Indelible

Driven by a long-standing desire, her education and her faith, mental health professional, Wendy Nordick, and her husband Bill Blair, a retired judge, plunged into a two-year assignment with Canadian University Services Overseas. She believed her 25 years of clinical social work were appropriate credentials to help a country with the highest rates of suicide in the world. Bill hoped to work for peace and justice. They felt they became laughingstocks when work visa delays left them homeless. Days before leaving, Wendy's father died. Once in Sri Lanka, she shivered in a rickety beer factory cum hospital where she taught mental health skills. A year later, she was transported into steamy, bombed out Jaffna, the epicenter of a civil war to teach a trauma team who worked with the war affected and tortured during the war. She was humbled by what she did not know and sought help from a previous refugee.