Single Stories

Hi All, I’ve been searching for the first couple of days to figure out what to write about beyond just telling stories of new people, new lands, and a new life. I found it on Tuesday when we listened to this TED talk. I’d watched Chimamanda Adichie speak a couple months ago, but it contained even more power in country and in the context we watched it. I highly encourage you to either watch it now, or after reading this blog post.

Digging below the surface story is one of the main reasons I’m on this trip. I want to learn ways to create deeper, more authentic, and more powerful bonds with people. Humans are incredibly deep and rich creatures with complexity worthy of exploration. The word that comes to mind for me in exploring this concept is holistic. One must take care of the whole person for them to be well and functional, and this is an amalgam of many life experiences. Hearing the full story is incredibly important, but also hard to find when battling personal biases, media biases, political biases, and all external factors that try to inform what must needs be a unique and personal relationship.

This is also intimately tied to history. Without understanding how and why people are wired from historical experiences, it is hard to fully appreciate where someone is coming from. History is a definite weakness of mine coming to South Africa, and something I’ve worked to discuss frequently in my first week. Even this can lead to problems. For example the continent of Africa is more than HIV/AIDS, the people of South Africa are more than apartheid, and the USA is more than a consumerism and money. The issues are so deep and numerous that I’m thankful to have a full year to explore the culture and people of Soweto, because this will afford me the time and space to connect deeper and more intimately with my community. Things will not (and must not) be rushed, and my purpose as I currently see it is to liberate the stories and find the discussion necessary to enrich the lives of those around me.

I recognized that through my lens, the concept of a single story reared its head in the form of HIV/AIDS. Learning that I would be serving in an AIDS ministry had me wired to this discussion. I read a couple books detailing the devastation this disease caused to the continent, and it was all I thought about. I attended an AIDS advocacy conference in Washington DC it was so important to me. At the beginning of orientation, we spoke with a leader of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in South Africa (ELCSA) youth league, and Tessa (my country coordinator) asked him what he thought were the three biggest issues ELCSA was dealing with. AIDS was not one of them. I realized at that point that I had been telling myself a single story about how I would be functioning in my future community. Or that he could be telling his own version of a single story. Opening myself up the reality of many issues with differing priorities for each person is rather daunting, but realizing this truth was necessary. There are so many more stories and layers of issues worthy of exploration that I’m now even more excited for what I may find in the coming year.

Tessa’s husband Jon had a very good analysis of the value of the video link I provided above. The three reasons he recognized as to why this is relevant are

1. To acknowledge one’s own struggle with seeing the single story
2. To challenge the lens by which one sees the world
3. To recognize the power of story telling

Maybe this can open the way to discussion in emails you send me, or maybe it will just challenge you to reflection, but I encourage you to seek out how you tell or see single stories in your life. How does this affect the way in which you form relationships, or even who you form relationships with? What methods can you take to reach beyond the single story to find deeper connection with strangers, friends, or even family members?