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Archive Number 2427 | ||
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Date: Fri, 3 Jan 2003 12:03:30 -0500
Laura Simms wrote: > Friends, > > I had an interesting experience yesterday afternoon. I work with a > young man from Africa who had both arms amputated during a civil war. > He is going to school not far from my house. I raise money for his > family (three children still in Africa, his parents were murdered in > front of them all by rebels not much older than them), and have helped > him to receive a voice activated computer. I pick him up from school > sometimes and take him to dinner before he makes his two hour trip back > home from Manhatten. He uses two pronged prosthetics for hands. He > is very kind, and a fiercely hard working survivor. He believes in love > and education. I am completely smitten with him and also often have a > really hard time talking to him. > > An eleven year old girl who had one leg amputated and is part of the > group of kids that are here together was taken to a family for adoption. > She was returned after five days because she kept threatening the new > mother with violence. I inquired if anyone was helping the girl. "Has > she spoken to anyone about her behaviour. She must really need personal > help," I said. My young friend responded to me with defiance and > definiteness, "She doesn't need therapy. She has to learn to behave. If > she is not kind, no one will like her, period." He would not talk about > it. It is not just America. the whole fabric of tribal trust and > expanded families and communications has fallen apart from the war. > These kids are the lucky ones to be here. Are they? they have a house > and food. But they are torn out of their culture as well. they can not > afford therapy, but would probably never do it without a lot of urging. > > I met the girl once. She was not friendly. But when I sat down to tell > stories, which is what they hunger for me to do when I visit the house, > she sat transfixed. > She wanted fairytales about princesses who overcome great obstacles but > are beautiful and powerful and fall in love. I had to pull out every > tale I could think of and remake incidents and add incidents to lengthen > them. this seemed to work. But she would not talk about what happened. > Because no one in that household can consider reliving the trauma or > talking it over as anything other than weakness. This is survivor > mentality. but it seems to come from dislocation and mistrust, the loss > of traditional structures of family and community. Isn't that the > situation that most americans find themselves in.. our structures of > communciation are so often based on commerce, jobs, families without > real community. My family were second generation immigrants removed from > their roots, huanted by holocaust and pogrom memories that came from > their homelands. > > Andre's note made me think about these kids and my conversation. I felt > like I could not say what I felt to the boy with no hands. or the girl > with one leg. It made me think about my grandmother who never > mentioned her childhood in Poland. Or my other grandmother who left not > tales of her city in romania. My life has been about telling stories, > understanding the need for stories, leaping through the fire of burning > away a heritage of attachment to stories of victims, outsiders, etc.. > and learning about how stories mean and benefit. It has been quite a > long journey that is not over. The process included my coming to > recognize the mythic dimensions of my own story as myth, and > acknowledging the raw emotion within my own more hidden tales, and then > learning about detachment without suppression. > It also taught me about my responsibility as a storyteller and that even > my personal story was no longere just about me when it was heard by > another. > > Wim Wenders once said very profoundly, "All stories are lies. But we can > not live without them.' > > Laura | ||