Women in Crisis in Tigray, Ethiopia

Seble is a 33-year-old woman in Tigray and has one daughter. She was born in central Tigray.  One day she went to look after the goats and military forces kidnapped her and took her with them. She was 10 years old at that time and they trained her in military techniques and forced her to join the armed forces in another country In 2018 G.c the Ethiopian government called the armed forces to enter their country and she got the opportunity to return to her home country and to meet her family. Then she got married and delivered a beautiful baby girl. She opened a shop and started breeding chickens.  She had a peaceful life with her family but when the conflict started officially armed forces captured their place and her husband joined the armed forces.  She fled to another village with her daughter unfortunately she saw armed forces and was hidden at a bush but one military saw her and called her. He beat her with his gun and she fell to the ground and couldn’t control herself. After a few hours, she woke up and she got herself at an old family's house. They told her that the armed forces were raped her and the woman helped her to clean her body. Due to this, she had bleeding and womb problems. After the peace agreement, she heard that the armed forces killed her father, mother, sister, and two brothers at their home. Her husband and her other two brothers also died on the battlefield. She was left alone from her family, and because of all these things she developed severe post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, helplessness, sleeping problems, self-blame, and hopelessness. Then she went to Suhul Hospital and a one-stop center referred her to Abraham’s Oasis Safe House for Women project for better service and psychosocial support.

When she joined the safe house, she was depressed and isolated and she was not interacting much with the other clients. She is also under psychiatry follow-up. She had physical pain and she got all the necessary medications, so her health problem was treated first. The individual counseling session helped her to relax and she began to make different crafts like Embroidery, coffee mate, crochet, and coloring. She also received group counseling, psychosocial support, and life skill pieces of training. These helped her to express her feelings and emotions freely, to use different coping mechanisms to feel better and to play and spend time with the other clients. She participates in gardening activities and she began to watch movies, and play games and the clients also have a dancing and coffee ceremony program and she enjoyed it. In addition to this, she got business skill training that will help her to start her own small business and parenting skill training that helped her to care for her children properly. Due to these, she has good improvements in her emotions but she needs continuous follow-up. We will continue to follow her! Thank you for your kind donations!