that the point of the exercise was that now everybody would be able to learn something, especially because they could follow the whole process.
The trainees agreed with my argument that respecting as many as forty rules was a recipe for failure. Priorities would have to be set. Establishing these priorities was done with a great deal of attention and caution. The trainees were serious, with very little laughing going on. The men and women spoke softly. One trainee holding a high position in a church organisation wished to know, at this stage of the process, how they could be sure that God would come up in the first rule. I said that the highest rule in religious institutions is to serve God, Yahweh or Allah and then sketched the difference with socio- therapy groups where rules of behaviour are less definitive and strict, and can be reconsidered and adjusted as and when new insights develop.
In the seventh step, the trainees showed interest in one place, enthusiasm in another. Their task was to discuss together whether the remaining rules could be combined. The first suggestions came from trainees who for various reasons (higher-educated, work experience, social status, being a man, and sometimes a woman) spoke out easily. I invited the other ‘owners’ of rules that were to be taken together to react. Would their rule still have the same purport if merged with another, or would it lose its meaning?
Many women behaved in line with traditional social patterns: if they were not asked to say something, they would barely speak out. But if they did, they often suggested relevant ways of combining rules. In a few groups, women joined in the discussion with ease and armed with knowledge. Various male trainees cut in on answers begun by others, completing them with what they had in mind. Enthusiasm did not in itself bring clarity. The process of com- bining rules resulted in an average of twenty combined rules for every group. In step 8, I invited the trainees to once more ask each other and answer ques- tions. This time, to select ten rules from the remaining ones, and give good arguments for their choice.
As they carried out step nine, the trainees demonstrated how they were learning from their new experience. They no longer stalled but thought for themselves about the top ten rules to choose.
In step 10, three trainees were asked to do the last priority-ranking at home and to announce the outcome the next morning. In the first group I made this decision because I was running out of time, in subsequent groups I made
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it a time-saving homework assignment. It also happened that a trainee (with a social status commanding respect) seized the opportunity to express his doubts: he asked what might come of the task if it were done without the others checking on it. His lack of confidence was not shared by the group, whereupon I said I had faith in the three people selected for the task.
By way of rounding off, I asked the trainees to summarise their efforts in one word. What they said was: ‘We all contributed some input. Every answer was fine. We had to think carefully. We worked together. It brought out the best in us and we didn’t quarrel’. After some ten minutes I asked if the activity could be called democracy. I noticed in all groups how the trainees responded to this with surprise. This clearly showed that they had never before thought about ‘democracy’ in this way.
Review
In the review meeting trainees of all groups said that they had appreciated the equality with which everyone could have their say. They recounted how they had very seldom been asked to use their head like this. One of the coor- dinators found it almost incredible that he had just partaken in democracy without realising it. After they had slept on it, some trainees saw the exercise as a way to resolve land conflicts. They believed they could even draw up a constitution using this method.
Trainees in all groups unwittingly disclosed the prevailing rules of conduct in how they behaved. This made the two to three-hour process of drawing up rules just as informative and important for me as the guidance that the final set of rules provided.
Reflection
The exercise had brought out the best in the trainees, in their togetherness, and without quarrelling. After years of mistrust, suspicion and unease, this proved an unexpectedly pleasurable experience. One of the coordinators showed surprise at the prospects he saw dawning. He realised that many more shoulders would be able to bear and lighten the burden that the gen- ocide was. The exercise made the trainees and myself think about what had happened, also to return to the matter later on in the training. Questions that could be visited again were, for instance:
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• How do the trainees look back on their diffidence when starting to work on their own?
• What makes it so difficult for many trainees to cross out a rule that the person sitting next to them has made?
• Can the trainees mention some pros and cons of taking part in choice-mak- ing?
• Men – traditional and otherwise – and women – whether or not with a respect-commanding status – and youths talked and acted together dur- ing the exercise. For many, this was a new experience. Are the trainees able and willing to say what in their world goes for ‘normal’ with respect to the place of men, women and youths in social relations?
• How does the present situation differ from the new experience?
The definition of sociotherapy anticipates group dynamics while sociother- apists assess whether they will let an unusual situation pass or whether they will focus on it. Before the sociotherapist-to-be can apply this skill, he needs the learning by examples where he is presented with material about ‘unusual situations’ and how and when to discuss these.
In the question if the procedure would make God come up in the high- est-placed rule I detected some doubt about the freedom of choice that I was giving the group. I realised that both the author of the question and myself had prompted the trainees to think about the normalcy of hierarchical and church rules and about the space in which they made their rules together for their group. In theory, it was quite possible to postpone answering the ques- tion until the ten steps of the rule-making exercise had been completed. But I decided to use the opportunity to let the trainees feel that my open question about usual social rules for training groups included the possibility of God being in the highest-placed rule. The person asking the question and other trainees could also understand from my explanation that I saw the outcome of the exercise as the group’s responsibility. The appreciation expressed by the trainees afterwards implies that the procedure for establishing rules in- creased trainees’ participation in open communication and introduced them to the game of democracy in social relations. In the next few days I could question the trainees about their understanding of democracy.
It will further the development of group targets if rules are formulated jointly. The exercise also yielded numerous leads that would help kick off the edu- cational dialogue about safety, trust, learning about stress and developing a group target. Using the sociotherapy principles, I could weave questions
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about people’s behaviour towards each other into a similar dialogue. This procedure would show the trainees how a group process develops.
6.3 Drawing up a definition of safety
For my account of how a definition of safety was drawn up I will follow my earlier course of action, and elaborate on: the occasion, the introduction, the execution (in three parts) and the reflection.
Occasion
‘Yes, safety, that is what this is all about,’ trainees in Byumba sighed while I gave them a succinct explanation of the phases model of sociotherapy. At my follow-up question about everyday examples of unsafety the trainees point- ed to the impact of poverty: children for whom school fees sometimes were available, sometimes not, and/or leaky roofs. They pointed to the existence of hunger and to the tensions between people. Their sigh was, for me, the occasion to formulate an exercise that could turn everyday frustrations into a subject for discussion.
Introduction
I introduced six questions (1-6, cf. Box XIX), explaining that I was curious to hear how the trainees described safety. While the trainees were working away at their answers, I created these tasks (7-14) to process their answers. I introduced these tasks over the next two days.
Box XIX Supporting steps for learning to define safety
Part I: 45 minutes: Individually, trainees write an answer for the following 6