“Blood”
For more than a decade, refugee women have maintained an encampment about three hours from Anaradapura in Sri Lanka. I visited in 2003 to guide them through Kolo activities designed to facilitate empowerment over long-term trauma and gender-based violence. Thirty women and children worked with me. It was an honor to be a part of their evolution from victimhood and dependence to self-sufficiency and empowerment. Once dependent on humanitarian food aid and shelter, the group arranged with the government to finance the purchase of land, which they used to cultivate sustainable crops. They also built mud hut homes on the land. At one point during sharing, one refugee woman chose to speak of her journey to this camp. She was traveling with her son and husband. They were walking ahead of her when they set off a land mine that killed them both. The women who sat and listened to the story were overcome with shock, as none of them had heard the story despite living together in the camp for ten years. Small children gathered rice and coconuts and presented them to the widowed refugee.
For more than a decade, refugee women have maintained an encampment about three hours from Anaradapura in Sri Lanka. I visited in 2003 to guide them through Kolo activities designed to facilitate empowerment over long-term trauma and gender-based violence. Thirty women and children worked with me. It was an honor to be a part of their evolution from victimhood and dependence to self-sufficiency and empowerment. Once dependent on humanitarian food aid and shelter, the group arranged with the government to finance the purchase of land, which they used to cultivate sustainable crops. They also built mud hut homes on the land. At one point during sharing, one refugee woman chose to speak of her journey to this camp. She was traveling with her son and husband. They were walking ahead of her when they set off a land mine that killed them both. The women who sat and listened to the story were overcome with shock, as none of them had heard the story despite living together in the camp for ten years. Small children gathered rice and coconuts and presented them to the widowed refugee.