The Middle of Everywhere (33 page)

After he and Bintu were reunited in the camp, they tried unsuccessfully to find their own children through the Red Cross. They helped the orphaned children in camp and informally adopted eight of the kids, some of whom were amputees. They weren't allowed to bring these kids to America with them, but they hoped to save money and bring them later. Bintu asked me for an international calling card so that she could call and check on the children.

We had to leave the café for their job interviews. I was struck by the contrast between their tragic stories and this restaurant with its scones and Italian sodas. I pondered the weirdness of time and place. While Bintu was being held captive, my daughter was a Fulbright scholar in Thailand. When Mohamed's family was killed, my son was in graduate school in California and learning to surf.

I could not believe that these terrible things had happened to these quiet, loving people. How could they go on? How could they keep from killing themselves?

But they weren't thinking of killing themselves. They were wondering how they could get bicycles. As we walked outside, Mohamed told me they were taking computer classes at Lincoln Action Program. They walked to these classes far from their apartment. They had heard that after ten classes they could get a free computer.

We looked at our capital building, currently enshrouded in scaffolding for repairs. I told them about the beautiful murals inside. Bintu said, "We will walk there today. We love to see beautiful things."

Postscript

Many things have happened to Mohamed and Bintu since they arrived six months ago. Mohamed has found a mosque and Bintu has found a church. Mohamed has two jobs and sends money to the camp in Africa to help the children. He has his driver's license.

Bintu works as a cook in a local institution. She has made many friends there, including a "mother" who gives her rides to and from work. Bintu calls me mother as well. She is gifted at loving people and has quickly adopted an enormous family that includes Jim and me, the Kakuma refugees, and many other Africans and Americans.

They have had trouble with their apartment. Sewage from apartments upstairs leaks into their basement. They are neat and clean but cannot control the stench from the "black water" that fills their place. Mohamed has called the landlord many times and I have called the city health department, but as of now the problems remain. Until they have more money, they are stuck there.

Bintu remains tormented by her eight months as a captive of the rebels. As the one-year anniversary of her capture approached, she was very distressed and asked me about therapy. On the date of Bintu's kidnapping, I was away, but my husband took her and Mohamed out to dinner. At the dinner they made a solemn toast to those left behind in Africa.

Bintu can be haunted and overwhelmed by her tragic memories. I respect her great suffering but I am also aware that she is moving forward into the future. She has compassion and energy for others and she appreciates what she can. The evil inflicted upon her has not turned her into a hater. Bintu can be one of the most joyful people I have ever known. When she enters a room, her face lights up when she sees her friends. She hugs and kisses everyone. She jokes with us all, calls us nicknames, and teases us in ways that make us feel loved by her, a great gift. Whenever I take her flowers, she kisses the bouquet and says, "I love you, sweet flowers."

Mohamed and Bintu epitomize the human spirit at its best and strongest. No one has lost more than these two people. Even here in America they are without family and countrymen, in a very inclement environment. And yet, they do not complain. They are supporting themselves and sending money to the children in Ghana. When I see them, we laugh and hug. They speak of their hopes for college educations, good jobs, and a reunited family here in America. I am never with them without feeling inspired and grateful that they came into my life. I am honored to share this time and place with them. They are my teachers.

The most interesting thing about the world is its fantastic and unpsychoanalyzed character, its wretched and gallant personality, its horrible idiocy and its magnificent intelligence, its unbelievable cruelty and its equally unbelievable kindness, its gorilla stupor, its canary cheerfulness, its thundering divinity, and its whimpering commonness.

—W
ILLIAM
S
AROYAN

On Lake Como in Northern Italy there is a beautiful villa whose gardens stretch down to the lake. About one hundred feet out from these gardens, in the lake, stands a brick tower with a terra-cotta roof. This tower has a small window facing the lake and inside the window is a statue.

About two hundred years ago, a wealthy young couple lived in this beautiful villa. They had a five-year-old daughter who played in the garden every afternoon. One day, when they called her to dinner, she didn't answer. They looked everywhere but never found her body. They presumed she fell into Lake Como and drowned.

The little statue is of the mother with her hand on her brow, shielding her eyes as she looks over the water, searching for the body of her daughter. That is what the real mother did for the rest of her life, and what the statue mother has done for almost two centuries.

We all suffer. Pain and sorrow find a niche in every household. Most of us do not carry the burdens of Bintu or Joseph, but our lives are not easy. All of us have lost people we love. We have been betrayed or abandoned. We have made serious mistakes and have needed to forgive ourselves. As Wynton Marsalis's grandmother said, "Life has a board for every behind."

In all places and times, people have needed to know how to heal. Ten thousand years ago, a woman whose husband was killed in a hunt for wild game must have wondered, "How can I go on?" Parents who buried their children must have asked themselves, "Will we ever feel happy again?" Perhaps the oldest and most universal question is, How do I get over this?

Just as suffering is universal, so are systems of healing. All cultures have wisdom to offer their own members and the rest of us. This chapter will examine ideas about healing from all over the world and discuss what enables some people, but not others, to heal. It will ask, Why, with tragedy, do some people break like glass while others are tempered into steel? And, Why does suffering brutalize and coarsen some people and ennoble others?

I started the Thrive Project with a group of mental health professionals. We trained mentors from different cultures to be cultural brokers on mental health issues. The project began with ten classes that included everything from explaining the difference between a psychiatrist and a psychologist to discussing when Americans toilet train their children to describing how to deal with a suicidal person. Mentors educated professionals as well, teaching us how other cultures deal with emotional pain. The mentors then worked with people from their own countries, easing them into our system or helping them in more traditional ways. Therapists supervised and supported their work. The lessons of Thrive pervade this book.

The value of the project was not what we taught the Bosnian, Vietnamese, Kurdish, Russian, and Caribbean mentors, but what they taught us. They spoke honestly about how their cultures perceived our mental health system. They told us about the psychological problems that people from their countries experienced, and they listened to our advice. Often, they politely told us why our advice wouldn't apply.

The mentors defined their roles broadly. They were action-oriented and they didn't wear watches. If their clients were stressed by hungry children, rather than discussing stress management theory, the mentors drove them to the grocery store. A traditional supervisor might say that these mentors didn't have good boundaries. But I came to see it differently. The mentors were not compartmentalized the way we Americans are. They didn't make distinctions between clients and friends, between professional and nonprofessional relationships. By their behavior they said, all of us humans need each other's help.

Early on, I noticed that the Thrive mentors who were the least like mental health professionals were the most popular with their own people. The ones who acted the most like us were not in great demand. What the busiest mentors had in common was that they were holistic. For example, once when I chided a Sudanese caseworker for taking calls at night, he said to me, "You don't understand. All the Sudanese people are my family. I will help them all day and all night. It is not a job to me. It is my life."

When our Vietnamese mentor had a client who needed emergency shelter, he invited her home to sleep in his daughter's bedroom. His wife fixed her a big Vietnamese meal and his family temporarily adopted her.

When our Bosnian mentor met people from her country, she gave them her heart. She had a client who had lost twenty-two male family members in Srebrenica. The woman said to the mentor, "My pain has killed my soul." The mentor listened to the woman's stories, then she invited her to the circus, which she told me later "was a big hit."

This Bosnian mentor had another client who had suffered many previous losses. All she wanted was a child and she feared she couldn't get pregnant. The mentor took her to a women's clinic where the doctor reassured the woman she could have another child. Then the mentor invited the woman and her husband to her home. The two families stayed up all night drinking plum brandy and singing.

The Bosnian mentor was my most creative mentor. She was warmhearted, helpful, and good-natured. She had common sense and intelligence. When she heard I was writing a book on refugees, she said, "Tell families to get a kitten. We were very lonely and sad until we got our little kitty. Now we have reason to laugh. My daughter jumps out of the bed every morning to check on her kitty. It is the best thing."

At first, the goal of Thrive had been to train mentors to use our system and to encourage their people to use it. As the group proceeded, I found myself wondering why had I assumed that our system was better.

Refugees don't seek therapy for a variety of reasons, some practical and some cultural. First, they often don't know that such a thing exists. They have no transportation to appointments, or they work all the time and cannot schedule sessions, or they have immediate concerns that take precedence over dealing with past pain. Usually therapy is lower on their priority lists than work, housing, or transportation.

Refugees resist therapy because of language and trust issues as well as a lack of understanding about our mental health system. Many refugees come from cultures with no cultural analogue for talking about problems outside the family. Certain things cannot be discussed even within the family. Domestic violence and rape are taboo subjects. In many cultures, the expression of certain emotions, such as anger, is not tolerated.

Often refugees label what we call mental health problems as spiritual problems, physical problems, or the result of a curse or the evil eye. Depending on the labeling process, different kinds of healers are required. A Vietnamese Catholic might talk to a priest. A Kurdish person might consult a tribal elder or visit a sacred shrine. Others might go to a shaman, a curandero, or a medicine man.

Even if refugees come from a culture that acknowledges mental health problems, these problems often are seen as shameful. Many people believe that only crazy people see therapists. Often times, mental health professionals are not trusted. The Vietnamese have a saying: You have to be crazy to understand crazy people.

Beyond these reasons there is another universal reason for avoiding therapy. Talking about trauma is not easy. To remember pain is to reexperience it. Many people just try to blot it out and pretend things didn't happen.

When I first worked with refugees, I thought that, with access and understanding, many would want our services. They were traumatized people who could use therapy to work through their past tragedies and current stresses. Of course, there were refugees who wanted our mental health services. However, I now realize that many refugees choose not to be in therapy. Even when it's affordable, accessible, and user-friendly, and even when they truly understand what therapy entails, they turn down our offers of help.

Refugees are able to partake of the services they truly want in our communities. Because newcomers quickly see their value, they find our schools, job counselors, libraries, doctors' offices, and cultural centers. But in spite of our efforts to make therapy more available, we can't lure many people in. Most refugees don't want to sit in a room with a perfect stranger and talk over their traumas. Many listen to descriptions of what therapists do and then decide, "I'll help distribute clothes at the Asian Center," or "I want to watch movies," or "I'd rather go fishing."

And if refugees do show up in our offices, they are likely to come for practical advice, not help processing the past. They are likely to bring a form they need help filling out, or they'll come in with the classified ads and ask for advice on buying a washing machine. They bring up problems with a supervisor or a landlord, or they ask for help finding a used car.

Psychology was founded in the late Victorian era by middle-class white men. There was no concept of cultural relativity. For example, at Ellis Island, the IQ tests were given only in English. In 1917 psychologists announced that 83 percent of Jews, 80 percent of Hungarians, 79 percent of Italians, and 80 percent of Russians were morons. About this time, Margaret Mead entered graduate school in psychology. She administered the Otis IQ test to foreigners and found that their scores were related to their English ability. However, her findings weren't accepted. She was out-maneuvered in a sea of powerful male psychologists and she left psychology because of its racism and sexism.

Fortunately, since then our field has worked to become less sexist, racist, and ethnocentric. While there is still resistance to dealing with culture in therapy and also a lack of sophistication about cross-cultural issues, many psychologists have devoted their careers to understanding diversity and increasing tolerance. However, in this time of transition to a multicultural society, psychologists often rely on models dusty with age. The field tries to fit people from all over the world into models developed for a very different time and place.