Okay I'm horrendously behind on this blog so I'm just going to get everyone up to speed on my last two weeks. First I have some exciting news! After scouring the internet for NGO's working at the Budumburam Refugee Camp, I finally succeeded in making contact with an organization named Cradle of Hope for Relief and Development. CHRAD is an organization that was founded and is managed by a Liberian refugee who hopes to address the woefully unattended to issues that refugees face daily. Although it is a fairly new organization, the man who runs it, Lawrence, is passionate and charismatic with the sincere hope of making a difference. With the help of Women for Sustainable Empowerment, another NGO located at the camp, CHRAD aims towards providing psychosocial support for women and youth in the camps, many of whom have experienced the type of trauma that only comes from something as horrific as warfare. It is also greatly concerned with creating educational and training opportunities for all members of the settlement in the hopes that what is learned can be taken back to Liberia to build a better, stronger, more peaceful nation.
So far I have been to the camp twice: once to just get familiar with the camp and the second time to begin my counseling. Yes, I am actually counseling people. So far it's mostly been girls between the ages of 13 and 21 who have been interested in talking to me about their stories, but apparently the boys begin to open up only after they get familiar with your presence and once they trust that you won't betray their darker secrets. Considering the pasts of some of these young men, I don't blame them whatsoever.
This week I went to DOVVSU for the first time. DOVVSU stands for Domestic Violence Victims Support Unit and they take domestic violence, rape, and sexual abuse complaints, process them, investigate, prosecute and offer minor counseling to victims. I've been a little wary of this internship only because it is with the police and I was worried that I would be stuck sitting in court or filing papers for hours. The beginning of the morning did not do anything to dispel my fears.
Yaw, a Ghanaian-American student from Chicago, and I arrived at DOVVSU in the Ministries area at about 8:15 am. At that point we greeted one of the Sergeants and he told us to wait for further instructions. So we waited...for two hours...just sitting there. Welcome to Ghana. From 8-10 officers wandered into work. I found this absolutely astounding. If you're 20 minutes late for work, you'll get a stern talking to or at least, it's incredibly frowned upon. Once you're at work, you start working right away, no dilly-dallying. Women, children and men began arriving around 8 but none of them were seen to until around 10. Not only that but the claims and statements are kept in files on desks that really seem to have very little organization. I can't imagine how long it takes to locate a file. If they just put them all in a computer, the whole unit would be so much more efficient.
Finally we were led around the station and introduced to various people who worked there. Because of my interest in trauma counseling, I will mostly be observing the counselors who work there. Obviously I shouldn't be allowed to counsel myself so I'm not surprised to have a more observational role than anything else.
The two counselors are both Ghanaian women in their mid-twenties. One is currently getting her Masters of Social Work at Kingston College in London and the other got a diploma in Social Work from a nearby institution. They are both wonderful and great to talk to. We mostly just talked about how their part of the unit functions.
When a person comes in to make a claim, they are first sent to an officer who takes a formal statement of their complaint. They then file that complaint and wait until the head Sergeant has read it and made a decision on whether to investigate, prosecute and/or refer the victim to one of the social workers for counseling. The victim can then set up times to meet the counselor. Elizabeth and Nora, the two social workers, told me that they mostly see couples but that they also see women and younger girls as well. I asked how important the unit thinks counseling is and both agreed that there needs to be far more emphasis on the recovery of the victim.
I was struck by how many children there were running around the Unit. Of course, this should never surprise me anymore as there are multitudes of children everywhere I go, it just broke my heart to see them there. They do have a small play room where the children can go when their parents are making a complaint or where they can de-stress if they are the victim but the like of child support in this case really needs to be addressed. In the states there are psychologists who are specially trained to work with child victims; here, the children can play on a rocking chair for a bit before telling their story.
As we were walking through the hall, Yaw and I noticed a clearly intoxicated man whose shirt was unbuttoned and off his shoulder. When I looked closer I saw a very deep gash on his shoulder. Yaw later told me that he had heard this man's complaint - his wife thought he was seeing other women and decided the proper way to deal with this was grab a knife from the kitchen and start stabbing him wherever she could. Pretty extreme I'd say. Other than that I didn't hear/see anything in particular but it was only my first time.
On a happier note, the other weekend several friends and I went to this fantastic place approximately 20 minutes from the nearest town and about an hour from the city. There was absolutely no cell phone service, an adorable little bar/restaurant with fantastic food/ an untouched stunning beach, and a tiny fishing village. The Green Turtle Lodge is an eco-lodge started by a British couple. They run a turtle rescue for the turtles that lay their edge on the beach and are entirely self-sufficient, from their solar power to their employees who are young men and women from the village. Despite the large waves and slightly scary rip-tide, it was honestly paradise.
I've got to be better about updating this blog, I forget too much if I wait!