year-old Rumeysa Kalkan's world was shattered on a sunny Sunday afternoon at 1.41 PM . That day, on Oct. 23, a powerful earthquake killed nearly 600 people in eastern Turkey, devastating towns and villages and leaving tens of thousands homeless. Rumeysa now lives with her family in a tent pitched on a windswept soccer field with other survivors, where she sometimes has nightmares in which the earth moves again and her two-year-old brother is missing in the rubble. She has to queue up in the freezing cold for soup and pasta. Her school is closed. But in the last few days Rumeysa has begun to laugh and sing again, thanks to a group of voluntary psychologists who work with traumatised children in a tent camp on the outskirts of Ercis, the town hardest hit by the 7.2 magnitude earthquake. “They teach us songs, we play games all day and we are having lots of fun,” said Rumeysa, a skinny, chatty girl who wears a pink coat she got at the camp. “After the earthquake I was afraid of the dark. My little brother could sleep but my sister and I could not. I don't have nightmares now,” she said. Psychologists and paediatricians say the devastation caused by the earthquake, Turkey's most powerful in a decade, has placed enormous stress on children, harming their ability to communicate and socialise. Many have become withdrawn, afraid to leave crowded tents where they cling to their parents. Older ones are showing anti-social behaviour and aggressiveness, adding to parents' woes. “Children are the ones who suffer the most the effects of such tragedies,” said Alay Sekman, a 27-year-old social worker who volunteers for the Turkish Red Crescent at the largest tent camp in Ercis, with 300 tents and more than 1,500 residents. “We take them away from this difficult world they live in now to the life they had before, where they had friends and played games. It's an opportunity for them to heal.” Since the psychologist centre opened, the children's lives -- and that of the camp -- has changed, said parents. Some of the children went to the same school before the quake and have reunited at the play groups. Many have bonded with the 30-odd young psychologists, whom they hug and kiss when they show up for their morning games.
