Heshima Continues!

Hey champs,

I was at my externship site, Heshima Kenya, and they had a guest speaker to explain counseling to the refugee girls. The counselor spoke English, which was then translated into Somali and...an Ethiopian language I ignorantly forgot the name of.

Most of the girls had never heard of counseling, and the speaker was struggling to explain that it didn't necessarily solve your problems, but rather had you work through the emotions surrounding those problems to help you arrive at a more productive place.

Though I know many of these girls have had shocking experiences, I can't help but be newly surprised and depressed every time I hear it. I'm sure I'll be come desensitized at some point, but it was a bad moment when the counselor opened with the question, "Why would you need counseling? What kinds of things happen that you need counseling for?"

Immediately, the examples were "seeing your parents killed in front of you," "rape" and "not knowing if your parents are alive or dead."

As the conversation went on, some of the girls became hostile to the idea of counseling. The Somali girl sitting across from me, who I think is around 17, said, "You can counsel me all you want but it won't change the fact that I was raped."

The counselor explained that no, she couldn't change that, but she could help her cope with it and move on with her life.

"It won't change that no one will marry me because I was raped. No man wants someone who is not a virgin."

"It's better to be dead than raped because you are so ashamed," chimed in another girl. The raped girl did not seem to take offense at this comment.

The counselor said that yes, some men are like that, but not all of them are and that they should marry you for you, not your virginity.

"But what if I like a man and I tell him I was raped? Then he will leave me. Maybe I'll find another one, but I liked the first one."

This kind of went on for a while, with the counselor trying to explain that counseling is a way to cope with trauma and the girls being irritated with the inability of counseling to solve or reverse their problems. I think most of them ended up signing up for counseling, which I think is a good idea.

It's not that I've never heard of the whole "blame the victim" mentality of rape before; I've done enough research on Darfuri and South Sudanese survivors to be aware that that mentality dominates a lot of the Eastern world. But it's still very hard for me to sit across from a 17-year-old and hear her, completely disempowered, essentially say that she has no future because she was raped and she is so ashamed. I do believe that these girls can be empowered with education and counseling, but it's really hard.

Happily, some of the girls have taken a liking to me. One girl asked if I was married (an oddly common question here, though usually from Kenyan men). I told her no, but I have a boyfriend. She said, "When you marry your boyfriend, I will dance at your wedding!" I laughed and thanked her for the offer, but explained that I didn't know if we were going to get married. She looked at me like I was on crack.

I said something like, "sometimes, in US, people are boyfriend and girlfriend but they don't know if they are going to get married." They were perplexed and amused by this.

Then one of the girls became concerned. "How can you leave your boyfriend until Decemba?" I told her that yes, I miss him.

She pressed on "How do you know he won't find someone else while you are gone?"

I told her that I trust him. They started laughing and said, "You can't trust him!"

I thought this was kind of hilarious, and it was cute that they were joking with me, but at the same time it's pretty sad that they find it laughable that I would trust my significant other. Here, the assumption is that all men cheat. And the sad thing is that it's totally true -- even Kenyan men basically admit that they have multiple partners.

In conclusion, Heshima is intense. I haven't really been given enough to do there yet, but I'm meeting with the program head on Thursday to talk about it and get more concrete tasks. So that should be good.

I'm off to bed, but my next entry will be about an improbable experience at Black Diamond, a club here, this past Friday when I got hardcore hit on by a Sudanese Lost Boy! So get excited.


Peace,

Dana