Anapausis... saving family life

HIDDEN away in the back of St Augustine, Mohammed Street to be exact, is a place called Anapausis. What is Anapausis? It means refreshing and serenity. It is owned by husband and wife team of Subesh and Debbie Ramjattan and it deals with ensuring that family life is preserved. The Anapausis Community is a dream come true for the Ramjattans who opened the Centre a few months ago. The state-of-the-art building is now becoming well-known for its activities and according to Ramjattan, he is very proud of what he and his wife have achieved. While thousands of Trinidadians were enjoying the Corpus Christi and Labour Day holidays, either at the beaches, abroad, or at cricket in St Lucia, Anapausis was the venue for more than 150 couples - married and those engaged to be married. Couples came from Venezuela, Guyana and Barbados to hear internationally-acclaimed speakers David and Sande Sunde of Louisville, Colorado. There was also American Gabe Buchholz who attended the two-day conference to train persons to be facilitators in the Home Builders programme. The Sundes, parents of three girls, were instrumental in establishing Family Life International in 1976. The two-day conference was designed to give couples the practical tools to resolve conflict, understand each other, open channels of communication in the home, and bring couples closer to their loved ones.

Based on the response of the 150 couples present, the conference was very successful with many looking forward to the next one on Corpus Christi 2004. The Family Life Center at Anapausis is run by Trinidadian Steve Mohammed and his wife Cecile, a national of the Phillippines. Mohammed said he went to the Phillippines to teach where he met his wife. They were married in 1991 and relocated to Trinidad, where according to Cecile, she was well received. “My in-laws are just fabulous,” Cecile told the 300 participants at the conference. One of the issues at the conference was “Anger Resolution.” Anger is the number one cause of damaged marriages, abused children, and violence in the home, school and workplace. It is the common denominator among juvenile delinquents and the reason that so many youths are running away from home. Many people think they have no problem with anger because they only “blow up once in a while.” According to David Sunde, “how would you like to live next to a volcano that only erupted once in a while?” He added, “you would have continual tension, wondering if today was the day it would erupt.” This obviously brought laughter from the participants. Sunde listed the symptoms of anger — irritability, impatience, raised voice, glaring eyes, hurtful words, explosive actions, argumentation, and clenched teeth.