Together with Caritas Bangladesh, Caritas Australia is helping families with lifesaving practical and emotional support to overcome trauma.
Jamila, a twenty-two-year-old single mother, is living in the world’s largest refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh.
A Rohingya woman, she fled the armed conflict in Myanmar’s Rakhine State to save herself, her elderly mother, and her eight-month-old baby.
Having been abandoned by her husband, she faced life in the camp on her own.
As her stay in the refugee camp stretched on with no end in sight, she received lifesaving practical and emotional support through vocational training and trauma counselling.
“I cannot explain the mental agony of leaving my own country,” Jamila says. “All I thought was that I needed to escape. People were trembling in fear, and then we had to walk for five or six days.”
Jamila had married at 18, a marriage arranged by her parents and is a local custom. Her husband abandoned her for another woman when she was just three months’ pregnant. Not long afterwards, Jamila was forced to flee Myanmar. She and her family arrived in the refugee camp with almost nothing.
“It seemed an awful place for me. I was completely overwhelmed” Jamila says. “In the early days, it was a bare area, with no life-supporting needs like food, shelter and water.”
There were also unexpected dangers, with fears that roaming elephants would trample their makeshift shelters.
Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya people have crossed the border into Bangladesh since August 2017. Over 1.3 million people remain in the densely populated camps in desperate need of humanitarian assistance.
Jamila joined the Women Friendly Spaces project, where she received counselling and emotional support. She learnt about health and hygiene, participated in a parenting program, and learnt sewing skills to earn an income.
“For the first time in my life, in the camp, I felt cared for and accepted,” Jamila says. “The facilitators took care of my daughter, so I could attend classes or take a nap if I needed it.
“My worries about an uncertain future are disappearing. It was like a ray of hope that spreads in the night, through the light of the Women Friendly Spaces,” Jamila says.
As part of this program, Caritas Bangladesh has also trained a group of counsellors from the Rohingya community to reach out to other women.
They go door-to-door and visit women in their shelters. They talk to women and help them face the challenges of living in a camp, including how to manage their hygiene needs and maintain social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Jamila now has a sense of community around her and feels less alone and more supported. As a result, she’s able to ‘Be More’ to her family.
“I want to offer my thankful greetings to those who are kindly thinking of us from overseas,” Jamila says. “Thank you, and thanks Caritas Australia.”
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