Trauma After The Earthquake

Even after she stopped running, the aftershocks continued.

On Saturday, August 14, 2021, around 8:30 a.m., an earthquake occurred in the extreme south of the country. I will tell you the story of one of my children.

This child is called Sena, she is 12 years old and she entered the program one year ago. She has been living with her host family for four years. She is very smiling, very pretty and intelligent. This child was not affected physically but psychologically.

She is the one who does the housework – washing dishes, sweeping the house, wiping the furniture and more. While Sena was doing the dishes, the earthquake passed and Sena didn’t know what to do, or what it was. The earthquake came and went and the walls of her house began to fall and the other walls of the houses in the neighborhood also fell. Sena saw her host family’s niece running and she started running too.

Everyone was on the street. The host family did not see their daughter because she was in the house sleeping when the earthquake hit. Everyone started shouting for the missing daughter. The people in the neighborhood started looking with them under a broken wall. After a lot of effort, they removed the wall but she was seriously injured. They ran to the hospital with her but unfortunately she was dead.

Since then, Sena was badly traumatized. She did not want to stay in the neighborhood and took refuge in a courtyard. She was stressed and couldn’t communicate with her host family. She didn’t want to eat either. A few days later, I brought her a tarp to give her temporary shelter so she could sleep. Sena told me that she did not feel well because of the death of her host family’s daughter as well as the earthquake aftershocks. I gave her psychological support. I asked her not to be alone, to communicate with other people in the house, to play with her friends and others.

Finally, Sena begins to recover. She is starting to communicate with her host family and she eats a little.

If you would like to help a child like Sena this holiday season, visit restavekfreedom.org.

-Report by Rosenette Moise, Child Advocate