Resilience vis-a-vis trauma

How, after experiencing the threat of annihilation, can one not to be subjected to the death drive? The human race is universally recognised as vulnerable to living through extreme situations in a state of distress.However in such situations, some people have not or will not develop significant psychological problems. Many people are resilient, which is defined as the ability to cope relatively well with adversity.The individual’s amazing ability to cope with adversity is based on a fascinating complexity of genetic, developmental and environmental factors.Keza, a female survivor of the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda confirms this hypothesis. I met her in 2002 and she gave me her testimony. She overcame the confrontation with “the reality of death”, as we shall see. Her name is Keza. She was aged 24 when she told me her story. Keza is part of the category of individuals who have the ability to stay healthy though they have experienced events usually known to cause mental or somatic disorders. Until April 1994, Keza led a happy childhood in an ordinary family from the South of Rwanda and was the youngest in a family of four children, two girls and two boys. Her mother was a nurse and her father was a teacher. The memories of that time are perhaps not all positive but Keza remembers them with a touch of enchantment and nostalgia.When the Genocide began, Keza’s family fled the killers in a state of panic and became dispersed. Keza is offered shelter by a neighboring family who agrees to hide her. Shes 19 years old; she spends her days in the ceiling where meals are served to her in secret by her hosts. But she listens every night to reports of macabre exploits, of killings and torture inflicting on other Tutsi from the village. Some are her neighbours; others are friends or friends of her parents. She says she spent three months with the certainty that she might pass away at any time. She had a fear of death, that word could not express, she said. It was not only her life which was in danger. She was also very afraid for her family, which she knew would not be the same when the Genocide eventually stopped.The Genocide was over and she found her mother, sister and brother. She heard from her brother that their eldest brother was killed savagely, when he had come out of hiding. Her brother had also witnessed the scene which was beyond imagination in its horror. Of their father, who was killed, his feet hanging from a truck body and his head dragging on the ground. Keza said she suffered terribly upon hearing of the murder of her brother and, the punishment imposed on her beloved father. Her mother and her entire family were so affected by this situation that Keza was worried that everyone in the family would go crazy from the grief. This was, in fact, the case for her brother, who continues today to be under the care of the mental health services.Keza has indeed suffered from what she had experienced during and after the Genocide. She said she decided after having almost experienced death, her only concern was how can I live my life fully? How can I help my family to continue living? . One can see this directly in Keza, in the activities she undertook after the Genocide, and in her manner of speaking of herself and discussing her history.She returned to school the year that followed the events, she finished high school, pursued graduate studies and graduated as a medical laboratory technician in 2000. She engaged herself in the cause of Genocide survivors and other vulnerable groups, studied social work and then began offering care as a trauma counselor and providing psychosocial care for women living with HIV. She is the bread winner for her family. In 2005, she met the love of her life and they were married the same year. In 2006, she gave birth to a daughter.Keza builds on the love of her beloved late father had for her. Indeed, this young woman tells me with an insight and an emotional equilibrium that I have rarely seen in adolescents who survived the Genocide, with the following words: My father loved me very much, he was intelligent and honest, and I am as intelligent as him. I have to keep the legacy he left with me by behaving with dignity especially vis-à-vis men.This memory of a loving and intelligent father, the personal psychological resources of Keza, her sense of altruism, the resources of her family and professional environment, all these became real life examples of resilience that make Keza live her life today.The author is the Director of Mental Health at the Rwanda Biomedical Centre.

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Resilience vis-a-vis trauma