A year ago, Cansu Gol lost her baby in the rubble of Turkey’s big earthquake. Now she works to heal the emotional wounds of her two children who are still alive.
One has an attention deficit disorder caused by trauma, and the other has speech problems that started after the accident in the southeast of Turkey on February 6 of last year, in which 50,000 people died.
She is 33 years old and lives in the province of Kahramanmaras. The makeshift schools in a container city near the epicenter of the earthquake give her hope. Next, check out this related news story: Pacers vs. Knicks: NBA Betting Preview Game peek for February 1, 2024, at 7:30 PM EST
“After hours of shaking, my seven-year-old daughter was found still alive in the rubble.” “Right now she has attention deficit disorder,” Gol told AFP. “She didn’t cry or scream at all, instead storing all the stress inside,” she explained.
Her son, who is four and a half years old, started talking after going to a preschool set up in one of the containers that hundreds of thousands of people who survived Turkey’s deadliest disaster in modern times were living in. “He asks over and over about his dead brother.” “His mother said he flew off like a bird.”
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Each child has lost their home, family, or friends, so teachers try to make the kids feel like things are normal. All of them have different levels of knowledge about what happened. Like at any other school, there is a bust of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in the plaza. He was the founder of Turkey after it was taken over by the Ottoman Empire.
The 20-student classrooms are decorated with balloons, which add color to a camp made up of hundreds of similar white metal containers lined up in straight lines. A 10-minute walk away, empty areas remind you of the apartment buildings that used to stand in this Mediterranean city that was once known for its ice cream.
The school’s principal told AFP, “It’s just as painful for the students as it is for the teachers.” The principal spoke on the condition of anonymity because government workers aren’t allowed to talk to the media without permission.
“A lot of things make me think of the earthquake: aftershocks, February, or just the snow,” which he said was heavy that night of the deaths. 850 kids from all kinds of different families go to his school. Ten thousand survivors live in a container city with them. It’s a dangerous place to live where fights break out from time to time. “Cursing, offensive gestures, kicking — things won’t go well until these families are settled in apartments,” he stated.
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