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May 18, 1999
Keeping the Refugees Well Until They Can Go Home
Partnership between UMCOR and CitiHope Establishes Hospital and Healing in Macedonia
by Mary Beth Coudal
General Board of Global Ministries, The United Methodist Church
When the Reverend Paul S. Moore, an ordained Nazarene minister and the President of CitiHope International, visited the Stenkovic refugee camp in Macedonia with five other Americans on a needs assessment trip, he met Shonla, a tearful young woman with little girls. He shared some smiles and Pez candies with the girls. Through a translator, he tried to comfort Shonla, who cried incessantly. "At least you can be grateful that you have your girls here with you," he said. Shonla dried her tears and explained through a translator, "These are not my girls. They are my neighbor's. I lost my two children while fleeing. I only hope that my neighbor has them and is caring for them the way I am caring for hers." With that, Shonla hugged the little girls and began to cry again.
Shonla is one of more than an estimated 747,000 refugees and displaced persons in the region, including nearly 239,000 in Macedonia, 426,000 in Albania, and 64,000 in Montenegro. CitiHope and the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) have formed a partnership to alleviate some of the suffering experienced by Kosovar refugees like Shonla. The program they created to meet the needs witnessed by the team in early April has the following four objectives:
- Establish the Tetovo Regional Refugee Hospital. Working with the Macedonian Ministry of Health, UMCOR and CitiHope will deliver medicine and hospital equipment, which will serve the medical needs of nearly 100,000 refugees now living with ethnic Albanian Macedonian host families. Funds from UMCOR will help equip the 230-bed hospital and provide two full-time paid staff members, volunteers who are medical doctors, health care administrators, and medical equipment technicians.
- Run a Medical Humanitarian Airlift. In the near future, the partnership hopes to procure $6 million or more in medical supplies and equipment for distribution to the camps, Tetovo Hospital, and the Macedonia Ministry of Health. It is hoped that the mid-June air transport will be paid for by the US Department of State.
- Create a Mental Health Project. A refugee trauma relief counseling center will be set up at Tetovo Hospital to care for refugees like Shonla who are suffering psychic pain. The Reverend Jeff Markay of Emanuel UMC in Springfield, New Jersey, one of the five Americans on the assessment team, said, "Every refugee we met has experienced terror, trauma, and deep emotional and spiritual wounds. Some are experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder and will need some intentional group or personal therapy." Post-traumatic stress counselors, psychologists, and pastors are needed to help.
- Mobilize Methodists in Macedonia. As an act of faith and witness, members of local Methodist churches, the largest Protestant group in Macedonia, will be encouraged to distribute the Boxes of Love (healthcare/personal hygiene kits) to the thousands of refugees in their midst. After interviewing several hundred families, Rev. Moore of CitiHope has assembled a list of items more extensive than those in the United Methodist Medicine Box to be distributed to displaced people. The Boxes of Love will be part of the airlift. Items such as Pepto-Bismol, shampoo, and waterless hand sanitizer will contribute to the refugees' personal hygiene and sanitary conditions in the crowded living quarters.
In reflecting on the plight of Shonla and other refugees he saw whether in camps or staying in one- and two-bedroom homes along with 20 to 30 other refugees Rev. Moore said, "I think the thing that affected me the most was their desire to go home. The ethnic Albanian refugees have been traumatized. They have emotional and mental sicknesses. They have physical sickness because they were exposed to the elements without adequate clothing, without food. Senior citizens trudged miles and miles and miles with only the clothes on their back, without proper nutrition.
"But, you may ask, what is making them sick the most? Homesickness. All they can do is say, 'Over that mountain is our home. Just over there. And we want to go home.'"
"Our objective at UMCOR is to keep [the refugees] safe until they can go home, to keep them nourished, to keep them hopeful, to keep their spirits up, and to listen to their stories and let them express themselves. And then we pray with them, believe in their future," said Rev. Moore. "We tell them, 'You can count on one thing no one's going to hurt you. You can rest for a moment. Take a breath on your journey. And we're going to help you go home. The United States and NATO are doing all they can to make it possible for you to go home. But while they're doing that, our job is to be here with you, to keep faith with you, to make sure you have access to medical care, food, nutrition, and friendship through the people of this community, and to keep your hope alive. You're going to go home someday.'"
Rev. Moore hopes that when the refugees return to their homes or begin to rebuild their destroyed homes in Kosovo, the Tetovo Regional Refugee Hospital, staffed, supplied, and supported by the partnership of UMCOR with CitiHope, will be a light to the people of Macedonia who took in strangers and gave them hospitality. He hopes that the hospital will be renamed Hope Hospital as a reminder to the Macedonian people of the dignity and not the diminishment of life when one human being reaches out to help another.
CitiHope began by providing assistance in 1991 to Chernobyl victims in Belarus and the Ukraine. Since then, CitiHope has delivered over $200 million worth of humanitarian relief to Eastern Europe and countries of the former Soviet Union. In recent years, UMCOR has worked in partnership with CitiHope in relief operations throughout the world, including the Caucasus region of Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan.
Medical doctors, technicians, nutritionists, pastors, psychologists, and post-traumatic stress counselors who have experience in disaster relief and would like to volunteer for at least one week are asked to fax their resumes to CitiHope: 914-676-3332.
If you would like to contribute to the needs of the refugees in Macedonia, you may write a check to UMCOR International Disaster Response, Advance #982450. Checks earmarked for "Kosovo Emergency" may be placed in United Methodist Church collection plates or mailed directly to UMCOR at 475 Riverside Drive, Room 330, New York, NY 10115. Credit card donations may be made by calling UMCOR at 1-800-554-8583.
UMCOR continues to respond ecumenically and through our own United Methodist connections to provide food, shelter, sanitation, and medical care in Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Bosnia. Local congregations interested in assisting refugees who are coming to the U.S. should contact the UMCOR refugee resettlement office at (212) 870-3807 or access the UMCOR Kosovo web page at http://gbgm-umc.org/umcor/emergency/kosovo.stm. UMCOR continues to collect emergency kits for the refugees. Please call the UMCOR Depot at 1-800-814-8765 for instructions.