12 KABABAIHANatKAPAYAPAAN September 2014

Balik Kalipay:
Healing the wounds of war
By JuRGETTE HONCulAdA
WITH A PEACE PACT between
the government and the Moro
Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) so
tantalizingly close at hand, and yet
so tantalizingly far, three women
hark back to a dozen years ago when
peace took root and fourished in
parts of the theater of war that was
Pikit, North Cotabato in Central
Mindanao.
From 2002 to 2004, a program was
implemented in Pikit to help heal the
emotional wounds brought on by war
and confict. Balik Kalipay its name
both wistful and imperative: Return
to Happiness was a pioneering
program when it was introduced in
Pikit by Dr. June Pagaduan Lopez, a
psychiatrist with wide experience
in psychosocial trauma healing.
Although trauma healing had been
essayed in many confict-ridden parts
of the country in rudimentary form
in the past (Davao for instance), Balik
Kalipay was the frst programmatic
attempt to provide training in
psychosocial healing in a systematic
and sustained matter.
This is the Pikit story as told by Dr.
Lopez, 63; Josephine Mamites, 40,
Pikit municipal social welfare offce
administrative aide and former Balik
Kalipay staff; and Grace Cadungog,
54, Pikit senior municipal social
welfare offcer.
All-out war
With the declaration of all-out
war against the MILF by the
Estrada administration in 2000, the
population of central Mindanao
and other parts of the island lived
in a siege situation: constantly on
the run, their landscape ravaged,
their lives and homes uprooted,
their children growing up as semi-
permanent bakwit (evacuees or
internally displaced persons, IDPs).
The all-out war uprooted nearly a
million people, mostly in Central
Mindanao. In early 2003, these IDPs
numbered 400,000. Half a year later,
175,500 of them remained in public
evacuation centers or sheltered by
kin.
North Cotabato is a predominantly
Christian province but the
municipality of Pikit has a majority
Muslim population. Pikit has
known half a century of fghting,
experiencing four wars in six
years (1997-2003). In 2000, fghting
affected 28 out of its 42 barangays
with similar statistics in the years
preceding and following this period.
Thus, Pikit was a cauldron of confict
for much of the decade, and its
poblacion (town center) became a
bakwit capital, providing refuge
to tens of thousands of IDPs from
outlying barangays.
Pikit evacuation center in the aftermath of all-out war.
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13 KABABAIHANatKAPAYAPAAN September 2014
The conjuncture
In 2002, Dr. June P. Lopez, who
teaches psychiatry at the University
of the Philippines, had just returned
from East Timor as project manager
of Regreso Alegria, a psychosocial
healing project for children victims
of the internal confict with
Indonesia. Dr. Lopez had earlier
provided psychosocial training in
other war-torn countries like Nepal,
Myanmar and Cambodia. Upon
her return, friends and colleagues
badgered her about putting to
good use her singular skills in her
home country, underscoring the
continuing devastation and suffering
in Central Mindanao. An Oxfam
video documentary Bakwit helped
seal the decision to focus on Pikit
which, by then, had declared itself a
Zone of Peace out of utter necessity,
like Sagada, Naga City and other
confict areas did earlier. A growing
number of barangays in Pikit had
become Spaces of Peace providing
safe space for IDPs to rebuild their
community.
Walking wounded
In congested evacuation centers
flled mostly with women, children
and elderly, the walking wounded
(those unhinged by the trauma of
war) had become all too common a
sight. For example, a ten-year old
Maguindanao Muslim boy became
shell-shocked and unresponsive after
witnessing aerial bombing at close
range. And there were many like him.
Grace Cadungog says that the
governments response then was
stress debriefng for trauma victims
(also called critical incident stress
debriefng or CISD in another form),
especially children, that involved
activities like singing and drawing.
Graduation followed after a month
of such activities. In one area, she
says, soon after graduation, the
war returned. Dr. Lopez calls stress
debriefng simplistic because
emotions are made to surface but the
roots of emotional trauma are not
addressed.
Enter Balik Kalipay
And so Balik Kalipay or BK was born,
a three year (2002-04) program with
Danish (Danida) funding that targeted
young trauma victims in Pikit and
proximate areas. It sought to bring
back laughter to children who had
stared death in the face. But to do so,
it had to make sense of the confict
among their elders, help rebuild
community among warring members,
restore trust in the present, and help
victims regain their selfhood.
Dr. Lopez recruited four UP medical
graduates and fve local volunteers,
ensuring a Christian-Muslim balance
in the group. Josie Mamites was
among the volunteers-turned-staff
after a training period. Staunch
Pikit peace advocate, Fr. Roberto
Layson, gave invaluable help. Besides
providing psychosocial services,
Balik Kalipay trained volunteers and
worked closely with other NGOs such
as Save the Children, Balay Mindanao
and UNICEF. Dr. Lopez says that
all told, Balik Kalipay touched the
lives of and provided psychosocial
training to, in one way or the other,
40 persons, including 29 teachers,
day care workers, staff and a core of
children.
BK partnered with the Department
of Education (DepEd) to produce
a 16-module curriculum that was
integrated with its Makabayan
curriculum for six months. BK also
teamed up with the Philippine
Educational Theater Association
(PETA) to develop creative
pedagogies that made use of art and
music. Pikit primary school teachers,
caregivers and volunteer workers
among out-of-school youth were
trained in the module series based on
Judith Hermans book Trauma and
Recovery which posits fve stages
of trauma healing: re-establishment
of physical and psychological safety,
telling and retelling (remembrance
and mourning), reconnection, and
community action. (See sidebar.)
Prime benefciaries
Balik Kalipays prime benefciaries
are, of course, the children. Ten of
those who went through trauma
healing formed BKs core of children
who formed the executive staff. One
of them, a Maguindanao boy of nine
when Balik Kalipay started, is now
in his early 20s and works with a
Grace Cadungog (left) and Josie Mamites in Pikit, Cotabato: A life-long
mission of healing.
14 KABABAIHANatKAPAYAPAAN September 2014
community development NGO. Dr.
Lopez was surprised that he chose
peace work because many of his
uncles died in the confict and he
could very easily have been recruited
to be a fghter. He was under pressure
to join his male kinfolk in the MILF
but BK work led him to another path,
and he is now connected with an
international NGO. It became clear to
him that his lifes purpose is not to
advance the armed struggle.
Adults in the BK network benefted
earlier, and as much as the children
did. For psychosocial healing to
succeed with children, it had to
succeed with adults. How could adults
presume to help heal children when
they themselves were not healed?
As a child, Josie Mamites witnessed
a Muslim shoot a fruit vendor, a
Christian. Over the years, many
more of these experiences developed
in her deep anti-Muslim feelings.
Her healing process was long and
painstaking, spanning a decade. But
now she says she bears no hatred
towards Muslims, and she is, in fact,
married to one, a Maguindanaoan,
which was unthinkable in the past.
When the program funding ended
in 2004, Josie and her colleagues
continued Balik Kalipay as volunteers
working gratis.
She recalls that once, while
undertaking a survey of evacuees
with the fghting not far off, the
tricycle she was riding overturned
and she, another passenger and the
driver were trapped underneath.
Fortunately, someone helped them
out and led them to safety. When the
fghting subsided after half a day,
they made their way through rice
felds to the school which was also an
evacuation center. But by then the
fghting had resumed and reached
the barangay hall nearby, so they
crouched in the toilet dodging bullets
that crisscrossed overhead. Mamites
says that Balik Kalipay taught her to
be calm in the midst of chaos.
Grace Cadungog trained in critical
incident stress debriefng in 1995.
Two years later, she was among 100
passengers in a Cotabato-bound bus
that was intercepted by the MILF
to pressure the military to stop its
siege on the Rajahmuda complex, the
MILF base. Forty of the passengers,
all of whom were Muslim, were
released, but 60 Christians remained
hostage for over a day. Traumatized
by the harrowing scenes of violence
(including the killing of a soldier in
mufti), and sleepless and dreaming
of war when she did sleep, Cadungog
sought psychiatric counseling in
Davao. But full healing came only
over a decade later with the training
in psychosocial healing led by Dr.
Lopez and her team.
Partnership with DOH
In 2009, compelled by the rise in
natural and human-made disasters
in the country and the magnitude of
suffering, physical and emotional,
of countless victims, the Health
Emergency Management Staff
(HEMS) of the Department of Health
sought the help of the UP College
of Medicine in capacity building
on Mental Health and Psychosocial
Support (MHPSS). Dr. Lopez agreed
with HEMS that responders and
caregivers in disasters and armed
confict are victims themselves and
need these processes and programs,
not only for training but also for
their own healing. In Mindanao, Dr.
Lopez wryly notes, war is the biggest
disaster.
MPHSS capacity building took
the form of three basic training
workshops (Davao, Cagayan de Oro
and Gen. Santos) and one trainers
training (Tagaytay), and the
publication of a Manual for Trainers:
Enhancing Capacities in Mental
Health and Psychosocial Support
in Emergencies and Disasters. Dr.
Lopez headed the project team
responsible for both training
workshops and production of the
manual. A total of 120 participated in
the training workshops mostly drawn
from the Department of Health, the
Department of Social Welfare and
Development, the military, police and
local NGOs. Cadungog and Mamites
were among the trainees, which was a
refresher for the latter.
There was general consensus on
the urgent need for developing
psychosocial healing skills among
participants as caregivers and frst
responders. The technology exists,
Return to happiness: Dr. June Pagaduan Lopez has broken ground in
psychosocial trauma healing.
15 KABABAIHANatKAPAYAPAAN September 2014
1
These include two senior DSWD social
welfare offcers in davao City, a davao
City social services and development
employee who deals with former rebels,
and two supervisory staff in a rebel
returnee program in Davao Oriental.
developed from the Balik Kalipay
and other similar experiences,
and is detailed in a training
manual. Unfortunately, it has not
been adequately integrated into
government programs, particularly
in social services health, social
welfare and education. This is
confrmed by recent interviews with
social welfare, health care and LGU
personnel who say they need these
psychosocial skills in their work.
1

Twofold legacy
The legacy of Balik Kalipay and its
training in psychosocial healing is
at least twofold: frst, in the 40 or so
lives that have been changed forever,
and if one acknowledges a ripple
effect in the transformation in
some families and seeds of hope
planted in their communities. One
such ripple relates to a Kidapawan-
based Japanese-funded NGO that
provides educational scholarships to
500 children orphaned by the armed
conficts (the New Peoples Army
is present in Kidapawan). Some of
the scholars who trained with Balik
Kalipay as children have put its
creative pedagogies to good use, such
as story-telling, in dealing with the
younger orphans.
Besides the personal and collective
turnaround of those who have come
under its care, Balik Kalipays legacy
also consists in helping redefne
war and peace, which is essential
to clearing out the mental and
emotional debris that undermine
a lot of the peace initiatives of
government and NGOs. One example
is the dualism (Muslim vs. Christian,
me/we vs. the other/stranger) that
must be overcome by the fact of our
common humanity and our common
suffering.
Cadungog and Mamites talk about
the dead-end posed by this dualism,
and how historic violence feeds
and fuels the hate and antipathy
of younger generations. Cadungog
observes, The confict is never-
ending. Without trauma healing, old
rebellions persist and expand. You
see this among old people. Many
among my grade school classmates
from the early 70s remain rebellious,
negative
Those who have not gone through
psychosocial healing remain
warmongers, she says, adding that
many programs for Muslims are
ineffective because they are viewed
as coming from the other side and
are therefore suspect.
Package deal
Credit for this rethinking belongs not
only to Balik Kalipay or psychosocial
healing, but to the rich discussions,
dialogue and debate that have
ensued from a new praxis of peace
that engages not only the social
disciplines but also the arts and
theology, that peace begins with
ones self.
Dr. Lopez says that peace work is
not just negotiating but engaging
people (like Mamites) to be your
frontliners. That is saying a lot
because, indeed, people like social
workers, day care workers, school
teachers, volunteer NGO staff, and
other public employees as in the
Department of Health, are frst
responders and on the frontlines of
the fray, tending to victims, building
bridges, serving as shock absorbers.
Dr. Lopez rejects the reductionism of
equating peace with disarmament.
The peace process, she says, is
establishing a sense of commonality
among all those exposed to
war whether as combatants or
bystanders. The vision-mission-goal
statement of Balik Kalipay (which
is being registered as an NGO) says
it all: Katatagan, kaginhawahan at
kapayapaan ng kalooban sa lahat ng
Pilipino (Security, prosperity and
peace for every Filipino).
Psychosocial healing is a package
deal of sorts, to paraphrase Dr. Lopez,
because part of the effort is to
organize community, to build skills
and develop solutions to problems,
to locate the incident within the
Peace advocate Fr. Bert Layson and the statistics of war.
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16 KABABAIHANatKAPAYAPAAN September 2014
On the restoration of physical and psychological safety, Dr. Lopez debunks the
grand leitmotif of GPH vs MILF to explain the violence. She says this is misleading
because it is small incidents that fuel lack of trust and lack of safety. In one
barangay, she recounts, the streets were emptied by 3 p.m. and they could not
fnd youth volunteers for Balik Kalipay. The trick? Initiating basketball games for
male youth and volleyball for the females. By the same token, she says, Little
attention to little things is what leads to peace. She further cites the fact that
while the frst all-out war took a high toll in civilian deaths (in Pikit), the second
all-out war had no civilian casualties because people were organized and had
time to evacuate.
The next stage of telling and retelling is also called remembrance and
mourning. Technically it is cognitive restructuring, a new way of looking at
the same thing or making sense of an old experience. While telling tends to be
negative, in retelling you answer the question, what is the meaning of the war in
your life, you are able to verbalize your feelings so that you are not trapped in
your anger and fear. Retelling makes you revisit the impact of the incident on
your character and how it has changed how you look at the world.
Dr. Lopez notes that the only thing in your control is how you choose to think or
act in a particular situation the meaning you give to particular incidents. Her
ready example is that of a woman who had witnessed the killing of her parents
(her father was with the CHDF or paramilitary) and had turned physically abusive
toward her husband, fnally leaving him, and venting the same anger on her
children. The trauma had left her depressed, angry with the world, distrustful,
aggressive. Psychosocial processing helped her understand that her parents
death was not her fault, that there is a lack of justice and we are all suffering.
The healing process helped turn her life around, she has since reconciled with
her husband and per last report was taking an education course.
The third and fourth stages of establishing commonality and reconnection
are the opposite of people succumbing to their pain, hopelessness, anger and
feelings of revenge, according to Dr. Lopez. As with the entire process, this
entails developing self-awareness and awareness of others, and leads to the
realization that we are all victims, theres a bigger thing that has thrown us into
the situation. We can coexist and live in peace while still in a war situation. This
belies the stereotype of people perpetually in confict. The only way to have
peace, Dr. Lopez maintains, is to have a sense of self-respect, and to recognize the
humanity and dignity in every person.
The ffth stage is community action grounded in trust and a sense of peace
that is institutional, and an optimism based on how people perceive justice.
Dr. Lopez tells of a grenade blast in a community whose perpetrators were
unclear (MILF or CHDF?), and threatened to divide the people into Christian vs.
Muslim. Overcoming their fear and refusing to fnger-point, the community
sent a contingent to the barangay captain to demand action. This stage eschews
the blame game in favor of solutions that are more creative, collaborative and
communal.
The fve stages of trauma healing*
*drawn from Trauma and Recovery by Judith Herman
national context, to draw out its
meaning in your life...
Some years ago, non-traditional
initiatives converged and brought
peace to Pikit. That peace still
resonates.
The challenge posed by Balik Kalipay
and the psychosocial healing it
pioneered boils down to this: for GO
(and NGO) to understand and affrm
that the wounds of war go beyond
the physical and that healing must
therefore target both body and soul.
Psychosocial healing starts with
being at peace with oneself and ones
neighbors, being at peace with the
past, or coming to terms with it, so
a future can be born. As one Pikit
parish leader put it, although the
war may be over, it still rages in the
hearts and minds of people.
Three layers of trauma
Waging war is tough but winning the
peace is even harder. The director of
a rebel returnee program in Davao
Oriental speaks of three layers of
trauma that many former rebels
suffer: the trauma of early poverty
or family violence that drives them
to the hills, the trauma of bloody
warfare, and the trauma of being on
the NPAs hit list for surrendering.
Psychosocial or trauma healing
does not have all the answers. But
it is a condition sine qua non for
people wounded by war to heal fully,
for generations to stop passing on
bitterness and revenge as part of the
family legacy, for the false divide of
Muslim vs. Christian to stop rending
and ravaging huge parts of Mindanao.
The peace pact between government
and MILF lies tantalizingly close
at hand. Can psychosocial healing
and the Balik Kalipay experience
be woven into this new Mindanao
narrative?