Candahog, Philippines - Day 7

Today we return to Candahog for a second day of playing with this wonderful group of kids. When we arrived, we were almost immediately surrounded and the group’s size had nearly doubled. Apparently, news travels fast, even about the games we played.

We found our way to the basketball court next to the stage area and sat on the steps as kids pushed their way to the front of the group for high fives. Then they started to shout “1, 2, 3, 4! Booo, aaah! Iiiiiiin... Ouuuuuut...” And they celebrated each other as they performed the corresponding movements.

We didn’t know what would happen if we showed up again to do another PLAYshop with the same kids. What we learned was that they basically would run it themselves. We said, “You want to do the clapping and the counting?” They said, “YEAH!!!!” So we said, “Go ahead! Let’s do it together!” Michelle and I had to do very little to cue the next exercises.

They held hands and the circle expanded and contracted for a long time. Then it moved into rhythm and they got so enthusiastic about counting and clapping that the boys moved to the stage while the girls became their audience - they were rockstars with screaming fans, led by Michelle. I was lucky enough to slip out of the group and catch some video:

Then, of course, in an ongoing effort to promote equality, we made sure to switch; and the girls had an ecstatic time shouting and stomping while the boys danced and chanted back, pumping their fists in the air:

The boys and girls often separated themselves, forming one half and the other of the circle in games and often forming their own circles. While not my own preference, it is not inappropriate or unusual, especially for this age group to gravitate towards their own gender; so, Michelle took the girls group and I took the boys group and we did some more exercises in parallel.

The “Yes/No” exercise was especially effective in this format as people were paired with partners of more appropriate levels of developmental and intensity. The hardest part of that game was getting them in a line, facing each other. Usually when we say get in a line, they fight to be in the front, directly in front of the facilitator. It took some finesse to get them facing each other, even though they’d done it before, but when we were set up and in the exercise, we made extra effort between turns to bring their attention back to their bodies, to their breathing. We watched as they regained control of their energy, of their anger, and we joined them in playful shouting as the energy expanded and contracted. Their energy was palpable; and the empowered joy they had, on the other side of their anger, inspiring.

Airplane game because of the marker shortage - great improv by Leslie. And amazing airplanes. More free play and chillin’ out with young people. After more play we went to Kusog’s office and met with their amazing team before ending the day’s activities.

Tacloban, Philippines - Day 6

Today, Michelle, Rony and I went out into a subdivision of Tacloban, a coastal community called Palo. It reminded me of Sri Lanka in its range of destruction. The surge of water wrecked everything along the sea and we drove through it all on a tricycle - the Filipino version of a tuk-tuk or small bicycle taxi. The feelings we experienced as we passed entire villages of ruined rubble barely resembling anything that could be homes are unnamable. Pictures could never do it justice.

Rikki, a volunteer from the town met us at the place we’d agreed, a well roofed, open air church with a basketball court in the rear that would have been perfect for a PLAYshop. We learned then that the priest said he would only allow “God’s work” to happen in that space and, although he had never met us and was not available to weigh in on it in person, we elected not to risk offending or disrupting the delicate balance that volunteers often work to establish in these kinds of situations. Although it was clear that the person we were asking, the captain of the area, was clearly taking a necessary political position, it was still a little disappointing. 

We did find a perfect empty space just up the road at the basketball court and were able to “make a joyful noise” (Psalm 98:4 KJV) there instead. The group was about thirty-five 6-10 year olds and they were beyond hilarious and adorable. By the end of the PLAYshop, we were standing in a circle singing, and breathing, and then we were “done” but nobody moved. They just looked at Michelle and me as if to say, “What’s next? What else?” They wanted to keep playing!

Some of the girls found their way into a group with Michelle playing. Later, Michelle went with some of the more withdrawn girls to be certain they were OK – they showed her their classroom. Meanwhile, the boys attacked Jonah with another million high fives. I think I have gotten more high fives in the past few days than in the past five years. Which is awesome.

The kids led us into their schoolhouse and taught us games in circles

which we played and sang for another hour or so and we ended up back outside playing tag, and pretending a lot of different, hilarious things. Apparently, I was pregnant with triplets and when I gave birth, my babies, “Nacho, Pizza, and Chili,” were paraded around the basketball court, the pride of the group.

Rony observed the PLAYshop, taking notes and identifying some kids who needed a little more attention. He sat still, like a big, safe animal and small children gravitated towards him, climbed under his arms and clung to his legs. He stayed there for a long time, just being a safe place for them to giggle around and take a rest from the playing. Rony also had in depth discussions with some of the volunteers about some of the other things going on around the area - he had visited with the Israeli Relief group last month, recognized some of what we’d driven through, and knew some of the people still working there.

On our way home, we discussed some of the challenges we face for the future - whether we can return and how often, and how best to build capacity on the ground to offer ongoing support and enable longer-term evaluation. We only know this for sure: the kids we met today didn’t want to sit around and talk about their problems. They wanted to play.

We’ll return tomorrow to do just that.

For now, Rony heads to Ormoc and Cebu to teach at the University as planned but Michelle and I will stay here as we’ve received numerous invitations from local organizations to visit their groups and we’ll reunite with Rony to run a workshop all together in Manila in a few days.

On behalf of all the people we’ve met, the students, psychologists, teachers, volunteers we’ve worked with and especially the children with whom we’ve had the privilege of playing, we thank you all, dear readers, for your all the support in all the forms you’ve given.

Until next time,
 
Michelle, Jonah & Rony

Tacloban, Philippines - Day 5

We rose early, as seems inevitable around here with so much work to do and such limited time. We headed straight to Sacred Heart to see if we could figure out a dry spot to do a PLAYshop or to split into two groups and do two. Their gym has no roof and the rain doesn’t stop so we found an outdoor corridor and basically assembled the entire school there.
 
There were about 200 children, aged 7 through high school. Knowing it is a real challenge to mix such a great age range, Michelle and I both took to the circle to work with opposite ends of the space. We worked rhythm together, back and forth for a little bit and then began to move our bodies and make some sounds. Michelle got great response from the younger children while I struggled with skeptical adolescents and teens until we reached some screaming and yelling at which time the little kids lit up and the big kids responded!

Michelle raised and lowered her arms and the 7-11 year olds roared in response. The challenge got the teens interested and they got involved. First the little ones, then the teens and back and forth as dueling from both sides of the room ensued; they screamed and yelled at each other in healthy and lively competition.

The group was enormous so considering that and the range of ages present I think it was worth the trip to have gotten some noise out. We did receive about a million high fives so that was pretty great and the teachers and parents were really pleased to see some noise come out like that. When we informed one of the Sisters the day prior that PLAYshops would be noisy, she quickly replied, "That would be wonderful. Before Yolanda, I would always tell the kids to be quiet. Now, I welcome their voices, it means they are alive." 

We raced from the school to the university to do our second day and were met with a small number of students, as with the heavier rain that day, people were slower to arrive. When they did, over the next thirty minutes, we played a few movement games to loosen up and then worked through our entire guidebook piece by piece taking questions as we went through, explaining each part of the PLAYshop in our teaching.

We heard from many of them that they had slept exceptionally well the night before, and from one in particular, Francis, we heard how much he loved the YES/NO/yelling part. He said he hadn’t yelled or screamed since the typhoon and that he loved doing so in a place where it felt normal, where everyone else was doing it, and described "NO" as his favorite word to scream because it made him feel "more in control." I don’t think he was alone.

That afternoon we were joined by Dr. Rony Berger, an Israeli psychologist with a specialty in traumatology who has accompanied us to a number of other disasters in the past 8 years and was responsible for setting up much of our logistics on the ground here after coming first 6 weeks ago. I first met Rony in Sri Lanka and he worked alongside us as we developed the beginnings of the PLAYshops in relief camps there. In fact, I was flattered to learn that he uses clips of video from that time in his lectures as examples of what it can look like to work in the field.

Tacloban, Philippines - Day 4

Jonah here, for the team from Tacloban, one of the hardest hit areas of Typhoon Yolanda. We are writing from the lobby of the Hotel Alejandro, headquarters of what seems like most of the international relief efforts. Since our arrival we’ve met with Save the Children whose staff are very interested to have further conversations regarding possible collaboration and longer term studies in their Child Safe Spaces (CSS). We’ve also gotten a great deal of input and feedback from the World Health Organization about assessing need, tracking data, and working with the local government to get support and deliver our services efficiently. While overwhelming, it is affirming to hear agreement about the need for psychosocial services and familiar to hear the concern about how best to deliver them.

We started our day with a 7am flight from Manila to Tacloban and were struck by the profound wetness of the city as soon as we approached our landing. Blue tarps dot the landscape amongst unimaginable destruction and rubble as far as we could see. We walked through the rain to the bag claim area that was, essentially, just a place where 4 guys were dropping trailers full of our bags off and unloading those trailers by hand into piles for waiting passengers. Many people were traveling with boxes labeled “food,” “medical supplies,” “hygiene...”
 
We took our bags out through the crowd and past armed soldiers and were met by our two of our hosts from the University of the Philippines, Paolo and Michael. They took us through the town to drop our bags here at the hotel; we grabbed a quick breakfast, and then headed directly to the school where we found about 50 psychology students and teachers waiting for us to arrive.

After moving rows and rows of desks aside, Michelle began with a short introduction and invited the group to open their minds to a new experience. Then we dove directly into a very lively, often hilarious, at times rather intense PLAYshop, ending with a short, grounding visualization. After lunch, we dove into the theory behind the exercises through which we had taken them in the morning.

After the workshop, we walked to a local school called Sacred Heart and met with Sisters there who invited us to give a PLAYshop for their students. We weren’t sure when we could fit it in; eventually, we agreed on the very following morning at 8:00am for almost 200 children.

At the end of the afternoon, we returned to the hotel for a short rest before heading out to a local teashop that serves bubble tea and other refreshments. It was completely flooded during Yolanda and looters had stolen much of what remained of the store; however, the store owners decided the community needed a place they can hang out, a place they can reunite with each other, sit, drink tea, chat, laugh, come together. So despite not having any money left, the owner somehow recruited the help of friends and the family to rebuild this tiny teashop and now the store has a grand opening sign proudly on display. It is one of the few businesses here that has re-opened. This place, called InfiniTEA, is basically where everyone goes because it has electricity, running water, and most of all, community. After school, people gather here and socialize. Some talk about their experiences during the typhoon, some avoid talking about it completely. 

When we were there there was so much laughter coming from a group of high school kids! Frances, the teacher who invited us to the shop quietly told me, "You hear those teenagers laughing? I saw all of them the day of the storm. They were hanging from rooftops and trying not to drown. One of them got hit by a car door that was flying in the air, had to get reconstructive surgery."

Right before we all were going to pass out from exhaustion, we managed to return to the hotel and debrief from the long day before we collapsed.

Manila, Philippines - Days 1 - 3

Jonah and Michelle here (Jonah typing) - finishing our third full day in Manila, currently in the back seat of a rather bumpy and, um, charming taxi ride through the constant traffic of “Jeepneys”, busses, scooters and moto-taxis. We’re on our way home from the second day of a two-day workshop for 35 wonderful participants titled “Enabling Resilience and Recovery among Yolanda Survivors” held by the Psychological Association of the Philippines at Rizal Technological University. Many of the group traveled from as far as six hours away by car and one even flew here to be a part of the experience. It was all rather incredible ---

But I’m getting ahead of myself...

Day 1 - Began with a visit to the World Health Organization’s cluster meeting to which we arrived rather late, due to traffic, but were relieved to learn that starting even later was not unusual, especially in Manila. In attendance were roughly 40 people from a variety of well-known relief organizations, primarily, the WHO and UNICEF. We learned a great deal, but most notably, that there is a serious shortage of specialized psychological infrastructure. We were quickly invited by Dr. Benny Vicente, the head of the National Center for Mental Health, to meet with his team - an opportunity that we are currently in the process of planning.

We also learned that there’s a rather serious Measles outbreak and significant problems in some flooded areas with Dengue. Not my favorite part.

We returned to the hotel later in the afternoon and after a trip around the mall to purchase and set up cell phones, we returned to the hotel to plan out our workshop. Around 8pm, as we settled upon our plan for the day, we received a phone call from Joy, our host. She called to confirm details about the upcoming two-day workshop we were to lead at the University. That was the first time we had heard it was one two-day workshop, not two one-day workshops. Surprise!

We had also just begun to revise the PLAYshop guidebook, which we realized was a much bigger job than just a quick overview. So we settled in for a long, jet lagged night of planning and, an hour later, were overwhelmed with sleepiness yet somehow confident that our preparations would suffice and we gave in to trusting ourselves, our training, and our ability to collaborate. By 4am the next morning, we were both wide-awake working on the document again and, after a big breakfast at 6, we were in the cab to the University to get going.

Day 2 - The workshop was set to begin at 8:30am. Due to the distance many were traveling, only half the participants were there at the start, most of the rest arrived by 9:30 - our first opportunity to pivot in our planning and change our own agenda around.

Michelle planned to give an intro, similar to Dr. Hackett’s from the Connecticut event, followed by a PLAYshop; what ended up happening was actually awesome. We were led, at the start, by one of our hosts, Joy, in a thanksgiving prayer and welcoming speech and because we didn’t want to start the PLAYshop without everyone present, we pivoted a bit and got to know the room.

What happened in the following hours is hard to summarize in words but I would say that it was one of the most lively, powerful, rich, exhilarating, awesome, invigorating, humbling, awe-inspiring things I’ve ever been a part of. I remember a moment when we were doing an exercise of “Being-With” in which participants were asked to mirror each other’s movements, one leading and the other, following, then switch roles, then attempt to have neither one lead or follow. I turned on some music, Bobby McFerrin’s “Bang-Zoom!” and let them start to move together and the room became a bunch of 6-year-olds, goofing around, dancing, being utterly silly and free and just super-cute. In fact, Michelle was one of them as she had partnered with someone as there was and odd number. It was a moment when the room came together in such a was as to say, “This is a safe space, a place where you can move, laugh, cry, be silly, dance...”

What the group created together was just amazing. Great questions, great feedback. By the time we got home that night, we were spent.

Day 3 - We finished *as if!* the guidebook as we flew out of the hotel for the second day of the workshop and arrived to find a very different vibe than the first day. Everyone was laughing, talking, being together in a really sweet way. We asked them what was present in the room and we got back words like, “TOGETHERNESS, TRUST, AUTHENTIC SELF, SUPPORT...” The feeling of community was palpable.

We dove right into some sound and movement exercises and they were so lively it was as if they were a bunch of professional improvisers! Very exciting.

In the second half of the day, we dared ourselves to try something a bit risky: to challenge the group to lead their own PLAYshop. We went for it - something we’ve never done before - and it was, at first, very intense.

One of the challenges for us in this work is to tolerate ambiguity, discomfort, and not knowing. We basically said, you have the guidebook, you have the skills, you actually have all the resources you need within the group to facilitate a PLAYshop; go for it, we’re invisible.

Then we sat there silently at the front of the room for almost 5 minutes, which seemed almost endless. They looked at their workbooks, read through the instructions, did a very reasonable amount of fidgeting around in discomfort and looked around wondering what would happen. Michelle and I kept breathing, trusting, hoping, and then, when I thought I would just about die from the awkwardness I had created, they stood up, got into a circle, and someone wonderful stepped into the middle.

They had told us it is a cultural normality to look for a leader and to want to know who and how to follow - and we had responded, earlier that day by drawing out the idea that sometimes we’ll lead, sometimes we’ll follow, and sometimes we’ll collaborate as leaders of a PLAYshop. We had offered some exercises to draw out the concept and then we had essentially thrust them into exactly the situation with which they had declared the most discomfort... and they were brilliant.

The improvised PLAYshop was not without discomfort or awkwardness. Far from it! But it was so incredible to witness them jumping in, developing their own styles, trying things they’d seen and things they’d thought of themselves. It was a small taste of what it might be like to not be the only one leading these things and it was great.

We finished the day with a little feedback and some hilarious photo sessions and after some sweet closing time with almost every individual, we headed back to the hotel for our first drink since arriving here.

Working with Michelle is simply awesome. We have a great rapport, a smooth way of sharing the spotlight, and a transparent process that I think makes for a great learning environment. The participants pointed out that it was nice to have, in their words, “Someone who looks familiar and someone who looks different.” I’ll let you, dear reader, guess who was who.

We think that their being comfortable enough to point that out was testament to the comfort level we’d built by modeling a tolerance for ambiguity, a space for different viewpoints, and a mutual respect and enjoyment of what each of us brings to the work.

Also, I feel safe trying new things, taking risks, and really going for it, knowing Michelle has my back. Michelle’s talking with her mom on the phone right now, as they are in the same time zone for the first time in a long while and taking full advantage of that convenience; but I’m sure she has lots of nice things to say about me too.

We’ll include some fun photos soon. And we’ll write more as the adventure continues.

Bye for now!

Jonah & Michelle

Archived Second Response PLAYshop Training

The Second Response PLAYshop training on Saturday, January 11,  from 1:00 pm - 5:00 pm EST was a huge success!  Approximately 70 people participated in the 4-hour training.  The parts one and two of the session were archived here:

Livestream Second Response

PLAYshop Training January 11, 2014 Live Streaming

Join us on Saturday, January 11,  at 1:00 pm - 5:00 pm EST for PLAYshop Training via Livestream.  

Please click on the following link to join us:

Livestream Second Response