FilmAid Unites the Displaced
Stephanie Bleyer has worked in Kenya and Sri Lanka with the International Organization for Migration. She recently returned to New York from Sri Lanka where she managed transitional settlements housing 2,500 tsunami-affected people. While in Sri Lanka, Stephanie organized screenings of a video created by refugees in Kenya from FilmAid’s My Reel Life youth program. She submits the following report.
On December 26, 2004, the ocean floor shifted, sending a catastrophic wave careening into the coastlines of Southeast Asia. Hundreds of thousands of people were wiped out. Hundreds of thousands more were displaced. I was in Manhattan at the time watching the death toll rise on television. One month later I boarded a plane for Sri Lanka with a small backpack and a box of surgical facemasks. One month after that I found myself running psychosocial programs in 22 emergency camps for those displaced by the tsunami. I was working for the International Organization for Migration in Ampara, the most remote and worst affected district on the east coast.
After the tsunami struck, the survivors were moved to camps. The camps were far from the ocean, isolated from the world, without access to media or entertainment. My job was to alleviate the pervasive idleness that permeated the camps. I contacted FilmAid to organize film screenings. Without adequate resources or time to produce a full-scale program, FilmAid sent me a DVD created by the Participatory Video Project (PVP), FilmAid’s youth media project for refugees from nine different African countries. After the tsunami, youth from the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya composed a “video postcard” for victims of the Southeast Asian disaster. Once the video arrived in Sri Lanka, I had it translated into Tamil and Sinhala and sent it to several NGO’s working around the country.
By the time we started showing the video, the displaced Sri Lankans had grown accustomed to the unprecedented support provided by international NGO’s. Lining up for donations had become their daily routine. The video was the first gift that was something they all needed, could be equally shared and appreciated as much as a mosquito net or cooking pot. In fact, when I would open my iBook and start the video it was the only time I saw the entire camp calmly gather together without disputes. This was also the first gift they received from people who shared their experience of displacement.
When we showed the video, we explained where it was shot, by whom, and why they were living in a refugee camp. We then showed the 10-minute video. It featured refugee youth speaking about their experiences as displaced people, how they coped and how they hoped the international community would respond to the tsunami. The FilmAid PVP members offered advice to the Sri Lankans about how to persevere through the challenges of displacement, and sent messages of hope, solidarity, and prayers.
Patrick A. Oola, a refugee from Sudan, said in his message, "I truly want to send my condolences to those people who were affected…I know you are suffering a lot, because as a refugee, we’ve all been through different conflicts…we can understand what’s going on…We are keeping you in our prayers and we hope you’ll heal through time."
When the Sri Lankans listened to these messages, they realized that they were not the first people to be struck and displaced by tragedy. Cut off from the world, they couldn’t believe that refugees in the remotest parts of Africa were aware of their tragedy. The video was a catalyst for discussions about other groups around the world that are displaced. Video was the ideal medium to communicate with people in the camps, as the visual medium transcends language barriers. The messages from youth in Kenya put a compassionate face on the international response to the tsunami.
In addition to the PVP video postcard exchange, FilmAid is exploring the feasibility of ongoing programs in Sri Lanka. For more information or to make a gift in support of our programs, please visit www.filmaid.org.
