Maryknoll Sisters

 

Since November 18, I have been working with Maryknoll Fr. Dennis Moorman, doing trauma-healing work in Port-au-Prince as a follow up to the training we gave in January, on the first year anniversary of the big earthquake in Haiti.  We were met at the airport by Maryknoll Fr. Romane St. Vil, a Haitian-American who speaks Haitian Creole and has been a very good host to us.

Upon arrival, we went directly to the Archdiocesan Episcopal Center, where we met with 27 of the community leaders who we had trained in trauma-healing in January of 2011.  When we met with these leaders over the weekend we were quite pleased with their practice of applying what they had learned in working with people affected by the earthquake in their communities.  They gave us feedback from the trauma-healing work they have been doing and we clarified some of their questions and doubts and gave further training for expanding their skills in healing trauma.

In addition, we have been working with the communities where many of these young leaders live.  In one of the communities where we spent four days, we attended to 54 people–a mixture of men, women and children, who two years after the earthquake were still living with post-traumatic stress syndromes.  

One 43-year-old woman, Mariemat Toussaint, had lost her husband in the earthquake, and was left with five kids to raise on her own.   She was very badly injured herself in the earthquake by the crumbling wall of their own house, which they also lost.  After the earthquake Mariemat was taken to the local hospital with two broken knees and two broken collar bones.  She was admitted to the local hospital, where she spent three months.  They were able to successfully treat her broken knees and the right collar bone, but her left side was not treated.

She told me that when she tries to sleep at night, her left collar bone will slide from one side to another and cover her throat, interfering with her breathing.  So, as I did a session with her, we dealt with the traumatic situation which was leaving her with extreme pains, desperation and fears.  What we were not able to resolve was her ongoing physical pain and the uncomfortable situation that occurs when she wants to sleep.  

Mariemat has been living with this unbearable situation for almost two years now. With a trauma-healing session she was alleviated from the emotional turmoil, but she continues to live with the physical aspect that would require surgery for correction.

We are hoping that one of our readers might be inspired to help Mariemat to get that corrective surgery and help her to be able to sleep well so that she can take better care of her five children.  

 – Sister Euphrasia Nyaki, MM

I am now in Haiti and have been here since November 18. The day we arrived were met at the Airport by Maryknoll Father Roman Saint Vil, who took us directly to the diocesan training center in the city of Port-au-Prince, where 32 community leaders were waiting for us.

These leaders from different communities were trained for trauma healing last January, a year after the big earthquake. Maryknoll Father Dennis Moorman and I trained these leaders with the expectation that they will be able to attend to people in their communities who still suffer from the  post-traumatic stress syndromes caused by the earthquake or by the extreme poverty and violence that people experience daily. 

On November 19th and 20th, we listened to the testimonies of the community leaders about their work on trauma healing using the method of Somatic Experiencing, a natural method created by Peter Levine.

We were happy to see that these young leaders are so well-dedicated to the healing of their own people. We gave more training this month to give them more confidence in their work. 

This week we are in the part of the city known as Leogan, where 90 percent of the population was affected by the earthquake. We are attending to individuals that the leaders have pointed out as having many psychosomatic problems.

Today, Tuesday we attended to 12 members of the community. I am writting from my cell phone. Tomorrow, if we have electricity, I can write more details about the seasons that we have with people here.

We will be in Leogan until Friday night and then we will go back to the city of Port-au-Prince for more work there. We will be in Haiti until December 12. 

Peace, love and healing,

Sister Euphrasia “Efu” Nyaki, MM

I want to thank all of you for your prayers and support for the people who have suffered so much in the March earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident in Japan.

I have been able to go there four times and will be going again.  There are so many on-going needs and now with winter setting in it will be even more challenging.

I have been mostly involved with informal counseling and activities with children.   I have been connected with Caritas Japan and Share, a medical non-profit organization. Both groups are committed to ongoing service of the people.

Last month when I was in Kesennuma a man who had lost his home said,”We don’t like it when groups come in have a big event, take lots of pictures and then leave.  We feel they are doing that for their own publicity.  What we need is on-going relationships with people who really care about us and will struggle with us to help us know what the next step is for us.”

I have also been asked to join the Catholic Tokyo Volunteers, whose main area of responsibility is ministering to the people in Fukushima who had to evacuate because of the nuclear accident.

The radiation, especially in contaminated soil from cesium, whose half life is 30 years, is such a big concern – especially to families with small children.  They don’t know where to store it. 

They do not encourage volunteers under 40 to go to Fukushima because of the health risk.  I’m 67 now – so no problem.  I hope to go there in December for a Christmas party and then again in the New Year to help make special New Year’s traditional Japanese food.

For those of you who have donated money please be assured that it is being channeled to the people who need it the most – through very reputable groups.  I wish I had time to thank you each personally but I’m sure you understand the constraint of time that I am under.

Sr. Margaret Lacson is also using some of the money to help many of the Maryknoll Filipinos who are victims of the tsunami, too.  She also has been up there to minister to them several times.

And please continue to do all you can to alert the whole world about the terrible effects of a nuclear accident – especially the problem of nuclear waste.  I work with children with cancer and it just breaks my heart to think how many more children are threatened with getting cancer because of this accident.

 – Sister Kathleen Reiley, MM

I was privileged to be able to work as a volunteer with Caritas Japan in Kamaishi, Iwate, from June 9–14.

The five-hour train ride through Fukushima Prefecture and Iwate Prefecture was beautiful. My heart is broken for the people from Fukushima who have to evacuate because of the nuclear disaster. The mountains and fields of the Tohoku district remind me a lot of the beauty of Pennsylvania and how worried I was in 1979 at the time of the Three Mile Island nuclear accident.

Even after I arrived at Kamaishi train station everything looked pretty much normal – it was only after we crossed the bridge into the town that one could see how the tsunami had ravaged the shopping area and the fishing port, and also many houses in between.

Miraculously, the tsunami literally stopped at the front door of the Catholic Church of Kamaishi. Caritas Japan has set up a base in the rectory and first floor of the church building.

We were approximately 30 volunteers, men and women from all over Japan from Hokkaido – Kumamoto from 20-70 years of age. Each morning small groups went off to our assigned tasks; the men did a lot of clearing debris from the gutters. There were also those who helped clean the mud off photo albums that had been found.

I was asked to join the Kokoro no Care team. We try to provide counseling for those who come to the Center and we also visited some people in the evacuation centers.

Some young mothers with children I met are concerned because their children only want to play “earthquake” and “tsunami.” I assured them that that was a child’s way of working through some of the trauma they had been through. I am still a “child at heart” – so I really enjoyed my time playing with them.

Every evening, we volunteers would come together and share in small groups and then in the bigger group what the day had been for us. Then we talked about what tasks we would do the following day.

Caritas Japan is so well-organized in providing hands-on support to the people on a long-term basis. Only about a third of the volunteers are Christian – one man said as he was leaving, other groups can learn a lot from Caritas, especially in the way they enable volunteers to get involved.

In Japan, they have the saying Gambaroo, “Let’s hang in there and not give up.” But the people who lost everything in the tsunami said, “We can’t do anymore than what we are doing now.”

I said, “Yes, don’t you think we should change the phrase to ‘Let’s Help Each Other – Japan,’ and they were all Smiles.

God-willing, I hope to be able to go back there on a regular basis, perhaps once a month or so. After the initial physical needs are met is when the depression and anxiety and sense of loss set in. But there is also a lot of hope when people reach out to one another.

But many in Kamaishi said they are lucky – with time they can rebuild their future – but the people who have had to evacuate their homes in Fukushima because of radiation from the nuclear disaster will probably never be able to return.

I was only in one small town, but 600 kilometers of the coast has been ravaged in the same way. The power of nature is staggering. One man said when he thinks of our lifestyle, he feels as though the earthquake was the earth “groaning” and trying to restore its balance.

I pray that we can all heed mother nature’s voice before it’s too late – especially in passing on a “habitable” earth to our descendants.

— Sister Kathleen Reiley, MM

Many have written to ask me about the recent happenings in Japan so I’m writing today to share a bit of it with you. You may have heard all this already from the news reports, so please forgive me if it sounds repetitious but it’s something that could happen to you in some form or other.

Engraved in my memory now along with the term “9/11,” reminiscent of the World Trade Towers tragedy, is a new one “3/11.” It is the date of the triple disaster that struck Japan: a devastating earthquake, monster tsunami, and nuclear reactor nightmare. The disaster wiped out lives, homes, land and infrastructure in the prefectures northeast of Tokyo.

We Maryknoll Sisters living in Tokyo and Kamakura experienced a strong shake-up as well. I was walking towards the subway after having said “See you next Friday” to the women at the shelter for the homeless when the big quake shook. The concrete pavement felt like quivering rubber and signs and poles waved back and forth. People on the sidewalk were staring at each other in disbelief. It seemed so unreal.

Four of the Sisters eventually made it home that afternoon. Three others, myself included, had to sleep on the floor of our workplaces as there was no way to get across the city. Our newest Sister, with the help of her language teacher, was able to get directions to walk to the convent of another community of Sisters who took her in for the night.

Since then, daily aftershocks and the threat of spreading radioactive particles have kept everyone’s nerves on high alert. The inconveniences suffered in Tokyo for the first few weeks after the quake (rolling blackouts, transportation delays, limited deliveries to grocery stores and convenience stores, unavailability of parts and products from the now-destroyed factories in the Northeast,) were nothing compared to the hundreds of thousands who struggled to survive on scant rations, spending their days and nights on the floors of evacuation centers, many without functioning plumbing and electricity, nor heat during the March cold temperatures. Added to it all is the mental exhaustion from the trauma of March 11, the loss of family, friends, homes, cities, livelihood, and especially anxiety over their children so vulnerable to radiation.

Now that nearly two months have passed and many organized groups of Japanese volunteers have responded to the immediate needs of food, water, clothing, medicine, and the government has cleared roads and reconnected electricity along with other necessities, the immediate emergency needs have and are still being met.

What remains is the huge job of rebuilding the damaged infrastructure. Temporary cassette housing is being set up, but contractors are having trouble finding enough land in this mountainous country on which to set them up. Most of the flat land left is in tsunami-prone areas. Destroyed or damaged hospitals and nursing homes are in great need. Damaged Catholic schools and churches are not receiving government aid because they are private institutions. Even Caritas Japan cannot help the Catholic institutions with the repair of their buildings as their regulations limit them to direct aid to people only, not buildings. The diocese of Sendai, for example, has had to set up a special fund for this.

There were a lot of factories in that part of the country which suffered heavy damages halting their operations. The resulting unemployment for the men and women eager to get back to a self-supporting way of life adds to the stress of the devastation. The farmers whose land was either flooded with salt water from the tsunami or contaminated by radioactive fallout are very angry, as are those with dairy herds and pigs and chicken. Tens of thousands will have to be slaughtered with no assurance of any compensation from the government. The fishermen are also extremely upset, to say the least, at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant for having dumped contaminated water into the sea and ruining their livelihood.

This disaster is truly a wake-up call for the people of every country to take measures now to care for our Earth and to quickly begin to develop new forms or energy and safety for living.

God bless you all.

— Sister Rachel Lauze, MM