地震之后，孩子们的混乱
来源：美国《基督教科学箴言报》
和每年的儿童节一样，村里的父母们在6月1日前往绵竹（Mianzhu）附近的公园里。但今年，他们没有牵着淘气的孩子，而是带着5月12日地震中失去的孩子的照片。在几英里外的帐篷城市里，学龄前儿童的庆祝则愉快一些，他们在新的日托中心里玩滑梯。
由于数以千计的学童在学校里丧命的惨剧，地震中最年轻的受害者的困境受到了注意。
当关注点转向幸存者，眼前的景象是混乱的：官员们说，没有人知道有多少孩子生活在临时灾民营里，有多少孩子需要治疗以克服心灵创伤，或者地震造成了多少孤儿。
四川省教育厅一位曾姓（Mr. Zeng）的官员表示，有很多事情他们不知道，由于登记地震受害者的工作仍在进行，他们难以做统计。到目前为止，地震死亡人数达6.9万，另外有1.9人失踪。
国际救援组织的工作人员表示，缺乏组织性令问题更加混乱。联合国儿童基金会心理支持的驻中国负责人马思婷（Kirsten Di Martino）表示，“我们最大的关切是政府机构之间或政府与私人组织之间没有很多协调。”“人人都参与做事，此刻有点杂乱无章。”
然而，这种杂乱无章让很多儿童留在帐篷之外。
富新第二小学有129名儿童丧生，当地政府承诺调查学校是不是豆腐渣工程。然而，还没有人到村里帮助180名左右幸存的儿童以及如今生活在悲痛中的人们。
当中有一个叫黄雨雨（音译，Huang Yuyu）的男孩，他在被埋三小时后获救，他说他不想和任何心理学家谈话，因为“我再也不害怕了。”但他茫然的表情和孤僻的行为背叛了他的话，他的妈妈相信他需要咨询。“他变了。他以前是个很热心的孩子，现在他很冷漠。他根本不和我们沟通。我想我应该寻求帮助。我不希望他日后生活在阴影里。但我不知道去哪里。”
马思婷表示，大多数幸存儿童不需要任何特别的帮助。从过去的灾难经验中得知，“95%的儿童可以自然恢复，而且当他们和同龄人在一起，如果有人知道最基本的做法，他们很可能恢复得相当自然。”
如今身在成都培训志愿者的上海精神卫生中心儿童心理学家范娟（音译，Fan Juan）解释说，问题在于如今没有足够的知道怎样去做的人。“大多数志愿者不懂得心理学，事情乱糟糟。有人不断地问孩子们的经历，这是很可怕的。孩子们的心理状况普遍不佳。我们缺乏资源。”
同时，灾民登记的进程仍然没有秩序，当局无法给儿童（特别是那些失去父母的孩子们）提供适当的保护。
一位不愿意透露姓名的外国儿童问题专家表示，有些地方组织良好，但有些地方仍然混乱，年轻女孩子和小孩到处走，他们很容易成为不良分子的目标。最近几天已经一些出现关于贩卖人口的报道。
孩子们的生活条件差距相当悬殊：大多数人和家人呆在帐篷里，孤儿和寄宿生则被安置在大学里，有的住在体育馆里。有的参加志愿者在帐篷里展开的课程，大多数则没有。没有正规的学校重新开课。
在友成企业家扶贫基金会成立的友成日托中心里，孩子们是幸运的。该基金会副秘书长马万里（Ma Wanli）表示，他们的目标是给孩子们提供一个安全的场所。6月1日，在气球和旗帜装点的中心里，来自帐篷城市的孩子们欢笑着与志愿者们玩耍，他们的母亲则在旁观看。一位母亲表示，如果孩子可以忘记灾难，再次快乐起来，那就太好了。
然而，像友成中心这样的亮点不多。多数孩子们在狭促的帐篷里呆着，只有他们疲倦的父母照顾他们。在灾民营里从事志愿工作的中国科学院心理学家史占彪（Shi Zhanbiao）解释说，政府的关注点仍然是安置灾民，还没有时间和精力组织和协调孩子们的心理援助。
马万里表示，在未来数月的灾民安置工作中，缺乏协调的问题将继续困扰当局。他指出，在紧急情况下下需要横向协调，但政府根据上面的命令行事。到目前为止，地方政府做得不错，但在这些情况下旧的体系没有发挥作用，而新的体系还没设立起来。（作者 Peter Ford）
译文为摘译，英文原文地址：http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0602/p01s01-woap.html
英文原文：
After China's quake, disarray for kids
Authorities are still tallying how many children survived or were orphaned.
By Peter Ford | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
from the June 2, 2008 edition
Wufu, China - As they do every year on Children's Day, parents of this village went to the park in nearby Mianzhu on Sunday.
But this year the straggling group had no mischievous offspring in tow. Instead, each carried a framed photo of the child they had lost in the May 12 earthquake.
In a tent city a few miles away, preschoolers celebrated in more joyful fashion, playing on slides at a new day-care center.
The plight of the quake's youngest victims has drawn attention because of the tragic way thousands of schoolchildren died at their desks.
As the focus shifts to the survivors, the picture is one of disorganization and confusion: Nobody knows how many children are living in makeshift refugee camps, how many need treatment to help them overcome trauma, or how many orphans the earthquake left, officials say.
"There are a lot of things we don't know," says the spokesman for the Sichuan provincial education bureau, who identified himself only as Mr. Zeng. "It is difficult to do the statistics because we are still registering victims" of the earthquake, whose confirmed death toll is so far 69,000 people, with 19,000 missing.
Compounding the confusion, say international relief workers, is a lack of organization now that the initial rescue and relief work is over.
"Our biggest concern is that there is not a lot of coordination" between government agencies or between government and private groups, says Kirsten Di Martino, head of psychosocial support for the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) in China.
"Everyone is going in and doing things. It's a bit of a circus at the moment," she adds.
That circus, however, has left a great many children outside the tent.
In Wufu, where 129 children died at Fuxin No. 2 elementary school, the local government has promised an investigation into whether the school was shoddily built.
Nobody, however, has yet come to the village to offer help to the 180 or so children who survived and who are now living with their grief.
One of them, a boy named Huang Yuyu who was rescued after spending three hours buried in the rubble of his school, says he does not want to talk to any psychologist because "I am not scared anymore."
His vacant look and his deeply withdrawn manner, however, belie his words, and his mother believes he needs counseling.
"He has changed," says Wang Fang. "He used to be a boy with a very kind heart, but now he is indifferent. He doesn't communicate with us at all.
"I think I should seek help," she adds. "I don't want him to live in the shadow of this for the rest of his life. But I don't know where to go."
Most of the child survivors will not need any special help, says Ms. Di Martino. From past disasters "we know that 95 percent of kids are naturally resilient, and when they are in a group with their peers they will probably recover quite naturally if they have someone who knows basically what to do."
The problem, explains Fan Juan, a child psychologist with the Shanghai Mental Health Center who is now in the Sichuan capital, Chengdu, training volunteers in the basics of counseling, is that there are still not enough people who do know what to do.
"Most volunteers know nothing about psychology and things are chaotic. Some just keep asking children about their experiences, which is awful," she says. "The child psychology situation in general is not good. We lack resources."
Children 'are a very easy target'
Meanwhile, with the process of registering refugees still haphazard, the authorities are in no position to provide proper protection for children, especially those who have lost their parents.
"Some places are well organized but others are still in chaos, with young girls and small kids wandering around," frets one foreign expert in children's issues who asked not to be identified. "They are a very easy target for different kinds of abuse, including trafficking."
There have been several reports of such trafficking in recent days.
The living conditions of the children among the estimated 5 million people who have been made homeless vary widely: most are in tents with their families, orphans and boarding school students have been housed in universities, and some are camping in stadiums. Some are attending classes run by volunteers in tents, most are not. Nowhere have regular schools reopened.
Laughter and balloons in a tent city
Among the most fortunate tots on Sunday were those at the Youcheng day-care center, a fenced-in collection of prefabricated buildings and semipermanent tents erected outside Mianzhu on what was a wheat field just a week ago by the China Social Entrepreneur Foundation, based in Beijing.
"Our aim is to provide a safe place for kids," says Ma Wanli, the group's deputy secretary general who oversaw the center's construction. "Very few of their needs are being met, and they can't be met while they are living in those shelters. We have to get them out of their dreadful conditions and into a good environment."
Mr. Ma envisages a mother-and-child center and day-care facilities for about 500 preschool children. On Sunday it was decked with balloons and flags and loud with squeals of laughter as children from the surrounding tent city played with volunteers, their mothers looking on.
"If he could just forget what happened in the disaster and be happy again, that would be great," says Xiao Xinqing as she watches her son play. "I hope this can give him back his happy childhood."
The Youcheng center is a rare bright spot, however. Most children are languishing in hot, cramped tents with little to do and only their harassed parents to care for them. "With the government still focusing on resettling victims it has not had the time nor the energy to organize and coordinate psychological help for kids," explains Shi Zhanbiao, a psychologist from the China Academy of Sciences who is volunteering in refugee camps.
This lack of coordination could continue to plague the authorities as they struggle to resettle millions of earthquake victims in the coming months, warns Mr. Wanli. "In emergencies you need horizontal coordination, but the government works according to orders coming from above," he points out. "Local government has done a good job so far, but its old system doesn't work in these circumstances, and they haven't set up a new one yet."