Tsunami
Help
In Thailand seminars,
JDC helps tsunami
caregivers help themselves.
•
GUY SHARETT
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Above: Thais who aid tsunami victims make
peace with the sea as part of a JDC workshop.
Phuket, Thailand
uree Worawit wasn't hurt in last winter's
Southeast Asian tsunami, but that doesn't stop
her from envisioning worst-case scenarios as
she relives the moment in her mind.
"We're still thinking, 'What if the tsunami had hit
on a Monday?"' says Worawit, a kindergarten teacher
at a navy base in Phang Nga in southern Thailand,
where teams are still looking for bodies from the Dec.
26 disaster.
'Although it happened on a Sunday and the kids
were safe, we still feel guilty, just by thinking, Vhat
if?'" she says. "The other teachers and I often speak
about what we're going to do if it happens again: Who
would grab which kid and to which direction we
would run."
Worawit was among 80 participants in one of sever-
al five-day seminars organized by the American Jewish
Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) in Thailand ear-
lier this month. Half a year after the tsunami killed at
least 165,000 people — including 5,400 from
Thailand — the survivors still relive the horrific hours
that changed their lives.
But the workshop Worawit attended in a Phuket
hotel wasn't only for survivors: The majority were aid-
givers, people who gave psychological assistance to sur-
vivors, even without training, and who might need to
do it again.
Three Israelis — one a trauma expert, the second an
art therapist and the third a medical doctor who
focuses on body and mind — came to give the helpers
and survivors the tools to support people dealing with
trauma.
Worawit's "reaction is a typical post-traumatic one.
It's called 'Near Miss': The mind of a person that was
in the second and third circle of vulnerability digests
the 'what if' as if it actually happened to him,"
explains Ofra Ayalon, a trauma psychologist who has
worked with terror victims in Israel, after the Balkan
wars and in Japan and Turkey after earthquakes.
"Our model is multicultural, and I have to say that
the trauma is very similar anywhere."
Left: Dr Gillat Raisch, an Israeli trauma expert,
instructs Thai aid workers at a June 11 seminar
in Phuket, Thailand.
jr
"The fact the participants are Thai and we're Israeli,
they're Muslim or Buddhist and we're Jewish, means
only that some cultural adaptations are needed, but
other than that, we speak exactly the same language,"
says one of the instructors, Dr. Gillat Raisch. He is a
pediatrician and family doctor who suffered post-trau-
matic symptoms after being at the scene of a car
bombing in a Jerusalem marketplace.
Participants in Worawit's seminar all came from
Thailand. At other seminars, Thais were joined by
participants from Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.
Though the seminars were intended as a humanitar-
ian gesture, they had inescapable political overtones:
Malaysia and Indonesia, majority Muslim countries,
do not have diplomatic ties with Israel.
"Barriers were bridged. You really felt people finding
their common humanity," says Betsy Sheerr, a JDC
executive committee member responsible for the orga-
nization's non-sectarian programs, who participated in
one of the seminars.
The training included mind-body sessions that were
unusual for the Thai culture.
"Now I will ask you to lie down on the floor and
close your eyes," whispers Nira Shiran-Mizrahi, the art
therapy expert. As an interpreter translates her words
from English to Thai, the participants, mainly
women, including some with Muslim head scarves, lie
down on the carpet.
"Relax. Now imagine a color is coming into your
body. It could be any color and can come to you
through any part of your body," Shiran-Mizrahi says.
There is silence in the half-lit room.
"Now the color can come as a blanket that covers
you," Shiran-Mizrahi continues.
"Every color has a meaning," she explains later as
participants make drawings in the color each has
imagined. "We can work with the feelings that these
colors represent."
Shiran-Mizrahi asks participants to look for symbols
in their drawings. Later, each writes a personal prayer
on the other side of the paper and goes to the beach to
make peace with the sea, offering seashells they have
painted with their symbols.
After hanging their prayers on a cord between two
trees, they stand and sing together in Thai.
Participants were moved by the sea-forgiveness cere-
mony; some had tears in their eyes.
"There was a session where I experienced an
immense feeling of pain inside me. Its hard to
explain," Worawit says. "Even after you share your
feelings with your friends, at the end of the day you
stay alone with your thoughts. That's why this work-
shop was very important for me: It allowed me to deal
with my own feelings, so later I can help other peo-
ple."
The JDC plans to continue working with trauma
experts in southern Thailand.
At the end of the seminar, Shiran-Mizrahi was
pleased. "The feedback was amazing. Many girls came
to us, hugged us and cried — things Thai people don't
do. Showing feelings in this way isn't part of the cul-
ture," she says.
"We gave them legitimacy to let it all out."
❑
Jlf
6/23
2005