Works In Progress - June 2003 - Kolo Healing in Sri Lanka

The following is an Interview with Danica Anderson, a forensic psychotherapist who returned this February from working with refugees in Sri Lanka. She had been invited by UNICEF-Movimondo to work with local NGO professionals such as teachers, social workers, and social mobilizers who work with the large refugee camp populations and many refugee camp-centers. Her goal was to reproduce the success of her trauma healing and counselor training program first developed in Bosnia. She uses Feminist Archetypal Psychology to heal and developed the kolo as a cultural and engendered trauma treatment for women Muslim refugees in Bosnia. Anderson, who is Bosnian-American, began making trips to that war-torn area in 1999. Because of the political "baggage" attached to using any and all of the languages in that region, she had to find "pre-nation state" terms to use in her therapy which would be accepted by those with whom she worked. Kolo is such a word, going back to the earliest civilizations there and meaning a "circle" or "to dance". In the kolo, people are given permission and opportunity, often for the first time, to tell their own stories about what has happened to them as a result of war. Issues of gender violence, ethnic intolerance and war traumas are finally talked about in the culturally-sensitive and supportive kolo circle. In telling their stories and hearing the stories of others, they begin the process of grieving, healing and growing. Taking the process one step further, Danica Anderson developed the Women's Cross Cultural Collaborations as a training model to create lay therapists who continue to reach out on their own. One of the positive outcomes of working with kolo circles for Bosnian women is that many become economically self-sufficient and can leave the "borrowed" homes in cities, villages or camps where they have been forced to live for years (some displaced persons, forced to move to a section of their own ethnicity, are still waiting for their original home to open for their return). Most importantly they are able to teach their families new ways-the peaceable ways that were part of their ancient, proud culture.

Linda: You have been working with Bosnian Muslim refugee women for several years now. What is it you have developed that is making a difference there?

Danica: I developed a trauma treatment program that was inclusive of female human rights, female culture-especially the Slavic/Serbian/Bosnian-- and the natural inherent fact that females are the main caregivers of the community, thus healers/therapists.

With so little funding going to mental health, to trauma treatment or'feminine valued' humanitarian and psychological concerns, I wanted to activate a self-sustaining and self-perpetuating program of self-help. I worked with the "throw-aways" or "invisible peoples" meaning women over the ages of 35. Incorporating and centering the process around their daily cups of coffee, and the Bosnian "kolo" (circle or to dance), the women have continued to be in kolos effortlessly now whether or not I am there. Since March 1999, the Sumejja Kolo of Novi Travnik, has gone to other cities and worked with other former Yugoslav women such as the Sebrenica women, and the Amijica women who are war crimes victims, teaching trauma healing methods.

Linda: How did you come to take your work to Sri Lanka?

Danica: My kolo trauma treatment program slowly got recognition with the Helsinki Human Rights in Sarajevo, and with other International NGOs such as Italy's GVC (Government Civilian Service) and EU (European Union). The GVC funded my kolo work in 2000 with the object of conducting training in Psycho-educational Conflict Resolution. The Field Manager from GVC is now stationed in Sri Lanka and wanted my work to be instituted there.

Linda: Where did you go in Sri Lanka and what were the conditions?

Danica: I was in the central part of Sri Lanka, in the ancient capital Anuradhapura about a week or so after the peace/truce was elaborated. I also worked in Vavunija, about 1 hour or so from Anuradhapura, a border town to the North and Tamil area. Most of the refugee camps or what they now term as IDP- Internally Displaced Peoples- are housed near there. After 20 years of civil war, the trauma is deep and violent.

One IDP camp housed 7,000 people (mostly women and children- interesting how they mask this by labeling it 'peoples', internally displaced peoples or uprooted peoples). Living conditions were worse then a dog would live in. Militants swaggering with their guns at check points still in place but no longer used for checking, added to an explosive warrior-ready mentality. Only this year did some of the rice farmers near Vavunija plant their fields after 10 years of being threatened with death if they did so. Most people are war weary and poverty stricken. Poverty is what kills the spirit, the females, and invites incessant wars. Trauma there is intergenerational. The youth unrest feeds the Sri Lanka political situation and war games. Living in refugee camps for over 20 years breeds youth who kill because they have nothing to lose, little to look forward to and have seen little but killing.

Linda: Were there difficulties particular to that setting?

Danica: Yes, the roads going anywhere were grilled from bombs, rains or droughts and the lack of repairs. It made any journey over 30 minutes bone jarring. Pure water is almost nonexistent and precious. Even the ocean nearby is polluted because of the gunboat activity and war. The inability to fish off what used to be a rich shoreline increases the poverty and degrades any promise of economic self-sustainability. No jobs and a collapsed economy with no promise of a future do not ensure peace or peace treaties. The men only know militant and army skills and have no where to go if war is not present in their lives. Often their warrior skills are rained upon their families in lethal methods. Furthermore, I could do nothing without two translators, one Tamil, one Singh, with me at all times in order to communicate. I learned to write down the last sentence I said so as not to lose the thread of my remarks by the time it went through three other people and back to me.

Linda: Who are the volunteers you train?

Danica: The counselor training is for treatment of trauma by the local women, the major caregivers of any community. In Sri Lanka I trained mainly professionals already working with the huge IDP camps and refugee centers, such as social mobilizers, social workers, voc rehab counselors, directors, even lawyers. Some of these people are refugees themselves living in the camps and some live just outside the camps or in villages nearby. These people then train others, especially the women in the refugee centers. In Bosnia, I work with the invisible women of the community directly.

Linda: What kind of training do you give them?

Danica: I train for 12 hours a day; sometimes 16 hours when we are in the field. Fieldwork is where I do a supervised practicum with the kolo lay therapists and see how they do the kolo trauma work. The training lasts a total of 7 weeks. During that time we do various activities to teach or sharpen skills they will need in bearing witness: deep participatory listening, validating the person who has experienced an event for which, until that moment, she or he had no vocabulary for expression. Using the kolo for first person story, art, dance incorporates a holistic approach to the treatment of trauma. It is based on the premise that a person suffering a catastrophic event needs to express it as soon as possible in order to begin healing.

Linda: Did you call it kolo work in Sri Lanka?

Danica: When humanitarian aid organizations employ my work the title is changed to Educational Conflict Resolution. The content, however, is the same. The kolo evolves the situation and is not seduced into solving or resolving situations. It integrates right and left brain hemispheres of the brain to deal with psychological issues, pains of the heart and to express and identify traumatic events, as well as thoughts or beliefs that encourage its perpetuation. (violence-wars-trauma) Linda: Do you only train women to be kolo counselors?

Danica: While it is preferred that females are the counselors, in Sri Lanka due to patriarchal constraints of religion and custom I found myself training some males. Most of the social mobilizer and director jobs are offered to males first before females. These men needed intensive training from the women trainees who shared their own wisdom as women. It resulted at times in a labor intensive situation as I had to team each male with a female in order to succeed with the kolo trauma treatment program. Most females bear witness to the first person stories wheras the men figit or cannot focus on the person expressing their life experiences. The results were impressive when those men who went through the training spoke of being filled with remorse and many regrets over past behavior and different understanding as a male. They pointed to the need for feminine conciousness. Such Uteri wisdom, a foundation of the kolo, is present in women both biologically-to the molecular level- and socially. The motherline of life experiences sets the stage for healing from the local family level to the global community. Germane Greer stated that feminism is first person story. The kolo uses the first person story of mothers, grandmothers and daughters surviving the traumas of rape, wars and violence to offer wisdom, healing and a promise of peace.

Linda: How did the women and men respond to your training? To your Feminism?

Danica: Usually the women defended their men and due to their upbringing in various faiths that taught submission and inferiority of females, our sessions included many arguments and gnashing of teeth. The caste system is loosely in place and underlies much of the struggle. I came with literature from their own women such as Kamalini Wijayatilake, author of "Unravelling Herstories," who works for CENWOR-- a women's studies and women's center in Colombo, Sri Lanka and author Sesenke Perers, "Political Violence in Sri Lanka" who offered indisputable proof of females' dire status. Julie Mertus critical study of the Balkans and suitcase refugees also added in the factor of the sexism of some humanitarian agencies. Sometimes the aide moneys never reach the women and children. Yet when it does, the little it may be goes farther and deeper than the standard modes of operating which often distributes through males. One trainee was a Buddhist priest and our social discourses on the interactions of women and men were sometimes shocking to the other train ees but encouraged a wide lens for their situation that included females.

Feminism is often labeled, devalued and tossed away by females almost more then males. Many women are quick to speak of how they are not feminist and prefer not to use the "F" word in Bosnia and in Sri Lanka. I am stunned at how they shun feminism. I believe it is due in large part to their valid fear of becoming targets of real violence should they begin to act and speak their own mind.

One young man, a social mobilizer, voiced a common male response when asked about the dire birth statistics showing female infanticide practices. He stated he didn't know. It is incredible how men feign ignorance when I ask how it is they do not notice the mass murder of females, female infants, catastrophic rape statistics, the molesting on buses where women are unsafe to venture alone? How is it that the men do not notice? And I asked the women how is it they pretend to not notice in their defense of men?

Linda: What do you think will be the response of the refugees to your newly-trained counselors?

Danica: In the field there the response was heartfelt and deep. I wept and they wept. So far the monthly reports are very favorable. The IDP's report relief that someone at last is listening to their first person story and that it is healing for them. UNICEF/Movimod, which keeps the statistics because they administer the camps, tells me that the Sri Lankan lay therapists have provided the kolo trauma treatment program to over 6,000 Sri Lankans in IDPs, and remote villages between February and April 24 of this year.

Linda: What differences (if any) were there between Sri Lanka and Bosnia?

Danica: It was not much different, just poorer, and the females are dead not just physically and statistically but in their eyes. They are exhausted from all the incessant violence and seemed resigned to death as a welcome relief from their poverty and low status as a female.

Linda: What did you learn/appreciate since you put so much of yourself into the Kolo training work?

Danica: I appreciate that I do this for myself. That I can go to sleep at night or look my children in the eye and say "I am working to make this world a place of peace and inclusive of females and the feminine by my own small acts." At 48, I can be aware and see how whatever we have been doing up until this point has not worked. To face this and know that I cannot change the world, only myself has been an incredible gifting. The other gifting is feeling the sister kinship with the women and their families I have worked with. Witnessing their lives is sacred to me and fills me with awe, wonder and love. It is incredible to me to see how the kolo rings and circles out so abundantly and is so much more than the sum of its parts.

Linda: What can women here do to help?

Danica: Stop being passive. Stop waiting for permission to do something or thinking that whatyou feel or do is not important. The small act of housekeeping, sweeping the ash from the street in war torn countries is great activism. Women in Bosnia were threatened with violence and death for doing so. Raising children with love is another great act of activism. Knowing female culture and female humanity is critical to ecology and to peace. Exercising our vote, being active members in sister kinship oganizations such as NOW and others are all helpful. It is us 'average' women who change the world, not the powers that be.

Linda: What can men do to help?

Danica: Be responsible for their lives and respond to life. Take accountability for their preferred gender in the patriarchal society we live in. Face not just what the war wreaked on the women, children and themselves but for how many generations has this gone on? Be conscious of their participation in the status quo-all forms of violence-with their preferred male status right down to expecting dinner when he arrives home while his wife arrives home to work another shift. In Sri Lanka the main obstacle was the utter denial by the men that such things-the violence-happen so often and then their male defensive postures. Since men economically are able to do more with their money, donations for the kolo work is another way men can help.

Both women and men must be accountable. Small acts are the agent of accountability. A person can change only her or himself. The world is changed when people change themselves. When you are the agent for small acts you are being accountable for your life and your community, and ultimately our world.

Danica Anderson lives in Olympia and can be contacted at danicakolo@attbi.com or 455-4701. She will be returning to Bosnia and Sri Lanka in June of this year. If you would like to help the Kolo project, the wonderful women of Novi Travnik, Bosnia, and the refugees in Sri Lanka, donations can be sent to The Kolo: Women's Cross Cultural Collaborations, 7638 58th Ave NE, Olympia, WA 98516.

Linda Malanchuk-Finnan is a feminist, social justice activist and the Thurston County NOW president.