In the Aftermath of 14 Riverside - Some Gentle Advice

We’re all going to go through a rather difficult day and week. Here’s some gentle advice:

We are relieved about the number of people who were eventually rescued by this morning. However, please keep in mind that there are many who did not make it. Be sensitive, even as you celebrate those that survived the attack. Keep their families and friends in their prayers.

Please don’t overwhelm survivors, especially in the coming few days. Trauma of this kind is difficult to get over. Even trained soldiers, whose job it is to deal with death, all too often come down with post traumatic stress disorder. How much more, then, for someone who, just like you and me, was going about their business on a Tuesday afternoon - sitting in the office; having a coffee in a restaurant; visiting a friend - and are suddenly confronted with death and injury? Many saw things they will never forget. Many saw people (including friends and loved ones) cut down in front of them. Many were trapped for hours, not knowing when or if help would come. We are grateful that they were rescued, but let them process this and begin the process of healing.

So please, DON’T call them asking them to recount and relive their experience. Don’t overwhelm them with your voyeuristic need to have a blow-by-blow account of what happened. Give them space. Give them comfort. The day they are ready to tell you the story, they will. If that day never arrives, it’s their story, not yours.

We are angry. Rightfully so. It feels cathartic to take out our anger on someone - anyone. But let’s be focused in our anger. Some are processing this anger by attacking members of the foreign and domestic media (I would know - I was among the first to call out the New York Times for its insensitive publication of pictures of our dead). But once you get personal with a journalist who’s only doing their work, you are crossing a line. I was in the newsroom in 2013, and people got very personal with my colleagues over our Westgate coverage. It may have felt justified, and it may have felt good to unload on a person you only see on television, but some of those colleagues are yet to recover. There are channels to address your anger, and in this age of social media, online petitions and e-mail on the phone, you can be very effective with your anger without being personal.

On that same issue of how to channel our anger, we want to share photos of the dead terrorists as widely as we can. They got what they deserved. Pictures of them help us to process our anger, because it shows them in the final rictus of their deserved death. But keep in mind that in that WhatsApp group, or Twitter or Facebook timeline, is someone for whom that photo is a horrible reminder of their experience. They may not have been in 14 Riverside, but they may have been at Westgate, or Garissa University, or even in a robbery where things went horribly wrong and innocents were murdered. Your shared pictures have just brought back all these memories, and all the terror has come flooding back. Be judicious.

All the things we are seeing, our children are seeing too. There were children at Consolata School who saw bullets whizzing past them. But even children who were nowhere near the location have seen the news stories, or heard you discussing the issue, or been told by their friends in school and in the neighbourhood about yesterday’s events. Keep a close eye on them. They may be scared, even terrified, and never tell you. They may be afraid that they’ll never see you again, or that their school is not safe. Don’t dismiss their fears. There are tools circulating online about how to help children cope in the aftermath of such incidents.

Our security forces, by all accounts, did quite a great job yesterday. Are they perfect? By no means. Do they need to improve? Certainly. But, unless you actually have expertise in intelligence, security, hostage rescue and/ or urban combat, go easy on your analysis, especially when you want to shout from the social media rooftops about their deficiencies. I’m currently reading a book about the Israeli security forces, widely acknowledged as being among the best in the world. You would be surprised at how many times attackers have hit them, even when they have had intelligence beforehand. Also how many rescue efforts have gone wrong.

For now, do what you can. Donate blood. Seek out a friend and comfort them. Be vigilant. Be your fellow Kenyan’s keeper.