Dancing Circles on a Rooftop in Nairobi, Post-therapy
It was only seven months after I had moved to South Sudan. I had committed to a three-year work term, which began in October 2012, little more than a year after the new nation’s independence from Sudan.
I was staying in a small Catholic guesthouse in Nairobi, run by Kenyan nuns, in a small but comfortable room on the first floor. I ate my meals every day, with the nuns, and I traveled to see a therapist on the outskirts of town, several times a week.
In one respect, my first seven months had been good. I had met and started to cultivate relationships with people in Juba — both Sudanese people and foreigners. I had already done some outside traveling — to Kenya, Rwanda, and Tanzania.
I got to see African animals in the wild for the first time in my life. I got to revisit one of my favorite places in the world, Rwanda. And I got to meet a friend from grad school in Tanzania. We even took a ferry to the island of Zanzibar — a treasure beyond words.
The first year was proving to be quite the adventure. I never once forgot how fortunate I was to be living in the heart of Africa, and to be experiencing all I was. But like all of the best adventures, there was danger and risk.
On that same trip to Tanzania, I experienced fight or flight, viscerally, for the first time. It was intense and bizarre. Basically, I was wearing my camera slung around my shoulder (like in the Stone Town photograph) and someone tried to forcefully remove it.
I experienced the real deal physiological response that is fight or flight, I had a dream about it that night, and I walked around the next day thinking everyone was out to get me. Classic trauma stuff. It was pretty minor, and the guy didn’t get my camera, but it was the first painful event in a string of events that led me to that rooftop in Nairobi.
Over the course of the next month: I saw a man lying dead on the side of the road, after being in a motorcycle accident; I accidentally killed a dog, which I also wrote about here; I witnessed, from right across the center divider, a toddler sliding across the asphalt after her motorcycle driver lost control and crashed — then turned around and took all of them to the hospital while trying not to cry because the little girl had a gigantic bump on her head (I still have no idea how this turned out); and then, the grand finale, one of my colleagues showed up on my doorstep one Sunday morning with his eye swollen shut after having been carjacked, severely beaten, and nearly shot at. Did I mention this all happened in the matter of a month?
This was life in Juba.*
What made it so difficult, which I couldn’t articulate at the time, was the lack of systematic support. Whose dog did I kill? Nobody’s because most dogs were stray, and nobody cared about that dog. Who paid for that hospital bill for that little girl, if she lived? Probably the parents, or guardians, and someone may have been hurt in retaliation — at least that’s what someone told me might happen. What would the police do for my colleague? Nothing. Even when he walked right up to them, bloody and beaten. Who knows, maybe the police were the criminals? I would bet on it, based on my own experiences with police in Juba — later down the road.
It’s been six years since all this happened, and I’m able to sit here and make sense of all of it now. Back then? I waved a white flag and told my country director I needed to get out. It pained me to admit defeat so early on. It made me feel weak and incapable, especially after all the good things I had also experienced. But something in me was adamant. I knew I needed help.
My boss sent me to Nairobi, Kenya to see a counselor. I would go for an indefinite amount of time, rest, get counsel, heal, and then return if and when I thought I could.
The therapist did help. She tried a few different things with me. We did regular talk therapy, prayer healing, and EMDR — Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing.
The talk therapy was nice. It was good just to get all of it out, be heard, and begin verbally processing what was happening. The prayer healing was something that would prove to be, at least, a good tool to add to the toolbox. Prayer healing, in my experience, is when you focus on something that has happened, then visualize God entering the scene, and observe how that changes your feelings and thoughts around the event.
The EMDR was interesting. I can see the value in it. It didn’t cure me, though. None of it did. None of it could. I was in way over my head, and that was only the beginning.
What stands out most to me from that time in Nairobi, after all that therapy, was a moment I experienced alone. The therapist had encouraged me to take care of myself while I was there. She asked what I could do to rest and heal and find joy. So I slept as much as I needed to, and I journaled, and I listened to music, and I danced.
The guesthouse was in the shape of a hollowed out rectangle. It only had a few floors, and after some exploration, I found out it was possible to go onto the rooftop. One day, I was dancing alone in my room to a song called One Thing Remains. It’s a worship song I had loved singing along to at church in Philadelphia, before I left the United States.
I was singing and dancing my heart out in that room, playing this song over and over again, desperately seeking joy and love and all things good. “I never ever have to be afraid, because one thing remains, your love never fails, it never gives up, it never runs out on me…”
Suddenly it dawned on me. “There’s more room on the roof!” I thought. There was something about being on that rooftop that called to me. Earbuds in, I ventured to the top.
It was the middle of the day. I was a little shy at first, but the chances of someone seeing me up there were pretty slim. The chances of some suffering someone seeing me be full of joy — also slim.
I felt so guilty. That was something to pile on top of all of it. There I was, a privileged, white, expat who could tap out anytime and be flown to safety. A rich Kawaje (kuh-wah-juh) — the Sudanese term for “white person” or “foreigner” — who could afford the luxury of mental health support.
Still, I danced.
I had to dance. Everything in my entire being was telling me to dance on that rooftop. I traversed the entire area. I spun circles. I jumped. I swayed, I cried, I sang, I smiled, I talked to God out loud, I laughed.
I danced my way to some semblance of healing. And in the process, I taught myself one of my greatest coping mechanisms in life.
And here I am, all these years later, crying as I write this.
The dancing and the writing go well together for healing complex trauma — that’s what I’ve found to be true for myself. Because dancing and writing are my things.
The little I’ve learned about trauma, mostly from living in South Sudan and listening to and reading Bessel van der Kolk — is that the mind and the body need to work together to release what is stuck in the brain.
So, here’s to more dancing, more writing, and more healing.
*Life in Juba was that, but it was also more than that. A complex story I’m dying to tell in full, from my perspective. I’m getting there, a little bit at a time.
Trauma is fascinating. If you’re still reading this, thank you. It means a great deal to me that you would take time to read my story. If you have suffered trauma — and I believe we all have — please know I’m not in any way an expert, and you should seek help from those who are. But I would love to learn from you, and hear any stories you feel like sharing.
