Misty-eyed 15-year-old Ibrar Goma struggles to find the words to describe the loss of three of his friends in the floods that devastated his town of Derna in eastern Libya.
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“We will never forget that day in Derna,” she told AFP, trying to remember how her father saved the seven members of her family from the floods that inundated the house nine days ago.
After Storm Daniel, “there were bodies on the ground and cars on top,” she says from her bed in a hospital in Benghazi, the major eastern city 300 kilometers west of Derna.
There is a comic book on her white duvet that she sometimes tries to leaf through to distract herself from the tragedy in her country, which has been plagued by violence since 2011 and the overthrow of dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
“This is the first time in my life that I have seen something so big, even during the war it wasn’t that difficult,” she continues in a quiet voice.
“Very rare”
“I’m mentally tired. My city has completely disappeared, maybe it will be rebuilt, but the people will never come back,” she says under the gaze of her mother, who has been at her bedside for several days.
For Fadwa El-Fartass, chief physician at the Benghazi Medical Center, “the psychological trauma is greater than the physical trauma” after these floods, in which thousands died and went missing.
“Even people who are not from Derna are in shock because such events are very rare in Libya,” she assures AFP.
Authorities in the east of the country have launched an investigation to clarify the circumstances that led to the failure of two dams above the city of 100,000, causing massive flooding that swept neighborhoods of Derna towards the Mediterranean and left thousands dead missing.
On local television, officials and presenters emphasize the need to prioritize psychological care for Derna residents.
“It’s not just children who are traumatized,” said the Health Minister for Eastern Libya, Othman Abdeljalil, on Sunday evening during a press conference in Derna: “Adults also have to go to specialists.”
In the first few days, “some survivors could not or refused to speak, as if they were waking from a nightmare,” Ms. Fartass says.
“It’s all a story”
But that hasn’t discouraged the team of social scientists and psychologists – 26 women and two men – from Benghazi Medical Center, who take turns at their bedsides.
Now Fatma Baayo, who leads the team, told AFP: “We come in, introduce ourselves and they immediately talk to us: they need someone to listen to them.”
“They all tell their stories: some say they heard a huge explosion, others said they ran before they went under, and others said they saved their children,” she says.
Faced with these problems, “we have to stay strong: if I get weak in front of a patient, he collapses, so I have to hold on so that he can get out of the crisis he is going through,” adds his colleague Salma. Zawi, 40 years old.
“We use every means to help them: we cheer them up, we try to relieve the pain, we help them talk so they cry and relieve the pressure,” she explains again to AFP.
And when evening comes, she says that she recharges her batteries at home: “I go home and see my six children safe.” That makes me happy because I know that there are many other people in my country, especially There are children who suffer.”