Bob's story

Bob Nelson's story

As reported in the Times, London, May 2000

From Michael Durham   0171 263 6872         0171 263 9900     07775 531612

Add to Tvind  -  1 (of 3)

Bob Nelson, 23, a former pig farmer from Huntly,  near Aberdeen, enrolled with Tvind after spotting a newspaper advertisement headed Africa Needs You.  He spent nine months in Scandinavia and five months in Mozambique, but arrived back in Scotland last month convinced he had done nothing to help poor Africans, but instead helped fill Tvinds coffers.

He is angry and disillusioned.  What makes me most angry is the feeling I was deliberately sucked in for their own purpose.   These people dont really care for anyone but themselves.  I met lots of genuine and lovely people who were just being used and abused in the same way, he said.

After ringing the telephone number in the advert, Mr Nelson was invited to Denmark for an information weekend which he described as very exciting.   He was promised training followed by experience of an aid project in Africa.   Because he could not afford the 2,000 advance fee, he agreed to work as a volunteer for three months at a UFF clothes sorting centre in Norway in order to defray the costs.

Once there he found he was expected to work up to 16 hours a day, sometimes starting at 7.30am and continuing until 10 or 11 at night, in return for living expenses of 30 a week.  When he demurred his boss, Jesper Petersson, shouted and stormed at him.   He was a workaholic and wouldnt accept any criticism.  The place was in chaos and we were always given more work than we could cope with, but there was no reasoning with him.

In February last year he went to the Travelling Folk High School in Denmark, where he expected to learn practical skills.   But the course was chaotic and students were often left to their own devices.  There was a strange attitude.  There was no proper training.  The teachers had absolutely no respect for the students and the students held the staff in contempt.   I expected something professional, but it was quite the opposite.

After eight weeks he was sent out to raise money on the streets of Copenhagen, selling college newspapers to passers by.  Students were given a target of 100 a day and told that if they failed to achieve it, they would not be allowed to go to Africa.    But Mr Nelson became suspicious when people on the street became angry and told him he was raising money on false pretences.

Everybody in Denmark knows about this organisation and most people really despise it.  They would take me aside and tell me to go back and ask the teachers about Mogens Amdi Petersen, about Faelleseje and about where the money was going.   But when I did, the teachers got defensive, hostile and aggressive and wouldnt talk about it.

Mr Nelson hoped his experience in Mozambique would prove better.  But when he arrived in Maputo with one other solidarity worker, there was no-one to meet him at the bus stop and he had to find his own way to the ADPP compound.    His passport was taken away and he was forced to travel without proper documents for the next five months.

At Tvinds teacher training college in Nacala, where he was supposed to help train young Africans, he found the administration chaotic.  Danish project leaders were absent for much of the time. There was no leadership and we felt a bit lost.    It was six or seven weeks before there was a proper meeting and we were told what to do.

The school was very tense.  The Danish project leaders were very closed-minded and had a kind of tunnel vision.   Anna, one of them, was extremely disrespectful towards the Africans, bad-tempered, wouldnt listen and would not take no for an answer.   The Africans absolutely hated the Danes   -   they used to describe them as neo-colonialists.

Eventually, with his girl friend, Mr Nelson left the project a month early, retrieved his passport and made his way home through Zimbabwe and South Africa.    We were just totally disillusioned because there didnt seem to be any reason for us being there, although we worked extremely hard we struggled to achieve anything.   It could have been so much better organised.  We had worked long and hard to get to Africa and it all seemed completely pointless.

Now back in Scotland and unemployed, Mr Nelson continues to feel depressed and frustrated by his experience.  He believes the real aim of the programme was to raise money for Tvind and recruit vulnerable young people into the Teachers Group.   I feel used.   I believe these people use the prospect of going to Africa as a bait, and when you are hooked they get what they want from you, he said.

Its all about money and getting people to join.    They make you work extremely hard and undermine your independence.  They get you to do things over and over again without questioning anything.  There was definitely a cult-like feeling.   I am sure there is a hard core element of the Teachers group, mostly Scandinavians, that are definitely a weird cult.   After a while you stop thinking for yourself   -  and if you are weak, you end up becoming one of them.  These people should be stopped.