wfn.org | Art therapy helps AIDS orphans tell their stories

["NewsDesk" <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

March 15, 2004 News media contact: Linda Green 7 (615)742-5470 7 Nashville,
Tenn. 7 E-mail: newsdesk@umcom.org 7 ALL-AF-AA-I {108}

NOTE: For additional reporting on Africa University, see UMNS stories
#105-107.

A UMNS Feature
By Joyce DeGirolamo*

BEREA, Ohio - It is their beautiful eyes that draw you into their world. 

In them, you see life filled with the joys of being a child. But there is
also pain and the despair of seeing their loved ones die of AIDS, of having
their homes destroyed and of suffering a gnawing hunger inside.

Rebekah Chilcote of Winter Springs, Fla., knows their eyes, their fears and
their hearts.  They are etched in her mind and soul. That is why she returned
to Zimbabwe, Africa, where she lived as a child and, later, spent a year as a
Fulbright scholar.

In 2002, she graduated with a degree in psychology from United
Methodist-related Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea. The child of United
Methodist missionaries, she spent five years in Africa (three in Kenya and
two in Zimbabwe). While in Zimbabwe, she would go to the orphanage at the Old
Mutare Mission, across from Africa University, to play with the children and
care for them.	

When she boarded the plane for a trip back 18 months ago, she knew what she
would find when she revisited the orphanage: children affected by AIDS. But
she knew she would also find children filled with love. It was these children
who inspired her to apply for a Fulbright Scholarship. She wanted to study
the use of art as a therapeutic intervention to help the children deal with
the varying issues affecting their lives.  

"For my research project, I worked with 45 orphans," she explains. "One-third
of them had lost both parents due to HIV/AIDS." As she tested and worked with
the children, she began to see their lives unfold.   

"I wanted to provide the children with a safe means of opening up and
expressing some of the trauma they had experienced," Chilcote said. "The
children shared their lives through art more than I ever imagined."

She would give the children simple topics to illustrate, such as "my favorite
day," then she progressed to "my worst day" or "my worst fear." She found
that the topics that revealed the most were "tell me a story" and "a day I
will never forget."

"The children began drawing funerals, their parents dying of AIDS, their huts
burning down and witnessing suicides and car accidents," Chilcote says. "One
little girl drew a picture of herself walking to school, her feet dripping in
blood from being cut on broken glass. She didn't own a pair of shoes. Next to
her she had drawn a picture of another little girl with beautiful,
high-heeled shoes."

Chilcote says through the illustrations the children expressed their deepest
desires and greatest hurts.  She believes that all this little girl probably
wanted in life was a simple pair of shoes.

"My greatest dream is to publish a book of the children's artwork," she says.
"I was able to take digital paintings of the 700 paintings and drawings that
the children made, along with their personal comments. I want the world to
hear their stories and to be given a glimpse into the lives of the AIDS
orphans worldwide."

As part of her mission, she tried to coordinate a research team, translate
questionnaires and set up an entire study, but was doing so under difficult
economic and political conditions, she says. "There were teacher strikes
affecting the school where I did my research, demonstrations staged by the
opposition party, severe fuel shortages, money changing on the black market
and more.  

"People were sleeping for days in their cars just to get gas, but often there
wasn't any.  When I first arrived there was no bread, cooking oil, flour,
sugar or salt available in any stores, anywhere. The people of Zimbabwe were
facing severe poverty and hardship, especially the children."

The school where Chilcote performed her research project is Munyarari United
Methodist School, a rural school that is part of a United Methodist Mission
station. The small school has 200 orphans, most of them surviving on the bare
minimum. 

Most of the children, Chilcote says, lost four or more members of their
immediate family. Some of them lived completely alone with a 12-year-old
sibling as head of the household.  Many of the children, as young as 10 old,
had been single-handedly caring for their dying parents. 

Chilcote spent a year in Zimbabwe as a Fulbright scholar participating in an
art therapy study. Through the project, she learned a lot about conducting
research, about the children and the people of Zimbabwe, and about herself. 
She returned home to Florida in the fall and has spent time since then
raising support for the orphans of Zimbabwe.  

In February, she returned to Zimbabwe as an independent missionary to
establish a feeding program for all 200 orphans at the school. 

"I want to create a program that can become self-sustaining after I leave,
with the help and support of the surrounding community," she said. "I also am
co-leading an Emergency Relief Fund, which was just getting under way when I
left there. This project supports the people of Zimbabwe who are living in
conditions of severe poverty with no other means of aid."  

Chilcote goes on to say that she and the other supporters connected with
community health workers in the Old Mutare area and visited local farm
communities that had been devastated by AIDS and economic hardship. Her
encounters with the people, she said, are etched in her heart.

She recalls meeting a 3-year-old girl dying of AIDS without any medicine to
ease her pain. She met a family of five orphans living alone, ostracized by
their remaining relatives.  

"We began delivering food packages to the families with serious need and
paying medical bills for children in need of health care," Chilcote explains.
But she knew that wasn't enough. Her goals include establishing
orphan-feeding programs, health seminars, educational support and more.  

In June, Chilcote will return to the United States to begin working on a
master's degree in art therapy. But, she says, Zimbabwe will still be in her
heart.	

"I hope to someday pioneer the field of art therapy in Africa and continue to
fight for the well-being of children orphaned by AIDS." 

# # #
*DeGirolamo is the editor/writer in the college relations office at
Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio.

 
 

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United Methodist News Service
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http://umns.umc.org