You Cannot Teach What You Have Never Experienced
Nairobi 27 August 2026: There is something slightly amusing about this photograph. Peter, our lead trainer at Salama Fikira’s ‘The Afrika Knowledge Academy’ was standing outside a hospital wearing a white doctor's coat, a stethoscope around his neck and a phone in his hand. The irony is that he is not a real doctor. But on this particular assignment, looking like one was part of the job. From hospitals to hostile environments the best security training often begins with something an instructor has experienced, not something they have read. The photograph was taken during a recent physical penetration test and vulnerability assessment of a major healthcare organisation in East Africa. The assignment covered hospitals, schools and foundation offices. The objective was to understand how easily someone could move through an environment they were not supposed to access; which security controls worked in practice rather than simply on paper; and where vulnerabilities existed between procedures, the physical environment and the people operating within it. Peter looked less like a security consultant and more like someone who belonged there and that was precisely the point. The scenario is a reminder of why good security trainers need to remain practitioners and be constantly exposing themselves to different situations. There is a simple question we like every instructor to ask themselves: ‘How do I give someone something I do not have? You cannot teach practical judgement if you have never had to exercise it. You cannot convincingly teach Hostile Environment Awareness if you have never looked at a real environment and asked: If something goes badly wrong here, what do I do? You cannot teach emergency response purely from a presentation. Nor can you teach decision-making under pressure if your understanding of pressure comes only from a classroom exercise. That does not mean every trainer must have experienced every situation they teach. It means the strongest training comes from people who continue to do, learn, reflect and bring those experiences back into the classroom. The day a security consultant became a “doctor” An organisation may have access-control procedures, guards, CCTV, visitor registers, identification requirements, restricted areas and written policies. All of those can look reassuring in a report. But what happens when somebody arrives who appears to belong? What does a busy reception area do with someone wearing the right clothing? Which doors are routinely held open? Where do people assume somebody else has already checked? Where does written procedure meet the reality of a busy working environment? These are human questions, because security systems do not operate themselves. People operate them. A vulnerability can exist in a wall, a door, a process, a communication system or technology. But most often it exists at the point where the system meets human behaviour and that is why a good security assessment requires more than a checklist. You have to ask not only, “What is supposed to happen?” but also, “What actually happens here?” Peter’s career, like those of many Salama Fikira trainers, did not begin in a classroom. Alongside operational security and risk work, he maintains an emergency medical background as a licensed EMT. Nearly five years ago, at CID School in South B, Nairobi, Peter took the 14th oath as an Emergency Medical Technician. Today he still volunteers as an ambulance medic, often on Sundays. He has helped keep people alive. He has also knelt beside someone as life slipped away. On another occasion, he helped bring new life into the world when a baby was born. Experiences like these shape a person. They change how you think about emergencies, preparation and, importantly, the people sitting in front of you when you teach. Peter’s message is simple: security is not about being a superhero. It is about being prepared enough to become part of the response when people need help. In austere environments, there is often a moment when the textbook ends. Information is incomplete. Time matters. People are frightened. Resources limited. Somebody still has to make a decision and that is where experience becomes valuable. Experience changes what you notice A person can read a great deal about risk management and still miss something obvious in the field. Experience changes that. You notice how people move, where they congregate, which procedures are followed and which are quietly bypassed. You see the difference between a security control being present and being effective. You learn how quickly routine situations become complicated. That is why an effective security trainer needs to maintain a relationship with the real operating environment. The field challenges assumptions. It provides new examples. It forces knowledge to be updated. And it prevents training from becoming a collection of slides slowly detached from reality. Of course real-world experience doesn’t mean an instructor walks into a classroom claiming to have seen everything. Students rightly resist that approach. The instructor’s role is not to say, “I have experienced this, so I know exactly what you should do.” Rather, it is to say, “I have experienced something like this. Let us examine what happened, what I learned and what you might do differently.” That turns training from a lecture into a conversation. It also creates space for the learner’s own experience. A humanitarian worker, security professional, project manager, medic and driver may all see the same problem differently and the best training environments allow all those experiences to meet. From the field back into the classroom This is particularly important in Hostile Environment Awareness Training. HEAT is sometimes misunderstood as a course about hostile environments. Its real purpose is broader and our courses aim to help people develop the awareness, confidence and decision-making ability to operate when any circumstances are uncertain, not just hostile. That is why our approach is deliberately practical and scenario-driven. During one recent exercise, learners received a mission folder containing a country profile, map, weather, threat summary, vehicle information, medical support, communications details and emergency contacts. They were given limited time before departure. Some immediately began discussing, some went straight to the task while all made assumptions. Others later discovered they had overlooked information that became important. That is exactly what makes experiential training valuable. The instructor doesn’t simply tell learners what they should have done. The learners discover it themselves and the debrief becomes a powerful learning moment: Who checked the weather? Who identified the nearest trauma hospital? What was the alternative route? Who was responsible for reporting? Abstract risk-management principles suddenly become personal and memorable. The point is not to frighten people. It is to make them think. The standards matter — but they should not become the story There is, of course, a place for standards. Risk professionals need frameworks. Organisations need governance. Standards such as ISO 31000, ISO 22320 and ISO 31030 provide valuable structure for risk, incident management and travel risk. But people do not experience ISO 31000. They experience a blocked road, an unfamiliar checkpoint, an aggressive individual, a medical emergency, a suspicious person at the gate or a colleague who suddenly needs help. The standard helps build the system. The person still has to make the decision. Training should therefore test judgement rather than simply memory. A pool of practitioners, not just instructors This is something we value about the Salama Fikira training team. Our instructors come from different professional backgrounds, including security, military service, emergency medicine, safety, project management, business continuity and operational planning. Their experience includes work in high-threat and remote environments across countries such as Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan. That diversity matters. A learner does not necessarily need an instructor who has spent twenty years doing exactly the same job. They need someone who understands the reality behind what they are teaching and who can explain the principle, demonstrate its relevance and, when appropriate, say: “This is what happened when I encountered something similar.” That sentence can sometimes be worth more than another twenty slides. So, how do you give what you do not have? You do not. You cannot manufacture experience. You cannot substitute a PowerPoint slide for standing in a real operating environment. But you can build a training team where experience is continuously shared. You can use instructors who continue to deploy, assess, respond, study and learn. Even into hospital environments looking like a doctor. And you can turn those experiences into questions that help other people think more clearly about their own decisions. Good security training should not try to turn everyone into a security professional. It should make people better prepared to recognise risk, understand their options, communicate, make decisions and act when circumstances change. Because when the moment comes, nobody gets to pause reality and open the training manual. At Salama Fikira, our approach is grounded in a simple belief: people learn best when knowledge connects with reality. If we ask people to prepare for uncertainty, the person teaching them should understand what uncertainty actually feels like. That is the answer to the question: How do you give someone what you do not have? You cannot. But if you keep learning from the field, keep bringing practitioners into the classroom and keep turning experience into practical knowledge, you can give people something almost as valuable: the opportunity to be better prepared before their own moment arrives. About SF Group Salama Fikira Group combines security consultancy, risk management and practical training to support organisations and their people operating in challenging environments. Its training approach brings together recognised frameworks, local understanding and the practical experience of instructors who have worked across different operational disciplines. The objective is not simply to teach security concepts. It is to build the awareness, judgement and practical confidence people need to make better decisions when circumstances change.
