CBOW fellow researcher visits Barlonyo community with CCVS counsellors

Two days ago, fellow researcher Saskia went along with the community counsellors of the Centre for Children in Vulnerable Situations (CCVS) to one of their weekly visits of a community living a 45-minutes drive away from Lira in Barlonyo, where rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) attacked on September 21st, 2004. On that day, between 200 and 500 (differing numbers according to sources) residents of Barlonyo were massacred or went missing. Today, there is also a memorial site displaying an array of mass graves.

Saskia witnessed and participated in the interventions that the counsellors implemented such as breathing exercises, metaphor work, and ball games, and listened to memories of women who were attacked on that day, witnessed pain and suffering, or were formerly abducted and kept by rebels of the LRA for differing periods of time.

The goal of the CCVS is to provide psychosocial activities and help to individuals and groups in communities, schools, and Lira prisons, who have been traumatized or otherwise psychologically wounded by armed conflict in Northern Uganda.