‘Si Yolanda! Si Yolanda!’: First aid for the soul

LEYTE, Philippines – Community organizer Edison Hamlet Paldas tells us that the classic children’s game of “tag” now has a new twist in Leyte. He says he witnessed a group of children excitedly huddled in a loose circle, anticipating the “it” to come and start tagging. Indeed the “it” comes, spreading her arms, and mimicking the swishing sounds of strong winds. “Si Yolanda! Si Yolanda!,”  the other children cry in mock fear, running away from  “Yolanda.” One by one the players are tagged. Curiously, the tagged children lie down on the dirt, lined up, still, like cadavers.

This is post-Typhoon Yolanda Leyte. 

Four months after the super typhoon wreaked havoc on this island, our team of “trauma relievers” was invited to the municipality of Palo, Leyte by WeDpro, Inc. WeDpro is a civil society organization that supports rehabilitation efforts at the grassroots level beyond the emergency relief services provided by planed-in NGOs and government organizations. WeDpro, under its project Padayon sa Pag-laum (Continuing Hope) saw the need to provide psycho-social services for the children and mothers of Palo. 

Lody Padilla of WeDpro had turned to us, the Pedagogical Response Team or PRT, for help. 

Our ad hoc team included a doctor, a theater artist, art therapists, a nurse, Bothmer and Eurythmy (healing) movement practitioners, and kindergarten teachers – all carriers  of Emergency Pedagogy, an emergency crisis intervention methodology based on the principles of Waldorf education. In a nutshell, PRT’s task was to provide “first aid for the soul.”

The Tacloban airport looked more like  a large shed with old and new sheets of galvanized iron roofing noticeably reinforced and nailed in place with aluminium straps resembling  BandAid strips. The conveyor belt for luggage was stripped clean of its rubber matting, and the snake-like  contraption was  more useful as a shelf to hold luggage while porters and passengers  claimed bags and boxes with surprising efficiency.

Everything was flat. There were hardly any buildings that were over two-storeys high, and these were certainly not spared by Yolanda. Houses that survived now had new roofs, or were a curious mix of galvanized iron and plastic tarpaulin sheets shaped into roofs.

Despite the obvious clusters of tent settlements, Tacloban was certainly being rebuilt. Ironically, homes were still being built with flimsy materials that would certainly not withstand the next typhoon season. One wonders if city planners and architects were even consulted and if the multi-million pesodonations from abroad are being put to wise use.

In Palo, WedPro housed us in 4 half-finished apartments which served as our workshop rooms during the day, and sleeping quarters at night. Electricity has not been restored in most parts of Leyte, so the screeching of chainsaws are accompanied by the incessant drone of kerosene-fueled generators.

Reawaken rhythm

On the first day of our workshop, more than a 180 kids came, ages 2 through 15. We divided the kids into two workshops for movement and games, two workshops for therapeutic art, and one for “kindergarten.” Some 40 adult participants were given a lecture on how Persons With Disabilities (PWDs) are often doubly sensitive to sights, sounds  and smells around them. As such, the terror that accompanies a disaster situation is likewise heightened, more so for children with special needs.

Trauma victims often become dysfunctional. 

A  person’s normal activities provide a secure sense of rhythm; when disrupted, he or she is distraught and out of sync. At the churchyard of  Barangay San Joaquin in Palo, is a mass grave that holds hundreds of those who perished in Yolanda’s wake. Here a woman is seen every afternoon. Her hands are raised in front of her breasts, as though cradling an imaginary child. She hums a quiet lullaby, her legs, gently shifting, left then right. She says that it is about this time in the afternoon that she lulls her baby to sleep. She has kept the rhythm, though her child is among the dead lying in heaps beneath her feet.

Rhythm is what our team seeks to reawaken in the child when we teach them clapping, stomping  and movement  exercises. Bi-lateral movements using the left and right limbs, hands and feet in a rhythmic manner encourages neuronal activity that “dislodges” traumatic memory and related negative emotions from the brain’s limbic system.

Our movement  and theater teachers, Nex Agustin and Lormie Lazo, led the kids into songs and games. Passing soft balls filled with mung beans to a rhythmic beat,  throwing balls in balanced succession, skipping rope, walking with regularity while following  imaginary lines that form spirals and figure 8s – are fun exercises but also incorporate deliberate Eurhythmy and Bothmer exercises which are healing in themselves.

Art as therapy

Kids filed into my workshop space. I could only take 20 at a time due to space limitations; but our team coordinator, Carlo Luna, shrugged his shoulders and said, “No choice eh!;” he gives me 22 children nonetheless. I have kids working on tables, on chairs, and on the floor.  

Asking a child to draw scenes of a life-threatening incident is like having her re-live and re- experience  the traumatizing event.  Rather than risk re-traumatization, I opt for the use of simple forms and lines,  and the making of simple mandalas  to encourage an inner sense of balance and harmony.

The kids are excited at the sight of watercolor in small plastic cups, paint  brushes,  sponges and wet paper.  I demonstrate how to work with the primary colors;  then,  they each get to try painting, perhaps for the very first time. 

The roomful of kids, some bordering on rowdy,  immediately  quieted down – you could hear a pin drop!  It was fun to observe some children gasp when,  with a brush stroke, the blue paint mixed with the yellow to make green.  It is this sense of awe in one’s ability to “create” a new color, or complete a painting that  enlivens  the soul. 

The ability to create is empowering.  It is not the outcome that is important but the process of creation that is. The kids are better behaved thereafter. Some even stay behind insisting that they help tidy up the room.

In the next room, my colleague Tet Mora  tells the younger kids (ages 8-10) the story of bird who creates a sturdy nest, and there the mother bird lays and guards her precious eggs.  Her kids quickly follow her example of creating a egg with potter’s clay, and forming the mother bird, nest and additional eggs. Again there is healing in being able to create a sturdy nest.  With their little hands,  the children “recreate” their nests, only sturdier to face up to the likes of Yolanda.

Hardened by experience

For two consecutive days, kindergarten teacher Malou Medrano had young children following her about like a mother hen. She had over 50 kids per day in her workshop space but she held their attention with her gentle singing, verses and poetry.  Malou spent hours cleaning then preparing her “emergency kindergarten.” It had to have soft handsewn dolls and finger puppets, sawed-off branches for blocks, and lots of cloth in kind  colors. A child who has survived a disaster is hardened by the experience. 

To come into a physical space that  spells nurture is immediately healing. I watched in amazement as Malou single-handedly quieted down a room filled with kids by hitting a few notes on a small melodious xylophone.  When all eyes were on her, she lit a candle, and with dolls and a gentle voice, told the story of a giant turnip that needed a family, their neighbours and pets to pull it out.

Despite the festive mood of the day,  there were constant reminders that this was still Palo, the hardest-hit municipality affected by Yolanda.  When clouds clothed the sun by mid-afternoon,  and tentative droplets of rain fell,  we heard a panic-stricken child run to her mother crying, “ ‘Nay, ‘nay umuulan na! (Ma, it is raining!)”

At one point,  I had asked the kids in my room to form a line so that I could escort them to their next workshop. “Pumila po tayo, (Please form a line),” was all  I said. Almost instantaneously, the kids pushed and shoved,  angrily warding off the other, each one wanting to be first in line.  

Immediately it was obvious that this behavior was one they were mirroring – most likely  from adults who pushed and shoved on lines distributing relief goods and construction materials.

On Day 2, even more kids came. 

The ones who came the first day invited their neighbors and cousins. At the end of the day, the kids asked if they could come to school “here” instead, since the teachers “here” were nicer . Quite a few walked home singing Teacher Nex’s signature song: “May isang kalabaw, na mahilig sumayaw….”  (There was a carabao who liked to dance….).

How about the mothers?

The next two days were devoted to the children’s mothers, Palo barangay officials, health and social workers. 

Dr. Grace Zozobrado-Hahn lectured on how extreme stress can cause trauma,  the definition of trauma,  its symptoms and how best to deal with it before it sets in as a post traumatic stress disorder.  Without a microphone , Dr. Grace lectured to over a hundred mothers, while competing with the grinding  of chainsaws, and a delivery truck whose driver insisted on noisily dumping  a hull-full  of wooden planks  inside the compound. But her audience was attentive.  

It wasn’t just disasters like Yolanda that could traumatize children, stressed Dr. Grace, but also seemingly everyday occurrences that adults take for granted. The battering of a child’s senses when exposed to loud karaoke sessions that curtail the rhythm of sound sleep;  public humiliation and violence inside the home are as potent as Yolanda.

After the lecture, the mothers were likewise invited into the various workshops for art, movement  and the lecture on dealing with PWDs.  Like their children, they played, sang, painted,  tossed balls,  and sampled the texture of dolls, shells, and wooden toys. 

Teacher Malou encouraged the mothers to sing to their children, create simple rituals  of story-telling at bedtime to again foster reassuring  rhythms. Nex and Lormie taught them  games they could initiate at home. Besides painting, I made them draw with their feet to develop focus and concentration, while  Tet made them experience claywork as well. Two Deaf guests, residents of Tacloban,  shared through sign language, their experiences  during Yolanda while PRT team members Noemi Pamintuan-Jara and Rita Aquino simultaneously translated their stories for the other participants. 

We ended the four-day workshop with a ritual remembering the dead, for we can only truly move on if the process of mourning is given ample time to complete.

At the conclusion of the workshop week, the PRT asked its participants for feedback and suggestions. A mother commented: “Simula pa noong November 8, noong dumating ang Yolanda, hindi na ako nakatawa.  Kahapon lang ako muling nakatawa, noong pinag-drowing ako ng mukha ng kasama ko gamit ang aking paa! (Since Yolanda struck last November 8, 2013, I have not laughed.  Only yesterday did I laugh again when I was asked to draw a my friend’s profile using  my foot!).”    

How reassuring it is to know that indeed laughter is still the best medicine. – Rappler.com

Reference: Emergency Pedagogy as a method of crisis intervention was introduced to the Philippines by the aid foundation Friends of Waldorf Education in December 2013.  Bernd Ruf, a Waldorf special education teacher, extensively writes about Emergency Pedagogy in his book,  Educating Traumatized Children – Waldorf Education in Crisis Intervention, Lindisfarne Books, 2013.

Susan F. Quimpo is an art therapist and a member of the Pedagogical Response Team (PRT).  The team may be reached through her at susanfquimpo@yahoo.com.