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\n Margarita Rojas Mena stitches up a torn photo of the local school, where armed groups had a confrontation \u2014 part of a healing ritual for residents. She’s a healer in Mojaud\u00f3, a community in Alto Baud\u00f3, Choc\u00f3, Colombia.
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Stitching sutures is one way doctors treat wounds.<\/p>\n
But now there’s another kind of stitching to heal psychic wounds: tearing up and then sewing back together photographs of loved ones and homes. That’s one of the rituals devised in the remote area of Alto Baud\u00f3 in the western region of Colombia, where feuds between armed rebel and criminal groups have terrorized the population for years.<\/p>\n
The photo stitching is part of a two-year project conceived of by Doctors Without Borders, working with community healers and midwives from 2022 to 2024. The goal has been to create rituals to help manage the anxiety, depression and other mental health risks posed by the area’s widespread violence.<\/p>\n
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\n “I cure the ‘evil eye,’ the evil of the nation,” says Margarita Rojas Mena, a healer and herbalist. “When there are wounds, I use my herbs, and sometimes I’ve had to do sutures.” Here she is wearing a wreath composed of the leaves of the totumo plant, used traditionally to reduce pain from cramps and from childbirth.
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The rending and mending of photos is a metaphor for healing, according to Colombian photographer Fernanda Pineda, who documented the project. Other rituals to reclaim memories of once peaceful places beset by violence include the use of fragrant herbs and leaves the healers traditionally employ to reduce pain and bring comfort.<\/p>\n
The organization also brought in medical teams to train 48 people in the community as health workers<\/a> and health promoters to ensure the availability of basic medical services. That’s essential because the isolated location means that it may take two to three days to reach a health center or hospital.<\/p>\n As Santiago Valenzuela, a communication manager for Doctors Without Borders from Colombia, said, “We created a dialogue between Western medicine and local healers.”<\/p>\n \n Traditional midwife Rogelina Arce Campo takes part in a newly created ritual to cope with the armed conflict in their part of Colombia. She tore an image of a place that has suffered from the violence, then used herbs and sutures to symbolically heal it. Fernanda Pineda\/MSF<\/p>\n <\/b> toggle caption<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n Fernanda Pineda\/MSF<\/p>\n Seven healers and the rituals they conceived and used during the course of the project are chronicled in Pineda’s photography series, Riografias del Baud\u00f3. It’s on view at the annual Photoville Festival in Brooklyn, New York, where a sprawling array of shipping containers are converted into mini-photo galleries through June 22. The project’s title uses the Spanish word for river in a play on the Spanish word for photograph, fotograf\u00eda.<\/p>\n “We chose to include Riograf\u00edas: Women Healers of Alto Baud\u00f3 because [the exhibit] exemplifies the power of visual storytelling to illuminate overlooked global health crises and the extraordinary resilience of women,” says Photoville creative director and co-founder Sam Barzilay, noting that the project depicts women as “agents of change, resilience and healing in the face of systemic neglect \u2014 stories we felt urgently needed to be seen and acknowledged.”<\/p>\n About 14,000 people, many of them of African descent or indigenous Embera, live in the approximately 130 communities in this rainforest area bordered by the Baud\u00f2 River, Pineda said. Thousands of people have fled the region to avoid confrontations between armed groups that sometimes forcibly try to recruit them. The use of land mines by the combatants poses a constant danger. As a result of these threats, many of those who remain confine themselves for safety, unable to work or attend school.<\/p>\n \n The Baud\u00f2 River is a gathering spot for this community. Fernanda Pineda\/MSF<\/p>\n <\/b> toggle caption<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n Fernanda Pineda\/MSF<\/p>\n People of all ages gather at the river in the above photograph, with family bungalow houses and immense greenery receding into the distance. “This shows their community,” Pineda says. “It’s morning, you see intimate moments with one woman holding a baby, people doing their wash, everyone is there.”<\/p>\n \n This child brought a canoe to the Baud\u00f2 River. Fernanda Pineda\/MSF<\/p>\n <\/b> toggle caption<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n Fernanda Pineda\/MSF<\/p>\n The kids at the river play with pails and balls and, as in this photo, a small canoe seen from the back. This young boy may have painted his face as a symbol of protection, Pineda said.<\/p>\n The peaceful river scene belies the stress that the community has suffered. “Chachajo is sick with fears. I am sure of that, because I, myself, live with that sickness,” says traditional healer Carmen Fidela Mena,<\/p>\n She has learned medical techniques as well. “Many years ago, a physician from Doctors Without Borders taught me how to suture wounds,” Mena says. “Sometimes, I don’t have the tools, like the needles and thread, so I have to use what I have: black thread and a well-disinfected sewing needle. And when there\u00b4s no sewing thread, we\u00b4ve had to use dental floss.”<\/p>\n \n Traditional healer Carmen Fidela Mena, from the community of Chachajo, Alto Baud\u00f3, Choc\u00f3. Fernanda Pineda\/MSF<\/p>\n <\/b> toggle caption<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n Fernanda Pineda\/MSF<\/p>\n \n Carmen Fidela Mena, a healer and midwife, sews up a photo as a symbolic way of healing the community’s suffering. Fernanda Pineda\/MSF<\/p>\n <\/b> toggle caption<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n Fernanda Pineda\/MSF<\/p>\n This photo is overlain with dried, preserved leaves. Healer Teolinda Castro, from the community of Mojaud\u00f3, is quoted as saying: “At the Mojaud\u00f3 school, there was a confrontation that left bullet holes<\/a> in the walls and ceiling. The resucito plant is used to cure pain. If my child tells me ‘Oh, mom, my head hurts,’ I get some resucito and wash their little head with it. The day [the confrontation at the] school happened, I got under the bed because I thought: ‘Am I going to die? If my blood pressure rises, I die here.’ So I stayed still.”<\/p>\n These new rituals do bring a sense of hope, the healers say \u2014 even as the fighting continues.<\/p>\n Diane Cole writes for many publications, including\u00a0The Wall Street Journal\u00a0and\u00a0The Washington Post.\u00a0She is the author of the memoir\u00a0After Great Pain: A New Life Emerges. Her website is\u00a0DianeJoyceCole.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Margarita Rojas Mena stitches up a torn photo of the local school, where armed groups had a confrontation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":197106,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4315],"tags":[105,4326,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-197105","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-medication","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-medication","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114709994684661737","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n
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