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Sister Christabel became a novice of the Jaffna Holy Family Convent at the age of 18, when challenged by a classmate to take up service as a life calling. More than 50 years later, she is still going strong.
“I was inspired by the nuns teaching at our school, especially our principal who was a European Mother Superior,” says Sister Christabel. “I would actively take part in social service activities arranged by the school, but one day a classmate scoffed that once we left school, we’d forget all about it.
I said I would not – and on thinking about it decided that family life would hinder such service, so I elected to become a nun.”
A higher service
She spent 25 years serving her ministry as a Mathematics teacher before the war intensified and demanded higher services of her. Becoming displaced within Jaffna in 1990, she stumbled upon Father Selvaratnam’s counselling training for community elders, to combat the growing problem of war-related trauma.
Mental health at that time was a taboo topic in Jaffna.
People simply opted to lock up relatives who exhibited signs of mental ill-health and hushed up the matter. The war however has forcefully brought the need to address mental health in the open.
Far too many people were succumbing to the pain and stress and their relatives realised that it was best to address the problem rather than brushing it under the carpet. Sister Christabel, who had intensively trained with Father Selvaratnam and then become one of his trusty coterie of counsellors, found herself at the heart of it.
“Due to the war, attitudes to seeking mental health treatment changed. Many people needed counselling and they realised it. People seek me from afar to counsel their near and dear because they realise the problem could get worse if not treated.”
According to her, two of the most common symptoms she sees are withdrawing into oneself and not being functional, and staring into space without registering anything for long periods of time.
“Concerned spouses or parents bring such people to me recognising the problem, and the effects of counselling. Now they bring even the terminally mentally ill – whom we refer to the psychiatrists, as we can’t help them on our own.”
Uphill battle
It’s an uphill battle though. There are not enough counsellors to meet the need and so the Sister, who trained extensively at the Institute of Anslem, UK, to be a psychotherapy trainer, has been involved in also training more and more counsellors to meet the demand.
She founded an organisation called Familian (Re Holy Family Convent), through which she does a variety of psycho-social work for the affected of Mannar District. She has a Kilinochchi branch too, sponsored by Father Chandrakanthan from the USA in honour of his mother, and thus named ‘Annai Illam’. Currently, there are 15 staff counsellors working under her, most of whom she has trained herself; 10 of whom have been with her for more than a decade.
The psycho-social service need is such that she and her staff also conduct ‘befrienders’ training for able village volunteers. Not enough people are developing as counsellors, so they have resorted to training volunteers as ‘befrienders’ with basic counselling skills, to serve in their rural communities.
Rampant alcoholism
Alcoholism, says the Sister, is the most rampant problem in Mannar District now. Mannar has always been famous for its toddy and none appreciate it more than its own populace; particularly the male segment.
“The problem with alcoholics is that they go irregularly to work, and these are mostly daily wage earners or fishermen. This leads to even more poverty than the rest of the community, family conflicts, health problems and so on. These days the latest fad is ‘vadi,’ a type of alcohol they make from local resources including powdered iron. They boil a variety of materials together and then strain it, thus the name (vadi means strain filter in Tamil). It is even more addictive than normal alcohol and the local youth are heavily addicted to it.”
Where the alcoholism is too hardcore to be treated by home counselling, Familian has a partner. Father Vincent of CRADA (Centre for Rehabilitation of Alcoholics and Drug Addicts) is another well-known figure in the community.
He commands enough respect that he can drop by at any village on hearing of a hardcore alcoholic and order him in for residential rehabilitation at his centre in Thirupumunai, Mannar.
In Sri Lanka, where white vans used for abductions are infamous, the Father’s white van used for collecting alcoholics is a famous local joke. “Watch out, there’s a white van. Father Vincent’s coming to get you.”
Price of war
Apart from alcoholism affecting most of the men, many others, especially the women and elderly, are suffering from post traumatic stress or depression due to the war.
“Those who find it the hardest to cope,” says the Sister, “are those who are still not sure if missing relatives are alive or dead. They have no sense of closure, and are unable to move on with their lives.”
Many parents are still trying day in and day out to find out what happened to their disappeared sons and daughters without much success. Others, who fled in the mass exodus of the last days, leaving dead bodies behind, are only now feeling the shock and grief. Either way, they have to be counselled to pick up the threads of their lives and move on – no easy task.
Youth issues
And what are the problems affecting the youth? Some do suffer from PTSD but mostly, like youth the world over, they have other pressing problems too. And in a culture where ‘love’ is still a bad word, they have it tough.
“I was conducting a group counselling for youth where I was cautioning them about the problems of projections and overhyped expectations leading to disaster in romance when one boy got up and demanded why he couldn’t have heard it sooner,” recalls the smiling Sister. “This was at a school. He couldn’t have been more than 18 and the advice was too late for him it seems.”
She says that most parents not condoning romantic relationships was giving rise to a number of hasty youthful elopements. And being typical youth, they did not consider the issues of livelihood and means to support themselves before embarking on such ventures, leading to tragedy. Either they stuck together and had children in extreme poverty or they split up, with the woman especially often unable to fall back on her parents for support because they had disowned her.
Inter-caste and inter-religious marriages are still frowned upon within the community. Parents prefer to arrange their children’s marriages as romantic relationships would not necessarily be confined to caste and creed.
The flipside of this is that many with youthful exuberance do not get to interact long enough to find out whether they are compatible before eloping, leading to a chain to a high rate of divorce and separation as well as extramarital affairs.
The Sister is not sympathetic to the parents’ rigidity but she does caution young people to be careful too. Extreme control from one end as well as extreme heedlessness of the future on the other is leading to many broken families whom she has to help mend. She has a repertoire of heartbreaking stories in this regard.
But amongst this minefield of broken relationships and minds that she has to navigate, she still retains her cheerful persona. She too was displaced and suffered during the war, but her call is to heal others, not be broken herself. And so her white-robed figure on her black motorcycle can still often be seen flying over many a village interior road – on her way to ‘save the day’.
(The writer is based in the north of Sri Lanka. Ideas and opinions expressed are her own and not of any organisations she is affiliated to.)
