Haitian children find healing in art

[MediaGlobal] Last year’s earthquake in Haiti has left over 750,000 children in the rubble of loss, with increased vulnerability to diseases and malnutrition. Today, more than a year after the devastation, the children of Haiti look to the healing power of art to recover from a tragedy that rendered words insufficient.

“When you meet someone in Haiti, it only takes a short time until he manifests the need to tell you what he was doing on the 12th of January 2010,” Caroline Maby, director of art therapy group Couleurs du Coeur, told MediaGlobal.
According to UNICEF report “Children in Haiti: One Year After,” the earthquake and resulting epidemics aggravated the nation’s already destitute state, further complicating the mental health of traumatized children. “The previous traumas linked to the history of Haiti emerged again with the earthquake,” explained Maby.

Art is deeply embedded in Haitian culture. For generations, Haitians relied on communicative symbolisms and colors of landscapes, animals, and people to express memories and emotions, especially those that are too painful to put into words. The Haitians’ natural affinity towards art makes art therapy a highly feasible means of reaching out to traumatized children.

Over the years, art therapy has been widely used in disaster relief, especially for traumatized victims of natural catastrophes, war, and terrorism. The creative process allows victims to reveal their sufferings and other unsuspected concerns, thereby relieving themselves of repressed psycho-emotional burden.

“In the context of Haiti, art therapy allows children to put on paper the unspeakable – their fears, their vibrant emotions, their mourning,” said Maby. “And we strongly believe that it is now the best way for the Haitian people to heal their children.”

Art therapy encourages children to express themselves through drawing, gradually confronting their repressed memories and emotions. “It gives them a platform to articulate their feelings,” explained Chantal Paret Antoine, Program Coordinator of Haiti Healing Arts of the International Child Art Foundation (ICAF). “Art itself reinforces and brings to light what happened.”

Disaster relief art therapy sessions conducted in Haiti last year revealed that many children reported a fear of nature, and anxiety towards an uncertain, tragic future. Effective interventions help children release these negative emotions, and foster confidence in themselves, their world, and the future.

Recent approaches pay special attention to include specific Haitian ethno-cultural identities. “Considering the voodoo culture and symbolism is absolutely necessary when working with representation and images in a country so inspired by icons, divinities, goddesses, signs, symbols, and beliefs,” Maby said.

Culturally familiar activities prove to be helpful, such as creating Christmas lanterns and lucky charms, both integrate the Christian and voodoo background. “These activities aid in rebuilding their sense of neighborhood, in reimagining a better, rebuilt Haiti,” explained Antoine.

Working with children transplanted from Haiti to New York City after the earthquake, Antoine gave the children ”safety boxes” that they could decorate with images of their treasured objects and mementos from their homes in Haiti. “They were imaginative in what they would hold dear,” Antoine said. “This exercise empowered the children to have some control as they relieve the experience.”

To the children of Haiti, playful images and colors symbolize pain that needs to be expressed in order to be healed. While one year remains insufficient for these children to fully recover from the tragedy, encouraging creative expression brightens an otherwise faded hope.