Bidibidi Storytellers beat coronavirus to help traumatized children
A pandemic doesn’t stop these South Sudanese refugees from supporting the most vulnerable people in their community
Story by Petroc Wilton
“There’s a lot of trauma here in Bidibidi,” says Seme Ludanga, a serious and softly spoken young man from South Sudan living in Uganda’s largest refugee settlement.
“Especially among unaccompanied minors… who just ran away from the fighting and found themselves here. Those children have seen a lot of terrible things,” he adds. “Some have witnessed their parents being killed and then had to walk away, not knowing where they were going. They found themselves in a place where there were a lot of people, and afterwards they were handed over to live with foster families they didn’t know.”
“That’s why we came up with ‘I Can South Sudan’… to engage children in social activities where they can get to know each other. The other point is to heal their trauma. Our target is mostly unaccompanied minors.”
Seme is one of 230,000 refugees living in Bidibidi refugee settlement, and one of 1.4 million refugees in Uganda. He came here in August 2016. Less than a year later, moved by the trauma he witnessed among children in the settlement, he and his friend Stephen Wandubimo founded a community-based organization specifically to help them. Others have also stepped forward from both the refugee and local Ugandan host communities to help Seme run I Can South Sudan, including another friend, Malish James.
“Most of the adults have classes where they can be taught how to heal their trauma and grief. But for children, it’s very hard to give them lessons or training about that,” Seme says. “So they need to be engaged in social activities like music, drama, dance and drawing. Those are the things that will, at least, make them forget their problems; make them forget the bad things they saw back home or on their way to Uganda.”
From an initial group of 20 children, I Can South Sudan has grown and now engages 50 children directly on a regular basis. Dozens more show up when activities are underway and are welcome to join in.
Singing and drawing provide the children with channels to express, visualize and begin to deal with the events that have left them traumatized. Seme notes that children sometimes draw guns, or people fighting or being forcibly separated. “That will help us to know what is torturing these children, and how to get them out of it,” he says.
Dancing gives the children a way to release some tension, while playing together helps break down tribal divides that have historically characterized some of the conflict in South Sudan.
“Back home, because of tribal fighting, they are all separated. Some are advised ‘don’t join with the children of this tribe, because they are hostile’,” says Seme. “But here, we help them to realize that what their parents are telling them about the tribes that are bad is not really true, by bringing them together.”
Seme and Malish are also both WFP Storytellers: refugees trained by the World Food Programme (WFP) from 2018 onwards in journalism, photography, video and social media. They’re putting those skills directly to use in their work with I Can South Sudan.
“I knew Seme before Storytellers, but when we were trained together by WFP through the Storytellers project… Seme suggested that if I joined I Can South Sudan then we could do something together,” says Malish, who came on board the community-based organization in July 2019 as a public relations officer.
“The Storytellers project helped me, because I got the knowledge of writing stories and picking photos and videos. Especially when the children are doing activities like drama and music, I can pick some short videos and photos and share about them on social media so people will know what is going on in the community.”
“I make some short stories about the children, and short video clips,” adds Seme. “Those are things I learned from WFP. Those skills have actually helped me to promote the organization.”
Combating Coronavirus
Inevitably, the outbreak of the global COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic in Uganda in late March has made life even harder for the refugees living in Bidibidi, and has had an impact on the operations of I Can South Sudan.
Funding, always limited, has dried up; and strict social distancing and other measures swiftly brought in by the Government of Uganda to combat the spread of the disease have brought their own challenges. Events like a dance festival the organization held in late 2019 — a wildly exuberant affair, with music blasting over borrowed speakers and everyone from young children to teenagers showing off creative choreography — are, for the moment, no longer possible.
“Some of the social activities we are still able to do without funding. The only issue is that now we are not allowed to gather, and it has affected us a lot,” says Seme. “This year, we are supposed to be having football tournaments and a music gala for these children. Those activities are still pending.”
But Seme, Malish and the rest of the I Can crew have no intention of letting the pandemic shut them down. “We still have some activities of helping the unaccompanied children. We are helping to provide them with materials on how to prevent themselves from getting coronavirus. And we have distributed soap for them,” says Seme.
Meanwhile, with large gatherings forbidden, Seme and his friends have switched to individual home visits — observing proper social distancing and hygiene — to make sure the drawing programme, at least, can continue.
“That actually gives us the chance to meet these children at their homes, to give them the materials there, and keep on checking how they are doing,” says Seme. “Because if they have the materials, they can still continue drawing. And as soon as corona is over, we will immediately continue with our other programmes.”
