Foreword 1 
Specialist Focus and Orange Pips - an 
introduction 
ANDREAS FUGLESANG* 
This issue of the Journal of Social Development in Africa contains a series of 
thoughtful articles on social work with refugee children, a commendable collection 
of insights to the reader's benefit. But maybe the reader would savour the food for 
thought even more if there was an advance alert of sorts to the complexity of social 
reality in the village or refugee settlement and the mindset of the little child in 
Africa 
What we should recognise first of all is that we as specialists - and I include 
myself in the category - often find what we are looking for. We are born as 
academics with a certain conceptual framework which we tend to force on reality. 
If a biologist looks into a storage bin for maize he will find pests. If a dentist is sent 
into the community he or she will find cavities. If a child psychiatrist goes into 
Mozambique, traumas are bound to be found. I do not dispute the legitimacy of 
that, but I do wish we were better at listening and asking questions, than at finding 
the answers. 
Children in Africa, like many places elsewhere in the world, are very much 
taughtto keep quiet in thepresenceof adults, leastof all are they prepared to divulge 
their thoughts and feelings to strangers coming to the village. The maxim is that 
when adults are involved in conversation, children should hardly be seen and not 
at all heard. That a foreign adult involves him or herself in conversation with a 
child, or for that matter, about children, is an extraordinary event It is in itself a 
very leading question that produces the answers we are looking for. In a still oral 
society the rumours are always ahead of us. People - and children - know what we 
are after. We are putting labels on our projects that people recognise immediately, 
because benefits are attached to them. Such labels are, for example, "trauma" and 
"orphan". We have experienced in our work that people simply "produce" orphans 
when they know that this is what we are looking for. To say so is not being cynical, 
but recognising that people make rational economic judgments. Taking a casehistory 
through an interpreter is sometimes a more delicate process than we may 
recognise. People in Africaare generally good practical linguists, but the languages 
are multifarious and the vocabulary sometimes restricted. The interpreter may 
tacitly and subconsciously resist the idea of taking the child seriously. Subtleties 
such as avoidance, tone of voice, hesitance or evasion, which are so important for 
* Regional Director Africa, Redd Barna, Norway
8 Andreas Fuglesang 
the history, are easily lost. Unwittingly, the interpreter will sometimes convey to 
us what is already said in the project description, rather than what the child 
expresses through words or behavioural clues. What is failing us in our pursuit of 
the labels is a sense of the whole child. As specialists we are mostly profoundly 
ignorant about the wealth ofthe thought-pattern around the child in a tribal society. 
What does the name of the child mean? What are all the ideas, concepts, traditions, 
behavioural norms or superstitions around the notion of a child? 
Goodall (1972) reports an incidence from an outpatient clinic in Uganda which 
has a general interest for us. A little girl was brought in with mysterious vomiting 
and abdominal pain. The doctors had problems diagnosing it Fortunately the child 
was seen also by a medical student who happened to be from her own tribe. He 
remembered the local belief that if an orange pip is swallowed, a tree may grow up 
out of the victim's abdomen. The child knew she had broken the taboo and admitted 
that this was her fear. When the student reassured her and explained that there was 
really nothing to fear, her symptoms quickly abated. 
What the whole child needs most of all, in addition to physical health and 
nutrition, is an intimate interactive relationship with an understanding adult 
caregiver. In times of poverty and social stress, parents or adults do not seem to 
talk much to children. Boxes on the ears are frequent, demonstration of affection 
or appreciation is rare. Praise is hardly ever uttered directly to a child - at the most 
only to a third person in the child's absence, so that it comes to it in a roundabout 
way, if at all. But there is more to it than that Emotional expressive caring alone, 
is not enough. 
It is important to recognise some insights from recent research in child 
psychology (eg see Hundeide, 1989). We need to work on the parental and caregiver 
role, the role not only of the parents but that of the teachers, grandparents, 
aunties and older siblings. While emotional expressive support from a caregiver is 
fundamental to the child's well-being, it is, in itself, not enough to bring about the 
child's development Particularly after exposure to traumatic events, a child is in 
need of support from a caregiver in the form of basic therapeutic actions through 
a counselling approach. But that is remedial, and does not meet the child's 
subsequent need to go beyond its suffering in a process of cognitive and emotional 
development 
To hold hands and release a catharsis is the easier part. To develop the child's 
cognitive abilities, its self-image and feeling of identity, its capacity to cope in an 
unfamiliar world of change and modernity is quite another, but not less expedient, 
issue. To participate and evolve as a member of a shared culture, a child needs 
caregivers who can mediate meaning and regulate its behaviour as necessary for 
becoming a socially accountable and successful person in that culture. The child
Foreword 9 
has a need to develop self-esteem and pride in its cultural heritage - but as 
importantly, in a time of rapid modernisation, to develop a flexibility of mind 
enabling it to cope with its future, undoubtedly to be full of adversity. When we 
focus on the immediate needs of the trauma, let us not be oblivious to the 
pedagogical demands of the longer-term perspective. 
The child is not exclusively vulnerable. It has also resources of its own. It has 
a power of healing and it controls in some ways the behaviour of adults. I shall 
venture the heresy that the child is neither a trauma victim nor an orphan. It is a 
whole person. 
References 
Goodall, Janet (1972) "Emotionally induced illness in children", The African 
Medical Journal, Kampala. 
Hundeide, Karsten (1989) Development and the Relevance of Early Education, 
Centre for Development Studies, Bergen, Redd Barna, Colombo, Sri Lanka. 
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