Posts published in August, 2015
Storytelling as community building
By Gillie Collins,’15 (English, International Relations)
The summer after my freshman year, I found myself crushed into a taxi with five other people, heading to my first day of work in Congotown, Liberia. That morning, it rained in torrents, and the roadside markets were eerily empty: the plantains packed up, the vendors hiding under umbrellas. Approaching the Hope Community Center, I worried that no one would turn up for the workshop.
I was wrong. By 10 AM, fifteen girls with damp clothes had trickled into the classroom. As a group, we decided on a name for our collective, and I wrote it on the chalkboard: “Story Society.”
As a Haas Fellow, I spent the summer facilitating the “Story Society,” a writing and reading program for Liberian girls ages 14-19. Using novels to spark group discussions, individual presentations, and creative writing exercises, we kept daily journals and wrote poetry as a group.
At the close of the program, the girls performed their original stories for their friends and family. Again, the clouds burst, the sky emptied itself — but the Hope Community Center filled to capacity. The girls clapped loudly for each other.
A home for conversation
By Catherine Zaw, ’15 (Biology, Linguistics)
When I signed up to volunteer for a homeless women’s shelter in the winter of 2013, I anticipated physical work moving mattresses and sleepless nights worrying about the safety of the shelter. What I didn’t expect was the bonds I would form with some of the residents.
Annie had been a waitress in a traditional Italian restaurant before it was replaced by a fast food chain. “I can name all the types of pasta,” she told me. She drew pasta shapes on a scrap of napkin. “The conchiglie is my favorite. It’s like a conch shell. My grandmother used to make it all the time.”
Annie taught me everything she knew after a lifetime working with pasta. In turn, I told her about how the words macaroni, macaroon, and macaron have the same etymological heritage, but are completely different foods now. We traded knowledge and life experiences, and after a whole winter, I was sad to see our shelter time come to an end.
Annie wasn’t the only woman with a story at the shelter. Each visitor came in with her own experience, and the lesson I took was that there is a story in everyone, everything—and that all of these stories are important.
