KALABALA BINDU PEACE GARDEN: This is a Childrens psychosocial initiative based on the highly successful Butterfly Peace Garden

located in Batticaloa in the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka that recently celebrated its tenth anniversary. This project was developed through a suggestion by the ACCESS staff during their induction and foundation training. Paul Hogan the originator of the Butterfly Peace Garden was persuaded to design, create and develop such a garden in Hambantota and he accepted the position as Creative Advisor. Those who wish to make a healing garden for children must embrace the poiesis and practice of the Garden Path firsthand and that is just what the Garden Path seminars gives them an opportunity to do. Rationale: The genius of the Garden Path lies in three areas. Firstly it is autochthonous. This means it arises from its own roots. Secondly, the Garden is a mnemonic device. That is, the physical space is constructed to influence childrens subconscious mental structures in such a way that their thoughts and perceptions accord with the goal of the Garden, to help them negotiate and to survive the dangerous labyrinth of war and natural disaster endemic to the area. Finally, the programs of the Garden activate and refine childrens creative powers. For example, they learn how to construct images and narratives that reflect what is happening outside the Garden. This teaches them that everything is part of an unfolding narrative that can engage their interest and participation, which greatly reduces becoming stuck in particular traumatic experiences.1 Approach: This Garden Path is a journey of the heart. It requires courage and commitment. You must return continually to your heart through practices of heartwork such as body wisdom, meditation, mystery painting and the dialogue of the medicine (listening) circle. Earthwork and Heartwork keep you grounded. Artwork the making of containers (symbols) for the spirit bridges the Earthwork and the Heartwork of the Garden. The Chinese called these containers or symbols hsiang, Dragon holes. The Greeks called them kairoi, holes in the web of time and space, eternal moments in which outer and inner worlds are reconciled. In the Garden we work consciously with signs, symbols and synchronicity. Signs make things work. The outer world is maintained by signs shopping lists, strategic plans, technical instructions, constitutions, job descriptions, contracts. Symbols connect us to the mystery of the world, its inner being, expressed in poems, paintings, imaginative stories, ritual theatre. Synchronicities often occur where symbols and signs inter-penetrate. In the act of symbolizing we connect inner and outer worlds the world of our daily life (with all its attendant problems) and the world of the spirit. In order for a children s garden of healing to succeed, its animators must connect with their own imaginations in a transformative way. They must become again as little children.

The first three months of training was undertaken on a plot of land owned by a family who run a small restaurant by the edge of the ocean on the outskirts of the Hambantota
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Rev. Dr. John van Eenwyk

town. In May the team moved to a garden site that has extensive grounds full of fruit trees and flowering shrubs. This area has become the garden and the name Kalabala Bindu (Crazy around Nothing) was originated by the team during one of the ten workshops that they undertook in 2006 and a logo, a mystery painting, has been chosen. The workshops with the trainee animators saw the development of fifty six activities to use with the children during the nine months programme and process that each group of children undertakes when they enter the garden. The garden site has been developed with play areas, a stage, extended services and utilities such as drinking water and toilets for the staff and children. A number of ships sails are being hoisted over the play areas to give protection from the weather giving the garden an aspect of sailing in the air. A store and kitchen area, is now the office and storeroom of the KBG team and contains its ICT, photographic and presentation equipment as well as musical instruments and office furniture and fittings. There are paints, fabrics, toys, masks and all the other material needs of the activities and games that are played with the children. There is a sewing machine for making costumes for the childrens dramas and operas. In November there was a low key formal opening of KBG and in early December the families and guardians of the first group of thirty children, all tsunami orphans, came to see the garden they approved, and the sound of the childrens laughter and chatter filled the garden for the first time in the second weekend of December 2006. By the end of 2007 some 250 children, all tsunami orphans, will have entered the garden to undertake a nine months process of play, narration, music, art and drama leading them to back to their childlike selves and away from the horrors of loss of parents, families and friends that has so stolen the childhood essence of these children of the tsunami.