. In spite of this she had recently climbed personal mountains, which included the return of responsibility for her three daughters, overcoming the seductive nature of drugs and alcohol and homelessness.

 

Alison sat in front of me crying, yelling and swearing that she could no longer cope with her daughter. She disrupted all of the other activities in the centre with her loud expression of anger and pain. I felt vaguely uneasy and saw the need to quieten Alison down, get a sense of control of the situation, channel her into productive conversation, and be aware that she is disturbing everyone. These thoughts tried to dominate my mind and I could feel the door opening on my anxiousness and an invitation to despair. I am sure that readers and fellow workers can identify the feelings and the question of “What to do?”

 

I felt incompetent to relieve her anguish and pain. I felt that I lacked the skills and professional knowledge to do anything, so I decided to just listen in silence. The words flowed, the voice reached a crescendo and subsided to be replaced by tears. Bucket loads of tears. Pain and anguished turned Alison's face into a mask of agony and I sat there. I knew the shadow was very dark at this time for my partner. I had witnessed this before with people that I had worked with. When what little hope and perseverance they had built experiences an eclipse. The shadows were released and dominating Alison's soul.

 

I sat like a wicket keeper focused and trying to catch all the anguish and balls of tears. After what seemed like an eternity, I suggested that we migrate to a different spot. I suggested the beach or the dam, expecting it to be the beach. I was wrong: it was the dam. So we migrated like birds do, to her safe place.

 

My partner directed me to the dam. It had been in the past a creative, safe place for her to think and ponder things. She finished her last can of rum and coke on the way. The day was cool but sunny. We parked and walked to the edge of the dam, which was surrounded by loose rocks of varying sizes. We both instinctively picked up a rock and started aiming for a branch protruding from the water. We threw countless numbers of rocks. We talked only about our rock throwing ability and the landscape. Not satisfied with throwing one rock we began to through piles of rocks. Like machine gun fire they hit the water. We then moved onto bigger rocks until the energy declined and we found ourselves seated among the rocks.

 

After a period of silence I thought of the strange rock game that Russell had introduced to our group only 24 hours before. We both cleared a patch and collected some rocks and began to place the rocks in the patch, randomly. “What is the purpose of this game” came the question. “I don't know.” I replied. So we continued to gather more rocks and fill the vacant patch that we had created. After a while we began to build some piles and then connected the small ones into a larger one. Silently we built and groaned with every landslide. At times we competed to see whose stone would cause the landslide and laughed when it happened. The world went on but we were locked into the rock game, modified to suit our needs. Occasional metaphors were cast into the patch, such as “rebuilding after landslides”. But largely it was two people finding shelter from the harshness of an at times repressive world through playtime in the landscape.

 

I'm not sure what happened. I can only say that the eclipse that had darkened this mother's world began to fade. My anxiety subsided and the lost strengths of hope, possibility and perseverance again found their way home. Alison reminded me when she laughed and said to me that we had to go now so that she could be at home when the children came home from school.

 

The mother continues her struggle with forces that escape a person's ability to control them. Forces that unnerve and create anxiety for human services workers. I still dread the times when I am faced with those forces and question how to handle those situations. But I have learnt the value of patience, creativity and play, especially using tools such as the rock game. But most of all, I have learned to acknowledge that sometimes when people experience brokenness they may just need someone to play with, rather than someone to direct or ‘case manage' them.

 

Where Do You Start?: Doing aid work in tsumani-affected regions

 

In this article Annie Townsend speaks about her work with World Vision in tsunami-affected regions of Thailand and Indonesia, including Aceh and Nias.

 

Working as a humanitarian worker in the tsunami regions is challenging because there is a sense of working from ‘ground zero'. The question most workers ask is, ‘Where do you start?'

 

I am a social worker doing aid work consultancy for World Vision Australia. I have been doing this work for a number of years with organisations like the United Nations as well as with more local, grassroots non-government organisations. Doing humanitarian work has always been a passion of mine and as yet I have never lost those feelings of excitement when I travel to a new country. Since January this year I have been wearing two hats with World Vision. One hat is as a consultant with the Staff Care Program and the other is as mentor to the World Vision child protection manager based in Aceh, Indonesia.

 

Staff care

World Vision is moving effectively into the program area of staff care and is implementing a model of care for staff members who have experienced or witnessed a traumatic event. The training is called Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM). CISM training has been offered to staff who are working in tsunami-affected regions.

There have been two training sessions conducted in Bangkok since January. Participants who came along have extensive experience in the humanitarian field and, for the majority, ‘doing aid work' is their vocation for life. They also came with a range of cultural, religious and language experiences.

 

During the training, staff explored trauma, the symptoms of trauma, and underwent education and training on effective self care strategies. During these training sessions I used both Strength Cards and Signposts (published by Innovative Resources) with participants. In both situations participants were in awe of these resources. They explored and articulated aspects of doing aid work, their spirituality, and the day-to-day challenges of living and working in a ‘mission'. They also explored what the tsunami has meant for them, their families and their community. Aid workers, like the participants in this training, work from the heart, and these tools helped to establish even deeper connections between the participants.

 

Child protection mentor

In my role as child protection mentor I travelled to the five most tsunami-devastated zones of Aceh, including Nias which was hit by an earthquake in March. Together with the child protection manager, I co-facilitated the ‘psychosocial education' training offered to the child protection teams.

 

The approach we take in the training is to firstly acknowledge a lot of the misinformation about psychosocial education, and then to work with the teams in exploring the psychosocial work they are already doing—and doing well. This approach builds confidence in each team and acknowledges the resilience of the local workers. Being resilient is a strength that the Acehnese are no strangers to.

 

During the training the Strength Cards were used with each team to explore the strengths and resources they bring to their work as well as to name strengths they would like to develop in the future. In this transitional stage, as Aceh moves from emergency to development, the main focus of the World Vision child protection program is the development of ‘Child Friendly Spaces'. Children gather at these spaces through the day and child protection teams organise play and other activities for the children. Some zones interpret Child Friendly Spaces as having more of an educational focus for children, some are based around informal play, some have a strong parental influence, some are a safe place for children away from the destruction and some are a place for children to continue to pray and practice their religious beliefs. The challenge for the community will be to move from a child-friendly place to a child-friendly community.

 

During the training, the child protection teams saw the Pocket of Stones (a set of 12 hand-crafted ceramic heads) as an effective tool for use in this space to promote play and conversation. Using the stones children can choose to express a range of emotions. The stones can also become talismans for children for the day. During the training, each team developed unique activities with the stones and the tool itself became a springboard for other tools made by the teams within their own community.

 

The Strength Cards also assisted each team to draw up a ‘future goals list' to guide them to embrace the philosophy of a child-friendly community. This will be built on in future training with the teams.

 

One of the challenges of working in Aceh is not knowing the language. There are times when it really matters and it can be a great source of dismay as you live in the country. I was fortunate that the training was translated into Indonesian and then back to English through the child protection manager. Sometimes you would have to accept that some meaning would be lost in translation. Using the tools, however, helps to bridge the language gap and allowed for alternate meanings to be developed. In trusting the Strength Cards (we pasted the Indonesian word over the English one on each card) I allowed myself to be ‘mentored' by the participants themselves and every day I learnt more about the language, the culture and the nuances of working with a resilient community.

Working as a humanitarian worker in the tsunami regions is challenging because there is a sense of working from ‘ground zero'. The question most workers ask is, ‘Where do you start?' This experience brings it home that simple tools like the Strength Cards, Pocket of Stones and Signposts in a ground zero situation bring about a quiet sense of hope and meaningful action.