Indonesian Children Still in Recovery Mode One Year After Church Bombing
(World Watch Monitor) — Three-year-old Anita Sihotang is still too scared to leave her house. It has been just over a year since a terrorist threw a Molotov cocktail into the grounds of the church yard where she was playing in Indonesia’s East Kalimantan province. The explosion killed one of her friends, two-year-old Intan Banjarnahor, and seriously injured Anita and two others.
Anita’s mother Tetty says her daughter screams if she hears vehicle engines, thunder or fire. “It’s very depressing to see her cry and scream, ‘I’m scared’, over and over again, but not be able to explain what it is that scares her,” she says.
Trauma counselling is available but Tetty does not always manage to take her daughter to appointments because she is also looking after Anita’s elder brother and sister.
The parents five-year-old Alvaro Sinaga, who had 17 operations in the first four months after the explosion, are still worried his hair may never grow back fully, but said very fine hairs have begun to grow back on many parts of his head that were badly burnt. His mother, Novita, said: “This is a miracle, because the doctor said that the right part of his head wouldn’t be able to grow hair anymore.”
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