Dublin Quaker Peace Committee

Friends in Georgia have chosen two psychiatrists who are trained in child and adult therapy. They are working with refugees in Tbilisi and Rustavi. They are now in their second week of helping refugees to deal with problems of stress and mental trauma caused by violent dislocation from their homes.

The email and pictures here clearly show the problems with which Friends in Georgia are working to alleviate. They send their thanks to Irish Friends for their help in funding and their prayerful thoughts.

Greetings from Georgia.

The psychologists that we hired by us successfully work in the collective centres in Tbilisi and Rustavi. As we see they will have to work around a month in each collective centre where we direct them. In the city Rustavi we informed the head of the city Council, who is in charge of the refugees , accommodated in Rustavi that our psychologist works in the collective centre.He expressed the gratitude. Rustavi is a city in 30 km from Tbilisi. It is a little city with the population about 200 000 people. According to the datas of refugees , accommodated in the city Rustavi. There lives around 1500 refugees from the South ossetia. These datas were given to us by the Head of the city Council. After the 2 month the city Councill will have a new information about the number of refugees and provide us information about the collective cnetres , where we will send our psychologist to work. Much more refugees live in Tbilisi.

The total number of the new refugees (from the South Ossetia , the villages around it and Upper Ablhazia ) decreased , because the Russian left the bouffer zones around the South Ossetia and some refugees had a chance to return. Unfortunately not all could return because of the burned and destroyed homes. Besides many refugees still afraid to return , because the South ossetia is in a few km. from their villages and some Ossetian plumbers still come to the Georgian villagees and plumber the population. A few days back there was a little battle between the Georgian police and the Ossetian gangsters. Many do not want to return to Georgia villages because they are afraid, and even if their homes are not destroyed or will be rebuild, there does not work infrastructure and due to the conflict there are no any working places. The Government tries to send back as much refugees as they can, because they do not want to show that there are still so many of them in Tbilisi and other cities and they live In the state buildings like different institutes, kindergardens and policlinics –which have to be released. The number of the new refugees for now is around 35000.

That are the people from the South Ossetia, Upper Abkhazia (2200 people), which is also called Kodoris Kheoba ,and those ones from the Georgia villages around the South Ossetia , whose homes were destroyed. There are also 247000 of refugees from the Abkhazia , who live in Georgia for 15 years. They live in the collective centres of different cities of Georgia for 15 years. Russian proclaimed the independence of both South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Once in a week we control how do our psychologists work at the collective centres with refugees. I try to take photos each time I visit our psychologists at work, but very often , refugees are against of that. As they say , they do not want everyone to know that they need the psychological problems. I think they are afraid , that I will publish the photos in some Georgian newspaper and they friends or relatives may find out that they had psychological problems.

Anyway, I try to take some photos.
The psychologists that we hired, graduated in different times, in different institutes. As we saw they have a little bit different way of work, from each other. But both of them separated the refugees for the age groups after the first meeting, with refugees. It is rather interesting to see how they work with people. We learned that a few elderly ladies (65-70 years old) were arrested by Ossetians and were kept in prison for 3-7 days. Now they attend the meetings with our psychologists. Some children have a real serious problems , due to the fear that they had to overcome. Our psychologist who works in Rustavi , used to work at a mental illness dispanser (hospital) for many years. She said if they will need more serious treatment, she will help them , since she still has contacts , with Mental hospital. I have attached a few photos to this and previous letters.

Thank you.
In friendship