How not to help

Listen, I have some advice about how to help Africans, in this case Rwandans. First of all, you don’t need very much time. It’s just a question of planning a very clear program. You don’t need much input either, because you are extremely knowledgeable. Trust yourself, you know a lot and really have something to offer.

Begin helping Rwandans by booking a week off work and informing the recipients of your aid when you are coming. You are coming a long way and you want to travel with your training partner and so finding dates you can travel together is absolutely critical. You need that time to connect with each other.

You know that what you are offering, say a workshop on stress and anxiety, is incredibly needed by Rwandans, especially, say, to those working at a genocide memorial centre. You are sure that they won’t mind that you changed the dates for your own convenience. They are grateful; you know that, because you are paying your own airfare and expenses. It is an important gift them you are giving them; your expertise will help them understand and manage their anxiety.

Never mind that it might not a good time. A place like a genocide memorial centre is always busy so there would be always something happening. In this case, it’s only that several staff have just returned from a visit to concentration camp sites in Poland, courtesy of the Polish government, and the director has been away almost a month. They all need to slow down and learn to relax, so attending your training will be good for them.

I want to assure you that they understand that you can’t change your ticket, you’d lose money. And they won’t tell you that you are making problems by changing the time because they are polite, but also because it is true that working at a genocide memorial is stressful, especially if you are a survivor as many of them are, and they are hoping to learn something useful.

By the way, about them being survivors. There’s no need to mention that or to use words like genocide or trauma. It is not necessary for your clear and well thought out discourse on anxiety; it might be overly complicating for the limited time you have decided upon. They might not be able to understand, if you make things too complex.

Look, even if you knew that they were a little upset about your changing the dates, there’s no reason for you to take that on. Stay connected to the key thing here: you are doing good.

It’s not necessary to ask the psychologist at the centre what she has been doing in mini-workshops with staff to address the impact of their difficult work that involves things like archiving survivor testimony. In fact, make sure that you and your training partner don’t ask anybody anything, even during the training. You are the experts and you have prepared your material well, so there’s no need to deviate.

Rest in your confidence that your script is excellent. It’s not that long, although this is a wee problem because you find on arrival that your two day workshop has been scheduled for four hours a day but you are positive that you did not agree to this. It’s important not to wear yourself out.

You are offended when another foreigner suggests brightly that the full four hours a day would give you lots of time to connect with the staff, find out what they need. There’s never too much time for doing anxiety-reducing activities, she offers. You are right to be insulted at this because you are the stress and anxiety expert. In fact you aren’t happy that there are four foreigners at the training because you are not interested in them. Actually, they are not interested in you either, and by the end of the training consider both of you frauds and terrible trainers but you don’t know that. Even if you did, please don’t let it bother you because it’s not them you came to help, it is the poor Rwandan genocide survivors and the poor traumatized staff of the memorial centre.

So just deliver your script the way you know is best for everyone. There’s no need to ask anyone about what he or she might want from this training, or what he or she knows already about anxiety and how to manage it. A round of names is sufficient.

Please, do not deviate from your script. After all, these people need to learn the difference between anxiety and fear is. It does not matter what their histories are or whether or not they have watched their parents being hacked to death, or whether their anxiety – whatever that is like and if they have it – is rooted in trauma.

Just talk for the entire two and a half hours on the first day. You have so much to share, so talk fast. Don’t worry if people miss a bit, after all, it’s on the handout you’ve provided. Really, there’s no need to pause and have any dialogue with the students in your training; you are committed to the banking model of learning – you are making a deposit in their bank accounts – and you know that the best way to help is to deposit your knowledge in them, and that then they can, if they work hard, gain interest on the deposit.

Besides, Rwandans are used to authority, you have heard that, and they tend to be obedient. But of course you want to open the floor for questions after you are done with your two and a half hours of talking.

If a woman says it is difficult to implement some of your suggestions and hard to control her anxiety at work, just assure her that if she just keeps practicing she will get there. Practice is the key here, it’s not important that you say anything else, like explaining n how difficult it is to control anxiety that emerges from trauma. Any other questions? No, okay then, see you tomorrow.

On day two, continue with our script, but now you and your colleague can intersperse the talking with experiential activities. There’s a lot to do so best keep each to a maximum of 2 minutes…a body relaxation that starts at the toes and gets as far as the knees. Great, they’ve got the idea. No need to move up through the rest of the body. Time to practice breathing for one minute. Good, got that. Breathing is very helpful, you know. Repeat that frequently. Move on quickly to mindful eating. Pass around the bag of tootsie rolls you brought from America and ask everyone to chew them slowly and carefully. But you need to move on quickly so I’m sure no one minds that your mouth is gummed up with the tootsie roll and your voice sounds strange.

While you talk and chew, let your colleague mindfully walk through the group collecting all the tootsie roll wrappers.

You probably don’t notice that one fellow didn’t eat his tootsie roll. But when your colleague came for the wrapper he then unwrapped the tootsie and put it in his mouth and handed her the wrapper. He got caught out not doing the right thing. That’s not so good in Rwanda.

Next a tai chi lesson. Do you know that tai chi is very helpful for stress, you ask everyone. Make sure you don’t make time for an answer. That would be wasteful of your precious two hours. You demonstrate. They watch. You tell them if they want to know more, there are many tai chi lessons on the internet. Move onto massage, very helpful for stress. Demonstrate with several participants, walk around the room giving a fifteen second shoulder massage to several people. There’s no time for them to do this for each other.

Talking is helpful; include that in your script. Do remind them how fortunate they are to have a psychologist on their team. Tell them to talk to her. Don’t suggest they talk to each other because an expert is needed here. And at any rate there’s no time to talk now, because there’s more to cover.

You are so efficient that you are done in an hour and forty-five minutes. There are no questions so you know that you have made everything clear. Move on now to the group photograph.

Here is the proof that you have helped the poor genocide survivors who work at the memorial centre. You wanted to help and these smiling people are proof of your success. You feel so good and you can’t wait to show the pictures to folks back home. Too bad there’s a few white people in the photograph but, hey, most of the faces are black and that’s what’s important.

And you know what? Some people say they have learned important skills and that they feel more relaxed. That’s no surprise to you. However, at the staff meeting the next week, it will be reported that you and your colleague said you were both very satisfied with how the training went. You wouldn’t have noticed that nothing else was said.