Training in Essential Counselling Skills

In Patongo, almost one in three people under the age of 35 regularly feels suicidal.  Network for Africa’s counselling courses equip and encourage people to talk about what has happened within their community, and reduces their sense of isolation and hopelessness.

Thousands were killed, millions were displaced, and the LRA abducted more than 50,000 children, forcing them to be soldiers, porters and sex slaves. Almost everyone was forced to abandon their farms to live in dismal and squalid refugee camps, where they have been for more than 20 years. The war stopped only recently and while many international NGOs have been and continue to be active in Gulu to the west, Patongo was largely neglected, as it was deemed to be too dangerous.

The war had a direct and brutal impact on almost every individual in a very personal manner. Living in crowded refugee camps, they were defenceless, unable to escape the random attacks of both the LRA and the UPDF, and constantly vulnerable to attack, torture, rape and other horrors.

Since the cease-fire in 2008, people have started returning to their land, but the conflict’s legacy is chronic and widespread post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In fact, Uganda’s refugees have amongst the highest rates of PTSD ever recorded, with women twice as likely as men to manifest symptoms. Their social networks, traditional farming skills, coping mechanisms and structures have been lost, resulting in very high levels of domestic violence, gender-based violence, rape, early pregnancy, depression and alcoholism. Even knowledge about how to safely prepare and cook nutritious food has vanished, due to the death toll and social upheaval. Their problems are compounded by a lack of even basic infrastructure, a consequence of decades of conflict and political and economic marginalisation by successive Ugandan governments.

Network for Africa works with local partners to offer training in basic counselling skills. The counselling courses equip and encourage people to talk about what has happened within their community, and to reduce their sense of isolation and hopelessness. Almost one in three people under the age of 35 regularly feels suicidal. Discovering that they are not alone in their difficulties, and knowing they have access to a caring support network, makes a monumental difference.

The training takes place in groups - typically peer groups. Apart from the immediate personal benefit for each participant as they confront and learn to manage their own trauma, the groups are trained to counsel other people in the community, thereby creating a cascade effect for the long-term benefit of everyone in the community. Rather than fostering dependency on an outside aid organisation, this approach rests on the determination of local people to rebuild their lives, to help others, and to reach out to others throughout the region. In so doing it nurtures a sense of pride and self-reliance, and it rekindles local civic society.

Augustin’s story