Psychologist uses faith to aid refugees

Turmoil in various African nations has created a generation of refugees who need not only the necessities of life in their new homeland but spiritual comfort for their trauma. Counseling them in Arlington, psychologist Hugo A. Kamya relies on his Catholicism's teaching of care for the stranger, as well as his own experience as an immigrant from strife-torn Uganda two decades ago.

Kamya, who practices with his wife and also teaches at Simmons College, originally came to the United States temporarily as a volunteer for L'Arche, a faith-based program serving the developmentally disabled. He stayed after turmoil in Uganda made returning unsafe; some of his family perished, he says. With degrees from Harvard Divinity School, Boston University, and Boston College, he has treated patients as young as 11 (though some 4- or 5-year-olds, born and raised here, have been counseled because of parental abuse born of trauma). Excerpts from a recent interview follow.

Q Was your religion a help in making that integration [into the United States]?

A There was a church in Syracuse that had a close connection to immigrant populations that I attended. Also, L'Arche was an opportunity for me to reflect on the resources that had been part of my upbringing, which included prayer. I used [it] then and continue to use [it] as a way of understanding the journey, crossing from a place of deprivation or pain to a place of hope. That was one piece. The other was community service, seeing myself not just as this individual, but giving myself out to others who were in a disadvantaged or marginalized position, informed by a sense of social justice. So were [tools] like meditation, reflecting on my experience and knowing I could have ended up in a different place. One of the things I talk about is the whole idea of my peers who were killed or disappeared, stuff that did not happen to me. Why did I deserve this?

Q Is that how you answered that question: "I survived because I'm meant to do something, helping others?"

A That was part of it. One of the things operative in my life is this sense of a stubborn optimism. I really think beyond the here and now, that there is perhaps a larger purpose that may be a mystery to who I am -- things that give me hope and trust, almost like a leap of faith into uncharted waters.

When I was about 10, I remember a group of armed men barging into our home. We were having dinner. It was soldiers who were looking for my father, secretary of a local [opposition] party. I remember my father running into the bedroom and hiding. The soldiers went into the bedroom. The next thing we heard was a gunshot. We stayed in the living room and waited. They walked out and said, 'We'll be back.' My father was nowhere to be seen. What I did see, which has been such an instrument to my own work and what I do today, was this crack in the window. There was a streak of blood.

For two years, we didn't know what had happened to my father. . . . After two years, he was discovered. He had escaped through the window. For those two years, that crack in the window for me created this sense of hope that my father was still alive. It's a metaphor I bring to my work. I always like to see that crack in the window, that hope in people's lives.

Q How many use faith to address that, and how many lose faith?

A Maybe 20, 25 percent lose their belief in a benevolent God. I did counsel two people from Rwanda who had mixed feelings about religion because these things that happened were dictated by supposedly religious folks and were antithetical to religion.

Q Do they come to the same answer you did -- there's a higher purpose for me?

A Some may continue to struggle through their trauma and not recover. A number see they've moved from a place of "lack of" to a place of "having." That creates a sense of appreciation of being able to make it or feeling better that someone, somewhere was looking out for them. A large number I've seen have been Christian and Muslim. The link is they are looking to a God who is both caring but punishing, who has a sense of justice.

Q How do you address [children's] trauma? A child's mind can't deal with these metaphysical, religious concepts.

A Through recreating stories of their lives -- what they did as they traveled, the games they played, the animals they played with. . . . Telling the story is a way of making their experience matter and taken out of the realm of being crazy.

Questions, comments or story ideas can be sent to spiritual@globe.com.