Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...

Chapter 4 • Nicola Mai
9 (e) Could you explain what it means for you to experience suffering?
How do you know that someone is distressed?
106
Well, it’s a change, but let me tell you what it’s like back home. I get up
in the morning, early, make coffee for my husband, go to the cattle, at
ten I go to the field, I come back in the evening, I don’t get tired. When
I come home, my children gather around me like chicken. Commodity,
plenty of food on the table, and here... How can I not be worse off? See
for yourself?. One toilet, one bathroom, children are noisy half way
through the night, food...We have food, whoever gave it to us, I thank
him. I don’t work anywhere, I don’t have anything, neither does my
husband, only those two sons work, so that these children could... And
how can I be well then, days only get worse, you’re helpless. Before, I
work all day – nothing. Now – I go to the village, my legs hurt. I don’t
work, the organism doesn’t work, and slowly, slowly, it will whither
before it’s your due, parts just die out. I just stand and I think of the
worse. Until now, I hoped I’d go back, now I see there’s no hope. [(S6):
Serb woman, aged 59, married, mother of two, housewife from a rural
environment, currently living with her husband in a collective accommodation
centre].
First, there is no regularity in sleeping and eating. It lasted for days. You
can’t realize that all of that has happened to you. Then worrying, shock,
stress until it cooled down… until months have passed. You couldn’t
believe it, but then you get stabilized even more than you would have
expected. Then you meet somebody and you fall down again, or you
remember this or that. It is always present, you can’t get rid of it completely,
and yet you have to look ahead, because you know the essence,
that you can’t look back, but ahead. There you go. [(V12): Serb woman,
aged 54, shop assistant, mother of two children, from a middle-sized
urban environment].
Well, people mainly don’t speak about it. They are mainly silent, probably
when they are alone, then they play that film. I don’t know how they
behave. I personally don’t think much about it, about Kosovo. So I
always think about something else… People don’t speak about it much,
very little. I think that it is some kind of defence, people don’t want to
return to it in this way. [(V10): Montenegrin woman, aged 34, architect,
from an urban environment. She was attacked by a group of Albanian
children when she was nine months pregnant].
You know, we were all traumatized. Especially my folks, who were there
until November, and my mother did not leave the house for the last three
months, she could not go, she could do nothing, do you understand? The
little food they had, my brother brought in. This was a traumatic experience…
[(V15) Serb woman, 25, from a urban environment. Her Albanian
neighbour had helped her by bringing five of his brothers to testify in
front of KLA soldiers that her brother had not participated in the Serbian
national army during the war].