stories

When you hear about places we often just get a single story about the place.  Maybe it’s from a family member who traveled there, a friend who heard something about it or you read something online. These single stories come from another person’s perspective, we learn about it from their experiences and what they saw – so how should we take these single stories?

every person is a new door into a different world – Six Degrees of Separation

Before coming to the Philippines, I heard lots of single stories from many people about the people, food, places and culture here, but these stories were opinionated, with their preferences and what they enjoyed when traveling here.  While I enjoyed hearing their stories and anticipated what my life might be like, I had to take these single stories with a grain of salt because I didn’t want these stories to overcome my view on how my life would be like in the Philippines.  Many filipinos ask me about America, they tell me their single story about how they are connected or what they know about America, whether it be from a family member who is working and living there or something they read or saw an image of.  And I share my single stories about my hometown, Chicago and America. These exchanges are good, it allows us to learn and share about our cultures but it’s important to immerse yourself to truly understand people’s stories.

 

While single stories can be helpful, they only offer you a snapshot to another place.  You can learn a lot from stories, but in order to have a true understanding about something, its important to go and create your own stories to share.  The stories I write here on my blog are single stories, I’m writing them through my eyes and my experiences as a PCV in the Philippines.  So with single stories, I encourage you to make your own travel to the place you’ve heard about, maybe its somewhere new in your city, in another state or a plane ride away (or maybe to the Philippines to pay me a visit 🙂 ).

Kita Kits!

Nina

This post is part of Blogging Abroad’s 2017 New Years Blog Challenge, week two: The Danger of a Single Story. To learn more about single stories, please watch this TED Talk by Chimamanda Adiche.