There’s a short and exciting honeymoon, and then the reality sets in.
People moving here from other parts of the world see a wonderful, but incomplete picture of life in Canada, says family counsellor Tabitha Phiri, who came from Zimbabwe 13 years ago to study behaviour sciences.
Co-ordinator of the Safe Homes program at the Central Alberta Immigrant Women’s Association, Phiri said on Sunday that isolation from friends and family, loneliness, financial stress, language and cultural barriers are all frustrating factors in a chain of abuse that affects husbands, wives and children.
Phiri has a knack for helping husbands and wives understand the forces working on their families and learning how to deal with them, said Halima Ali, executive director of CAIWA.
The husband may not understand that his wife needs help with household chores because she no longer has a grandmother or an aunt or a few nieces and nephews around to help her out, said Ali. The wife may not understand the frustrations her husband is experiencing at work in a strange country where the language and customs are unfamiliar, she says.
Along with those frustrations, women need help understanding that, in Canada, it is not OK to hit your wife and children, nor is OK to break their things and yell at them, said Phiri.
Originally called the Family Violence program, Safe Homes was created to help break the chain of violence in their homes.
The original name was scaring people away, she said.
They’d see the title and they didn’t want to be involved.
Under its new name, Safe Homes is reaching a much larger number of women, offering services to help them adapt to life in a new country.
CAIWA volunteer Patricia Arbelaez, originally from Colombia, said she advises immigrant women who are having a rough time in Canada to take control over their lives and take advantage of the help being offered to them.
Perhaps, where they come from, the man is king and the woman is garbage, said Arbelaez. But women do not need to cower in fear and isolation in Canada, where every person has value and opportunities exist for those who will seek them out, she said.
CAIWA and its Safe Homes program brought families from all over the world together at the Golden Circle on Sunday for the Family Fun Fest, celebrating Family Violence Awareness month.
Learn more about CAIWA at 403-341-3553.
bkossowan@www.reddeeradvocate.com