Arts and Drama group helps Village Kids Cope

A team from UK-based FUN FOR LIFE (www.funforlife.org) is currently spending one month in Sri Lanka, working with children from the villages of Seenigama and Tuticamora. Debra Colkett, a drama therapist with a history of working with children with depression as well as those with post traumatic stress disorder, arrived on February 19th. She and her team hold daily workshops with the children; presently at the village temple. Workshops range in number from 12-30 children of all ages.

“I couldn’t imagine what I was going to find,” she said. “The devastation is colossal – like a war zone.” But, she added, “people’s level of coping is amazing.”

Coping with visions and memories of that day is the primary focus, but it is impossible to be so deliberate as the villagers do not have a custom of talking about their feelings so openly. Children even less so.

“When we asked the children how they feel, our translator said ‘no one ever asks them how they feel’,” she said. “They don’t think about their feelings; they just have them and then they’re gone.”

Traditional dances and chants have led to wave-motions and howling sounds, which she calls quite haunting. “We ask about these sounds, but when one of the younger ones said ‘tsunami,’ one of the older girls – about 15 or 16 – wouldn’t allow the group to talk it in more detail.”

Colkett said the children really want to go to the sea. It’s what they’ve known all their lives. So, she and another of her partners, took a group of six to the beach. Everyone held on to a long cloth so as to be attached to one another. They made it to the shoreline, but when the waves came in, some got a bit anxious and the group left soon thereafter. Still, it was a bit of a breakthrough in Colkett’s eyes. “All we do comes from them and what they want to do.”

On the 14th of March, a huge procession is being planned to take all the children out to the water’s edge. The group’s puppeteers are building large cobra and bird puppets, which signify gods of protection and gods of fear in Sri Lankan lore. Torches will light the road from the Foundation grounds along the village’s main road to the sea. Dances that the children are doing now will be featured.

The team found village response to be immediately gratifying. “What ‘s really touched me have been the parents coming and thanking as they give me their children,” she said. Numbers increase every day, which can be a bit of a challenge, but every child is absolutely welcome.