Butoyi Louis-Marie works with refugees and asylum-seekers in Luxembourg, Belgium, by engaging them in conversation to understand their strengths, and then encourages them to find solutions to their problems.
Louis-Marie started his career in the Red Cross Society of Belgium but soon realised that it was not enough to provide the refugees with food and a place to sleep.
“These refugees had spent all their time eating and sleeping for six months to a year, since they were in a new place with no knowledge of the language and no access to resources. They come from different places and understanding their languages is very difficult,” he recalled.
That was when he met Jean-Louis Lamboray, founder of The Constellation, who suggested that he could help refugees discover their strength and find their feet.
The Constellation is an organisation that believes in building communities which can competently manage their problems and not remain beneficiaries of charities. Started to address the issue of HIV/AIDS, over the years, the work of the organisation has gone far beyond.
At an ongoing global learning festival in Mamallapuram, organised by South Indian AIDS Action Programme, counsellors from various organisations shared their experiences and attempted to find a collective way forward to deal with issues of all kinds.
“If somebody could operate a computer then that could be put to use, I learned. A businessman from Chad had money but did not know what to do. He is now running an import-export business. Someone who was a teacher back home began a career anew and is able to make some money,” Louis-Marie recalled.
Since Tuesday, he has been in Mamallapauram, sharing his experiences with others like him. He no longer feels like an automaton, always focused on doing a task or achieving a target.
Father Joe Ngankhuchung from Nagaland has been working for 21 years with injected drug users and people living with HIV/AIDS, shares his sentiments. Like Louis-Marie, he sometimes forgot to be human, he said. “There are targets to meet, tasks to achieve and we forget ourselves.” But talking to people without pushing an agenda could be rewarding, he discovered. At a field visit to nearby villages on Wednesday he met a group of sex workers who had brought about changes in their lives.
“They have made the district collector provide a bus service as there is no hospital for over 35 km from their village. The women have learned to discuss their problems and are also helping other women,” Fr. Joe said.
While working with a community, insight into finding solutions to problems using different methods comes automatically, says Sangamitra I., who has been working with three different groups of women in Karnataka for 20 years to help eradicate the stigma associated with HIV/AIDS. “It’s a sensitive situation, but 1,000 women have benefited,” she said of her work. These women have now planned to set up a helpline for women in abusive relationships.
Thirty-one-year-old Dewi Rahmadania is in awe of these experienced counsellors and the limited exposure she had to HIV/AIDS, was offset when she interacted with senior counsellors. She began working with youth in 2007 in Jakarata, and though she spoke about HIV/AIDS awareness, her interaction with counsellors who are associated with people living with HIV and AIDS has changed the way she addresses the issue now, she said.
Onesus Mutuku from Nairobi, finds interacting with the counsellors invigorating. The 30-year-old is counselling “the trucking and fishing community” and it has helped him identify with the issue of sexual abuse that women here spoke about. “It is amazing to know that a woman in sex work has managed to send her daughter to university,” he said. She is now studying to become a nurse,” he said. He was impressed that the woman, despite the hostile conditions she faced, had managed to educate her daughter.
Listening to the experiences of other counsellors offers him an opportunity to analyse the situation back home and he tries to find an a method to approach to a solution, he said. “When communities are strengthened they begin to believe in themselves and your health-seeking behaviour also increases. The sex workers we met at the village said they initiate a conversation with the client on the use of condoms. And if a client refuses to use condom, then the woman refuses to entertain him.”
The visit to India and his interaction with the various kinds of situations that counsellors handle here has opened some avenues that he could work on when he meets his group when he returns home, he added.
