Else's story.a dossier on Tvind, Humana, Campus California TG, Planet Aid and IICD

This is an extract from 82 full pages written in Danish: "13 r under Tvind"

Tvind from the beginning.

I joined the place Tvind in 1974 in the age of 50 and I left again in 1987. During this 13 years I have seen the place develop from the three schools: The travelling Folk Highschool, The Teaches Training College, and the boardingschool for children from 14-17, to a world wide undertaking with more than 30 schools in Denmark . I don`t know how many abroad. When I joined we were about 50 people working there, and we all shared the same conditions and functioned as a real democracy. (I believed). We were all the kind of people who felt responsible for others, and specially since most of us had been travelling in countries with very bad living conditions for the natives, we knew about the suffering, and we wanted to help making a better world. Exactly those feelings are exploited to the limit everywhere, where Tvind is operating. When they once has got a foot into some place they never let go and hand over the tools to the natives. They want the full and aboslute control, and if they ever get it in a country, it will be as bad as in the Sovjet Union, with a never resting control over everybody.

As a fact, at the time I joined, one had to promise, that it was for life, and that from now on the group decided, what I had to do unconditionally  - individualism was a very bad word. From now on you could own nothing, not money, not time, not yourself.

That was ok with me. I wanted to work for better schools  - that was the first goal. My life got meaning and I had very good comrades rround me. Some years later one could join on a 2 year contract. That would make it easier to sort some out again.

But I was there for good. Very soon I found out, that it was not easy. Because of my age and my not very best health, I had a limited working time. But most of the others was working very hard, for instance with the old buses, and they were always short of time.

But when we had the meetings, they had to participate, and some, with maybe 20 hours hard work behind them.   If someone fall asleep, he had to get on his feet and stand up for the rest of the meeting.  I have seen one of them, more than one time, standing there and then suddenly fall straight to the floor. And then there was shouting at him, demanding that he should take part in the discussion and give some opinion. And he could not.

I did not like it, but thought, it might be necessary, since everybody else seems to find it ok.

Since then I have experienced lots of that kind of meetings, where somone was assaulted with angry words and none to defend her. Also I have been through that several times

But the positive experiences was still the most.  To see the developing of the children, of which many of them were thrown out of their school for bad behaving, or wanted to leave because they were treated badly and had no self-confidence. To see them grow and bloom and become responsible and social behaving, was a gift. And that was the job done by the very good teachers around them.

And I have seen much of that, since I have been working on boarding schools as a secretary the most of the time.

The children was not the victims.

Every second weekend all students was going home and all the time we had a good connections with the parents.

But that did not mean, that we were free to do whatever we wanted, unless we were still so enthusiastic, that we just wanted to obey orders.

All these weekends was spent with building new schools, sports halls, swimming pools, whatever.

I hated those weekends, because I did not like to work in a line with hard physical work.

I am too short and could not follow. I liked it the best, when my job was to sew curtains or covers.

In the evenings there was entertaining, and we had good entertainers, not least Amdi himself.

Everybody was hanging around him, listening to him, admiring him.

It is just too much to mention everything, but there two things, which did hurt me very much.

The one thing was, that I was denied to go and see my sick mother. She suffered from Alzheimers, and when I finally saw here, she did not know who I was. At the time I wanted to see her she was more conscious and she suffered. I shall never forget all these teachers standing around me and shouting at me for my demand. We had common summer.

The other thing was, that I was forced to burn everything concerning my former life. All the photos and diaries and worst of all - all the letters I wrote to my mother, 100`s of them she had kept from during the world war two, where I was living in Copenhagen and up till now. Today I miss those letters, because there was interesting information in them.

That is part of the politics - you are not allowed to have any kind of private life.

And that is not good enough for a human being.

Oh, yea, I remember another bad thing. It was when in February 1983 I was told, that the ship "Activ" was lost and some of my friends drowned.   They were all teachers and they were on their way home for a meeting. When we were called to those meetings, it was unthinkable not to come, no matter what. If there was a snowstorm, you had to come, there was no excuse for staying away. So they died for it.

Some years I was working in Grindsted, where there was a common place for all accounts for the schools. I now was the secretary for not only one school, but for all the boarding schools, and I had so much to do, that I sometimes worked the whole night through, two times a week. Of course I made faults and some school leaders complained. We had a meeting with Amdi in my office and he told me about the complaints. My excuse was, that I had too much to do. He said no, that is not the reason. I had to be more careful. There was no shouting or anger, just this: I did not have too much to do.

I had a beautiful room, where I worked and slept, with a big screen window out to the nature. I looked out, and there was the snow. I looked out again and it was summer. There was no time for enjoying nature.

But anyway, something happened. A young man came to take over, and to prove, that it could all be done without mistakes. I got something else to do and had still enough. But he could not make it all in time, and then he was locked in, in a room in the basement, his meals was brought to him and he was ordered to stay and continue, until he was up to date.

Then a new idea came up.

The head of the place should distribute all work between us. She sat by one side of a table and one of us at the other side. Both had a microphone and between us was a tape recorder. Then she talked the task into the recorder, and I (for instance) was telling ok and my name in my microphone. Even we could see each other, it was not possible to speak directly.

I went with my task, finished the job and talked it into the tape. And then went to get another task. There was no more the big bunches of work waiting on my desk in the morning.

I had no longer any resposibility to catch up with the time. It was no longer my concern.

And that became awful. I felt more and more like a robot. And one day I could not stand it any more. I broke down and the end of that was, that I went back to Tvind, where I spend the next couple of years, the last year as a teacher for adults in a handcraft school . Something happened here, that made me finally want to get away for good. And so I did.

At last I broke down, and that was of course because I was not wholehearted enough. They would say. What started like real democracy developed to a totalitarianism where nobody doubted who made all decisions. There were directors, inspectors, controllers, control, control and control again, everywhere. I had enough.

I had a mini bycycle, and I took the most important clothes in my rucksack and went through the sanded path behind Tvind to the nearest grocery 2 km away. I ordered a taxi and went to the railway station.

And I gave myself the greatest gift ever: the rest of my life. The right to decide for myself, what to do.

And I owned nothing.

Today I have a very good life, living in a little old house and having everything necessary

My mother died long before I left Tvind, but I see my sons and my lovely grandchildren.

Every morning I look out into my beautiful garden and think:" Oh what a wonderful morning."

This is only very short about a long time experience, and if you have questions (once I was the tourist guide on Tvind) just ask:

Else Waale   ewaale@get2net.dk

PS. Of all the people who were in Tvind when I joined, there is only a handful left. Most of us are outside now, and most don`t want to talk about it anymore. We were all followed and sometimes they could talk people back again by promising something. Also I was offered much better conditions, if I would only come back. But that I felt awful. I was not able to say: Give me good conditions and I will forget the injustice against my friends the feeling of slavery, slavery for most and luxury for a few. We know the pattern. The slavery maybe would be at an end for me, but not for all the others. If I said yes to do that, I would feel like a prostitute. One who is for sale. I may be naive, but I am not for sale.