What is trauma – a Malawian perspective

 

I’ve been delivering 360Life training in Malawi this week. The training focuses on giving the participants a greater understanding of how to have a trauma-informed approach in their work, and what the links are between trauma, mental health issues, and challenging behaviour. We also look at how we are all unique and therefore have different personal preferences on how to respond to situations, working styles, communication styles etc. And we look at basic listening skills, because although this is not a course to train counsellors, the reality is that many of the participants have to take on an informal counselling role due to the lack of affordable options for counselling in the country. I keep the training basic, and there is a lot of contextualising conversations so that by the end of the training the participants have not only received the information and knowledge in a generic format, but have also had space and time to consider how to embed it into their programmes in a culturally and contextually relevant way that best serves the programme beneficiaries.

The participants at the workshop have been representatives from 4 different organisations that between them provide support to prisoners and prison staff, victims of gender-based violence, communities struggling with food insecurity, rural poverty, lack of employment opportunities, lack of basic infrastructure (power and sanitation) and where the children sometimes have to walk for up to an hour to go to school, often on an empty stomach. Not surprisingly therefore, when the conversation turns to the topic of trauma, the participants have lots of experiences and insights of what that includes from a Malawian perspective. I thought it might be interesting to share some of those with a wider audience.

At an individual level, the examples of trauma include those that are sadly found in all countries – abuse, neglect, violence, and, for the children – the trauma of seeing parents separate and or being incarcerated. Then there are the traumas of living in poverty, never knowing where the next meal might come from, and the increased prevalence of experiencing trauma from losing a loved one, due to the higher rates of death that are found in many developing countries.

But let’s move away from generics to some specific examples that have been shared with me on this trip.

For Malawians, there has been the climatically-induced trauma of living through a drought that led to famine in some areas, and unaffordable food prices in others. Conversely, there was also the trauma of living through floods that wiped out harvests, devastated rural villages, and led to food scarcities and the associated fear of starvation. There has also been the trauma of living through massive financial crises caused by all sorts of reasons, including corrupt governments.

The withdrawal of USAID is being felt hard here – lots of jobs lost directly, and lots more jobs lost in peripheral services. Lots of people now unable to access urgent care and support due to closure of life-saving programmes. One of the participants coined the impact of Donald Trump’s presidency as ‘Trump-trauma’ which certainly brought a chuckle, as well as an agreement that no positive outcomes have been felt.

Trauma as a result of gender-based violence has been cited a lot as well – GBV within the marriage, GBV that focuses on the girls, GBV as part of arranged and early marriages, GBV that results in teenage pregnancy, intergenerational GBV, and GBV in the wider community. Two of the participants were traditional chiefs, these are people who have a key role in counselling and solving disputes between parties within their village. They spoke of the types of disputes that they often have to deal with, and confirmed that many of them relate either to land, or have a strong GBV element to them.

The prison chaplains shared of the wide range of traumas that they come across when supporting the prisoners. Childhood traumas that have been unprocessed, and then overlaid with more trauma in adult life. Trauma of the death of a parent, and then being abandoned by step-parents. Trauma of living on the streets, and being at the mercy of others. Intertribal and inter-village disputes that result in intergenerational trauma. Trauma of being thrown out of school for being ‘stupid’, trauma of being a girl in a patriarchal community, trauma of living with parents who are addicts, or in prison…

So many examples of trauma – physical, sexual, mental, financial, emotional, individual, community, national… One participant summed it up as ‘we are born into trauma, we live through trauma, we die in trauma’. A lot has been shared.

But alongside this, and as a result of this sharing a lot of healing has started to happen for the participants as they have gained understanding about their own experiences. Recognising that they don’t need to feel guilt about what the perpetrator did to them, recognising that they don’t need to carry the shame anymore, and recognising that they are incredible, strong and very resilient individuals to have got this far despite their past, has been very releasing for some. The participants have also been sharing how they now feel so much better equipped to support others who have experienced trauma. How they feel better able to give trauma-informed support, which asks ‘what happened to the person’ rather than ‘what’s wrong with the person’. And how they feel better able to recognise that some disputes and disagreements are due to differences in personality, not just people being frustrating to each other.

There have been many more conversations as a result of the training, and it has been an incredibly positive experience for us all. I’ve certainly learnt loads, despite the participants all seeing me as the teacher. Each of the organisations here are speaking of how they are now going to be delivering the training to their teams so that the learning can go wider, and the benefits can go out into the programmes. It’s been a very special time and it doesn’t finish here!