We forget that we are resilient.  We, humanity, are a resilient species.  We’ve adapted to a world full of climates and thrived in every one of them.  We’ve weathered ice ages and warm periods, we’ve turned our rival predators extinct and eaten their flesh.

We forget that everyone is powerful.  When we decide someone is a victim, we take away their power.  We look at the victims of Cyclone Pam and think how terrible, I should go save them.  But we need to remember that the people of Vanuatu have been through cyclones before.  They’ve survived thousands of years of earthquakes, tsunamis, and mudslides.  And life has gone on.

Let’s give credit where credit is due.  Ni-Vanuatu are resilient and clever and very good at living in Vanuatu.  They are capable of rebuilding.  They don’t need my lily soft hands and ignorant planting techniques.  They need bags of rice to cook in water purified with tablets, they need enriched wheat to make bread that carried a nutritional punch.  They need chainsaws and axes and nails.

Your soft western hands, like mine, aren’t suited to this work.  Your need, like mine, for plentiful  drinking water on hot days isn’t suited to this place.  I’m not trying to be mean and squash your inner butterflies, but simply, it isn’t about you.

This is about the thousands of people who don’t have a choice about where they sleep tonight.  They can’t leave their comfortable homes to have an exotic adventure while Doing Good and Saving the World.  They don’t get to jump on a plane back to “civilization” or go seek medical attention from top hospitals.  They have to choose between enough rice to eat and a term of school fees for their daughters.  They have to choose between building a temporary shelter or tending to an injured uncle.  They don’t get to step off this merry-go-round when it gets uncomfortable.  These are the people who are truly affected by this disaster.

My heart breaks every time I read my newsfeed.  I want to go there and help pull coconut trees off of roofs, dig new posts and put up walls.  I want to teach condom use in temporary shelters and translate purification tablet directions into Bislama.  I want to help.  I want people to see how much I want to help.

I want to be a hero.

But that isn’t my role.  Not today, not in this instance.  I, like the hordes of other Westerners with soft hands and no experience, have a role to play here at home.  We have a role to play in teaching our countrymen about this beautiful, wonderful paradise and all its cultural complexities.  We have a role to play in raising money for use on the ground there.  We have a role to play in supporting our friends and families there as well as here.  We have a role to play in organizing our communities here, where we can rally support and bridge the gap from here to there with relief funds and support.

This isn’t about you.  It isn’t about me.  My hands are hardened from manual labor but still rip open blisters when I use a machete.  My body has hardened with work outdoors in the frigid winter, but I still sweat when exposed to heat.  I am not the best person for the job of rebuilding.  The best people for that job are already there.  They plant yam each January, they wash clothes in rivers and skin coconuts in seconds.  They live there.

I can’t be a hero.

But Vanuatu doesn’t need foreign heroes.  They need the option to be heroes.