Trauma

 “We‘ve got a group of Tongan people who have come here who have also experienced 12 months ago the earthquake and tsunami in Tonga. They are already traumatised from that event a year ago," says the Pasifika Medical Association Chief Executive Debbie Sorensen.

“In Tonga following the volcano, every time a truck went past a house people were frightened because the house would shake, and they felt that another volcano or tsunami might happen.

“A lot of people were impacted, it may not be physically but mentally, that’s something we’re trying to address."

Speaking to FBC News, he said much of the trauma that remains is unseen.​

“We may be able to build houses now, but addressing mental health issues will take longer.”

Of the 80,000 people in Tonga affected by the disaster, 28,000 are children. 

Save the Children Tonga country lead Maa’imoa Mafile’o says many kids are still struggling.

Trained in trauma and grief counselling, the chaplains will spend time in the communities most affected by the cyclone before returning to the capital, Nuku’alofa.

The Roman Catholic charity arm, Caritas, has also joined the relief effort to deliver supplies – food, water, and temporary shelter – to those most affected.

But the chaplains at the forefront of rebuilding and strengthening the community through psycho-social support which will restore hope.

Maybe it was when a young girl was burned alive while her parents watched complicitly. Perhaps it was the orchestrated slaughter of a family, a pregnant woman's belly stabbed again and again like the film over a frozen TV dinner. Was it when a psychopath ate a sausage next to his freshly-castrated hostage? Or one of the uncountable, imaginative depictions of rape and psychological abuse?

Every "Game of Thrones" fan has had it, the moment when they looked away from the screen and wondered:

"Is suffering the only thing these people do?"

Speaking to Radio and Television Tonga News, he says this can happen when students were not given a break to return home after the bus crash in Gisborne, but were told to continue with their fund raising drive.

Melino Maka of Tonga’s Council in Auckland told Radio and Television Tonga News, the students should have been monitored and given appropriate treatment and counseling after the accident.

He says an expert ‘Alo Foliaki residing in NZ followed up with the student’s mental health but before the ten days completed they continued with their concert.