Telling Multiple Stories

Watching this video, in which Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie talks about the dangers of telling the "single story when any individual, community or country is invariably made up of multiple stories certainly gave me plenty of food for thought, and I am aware it is something to keep in mind as I write this blog.

We have not been here very long, and both from my own observations and from the conversations we have already had, some of the complexities of history, of culture, of economics, of environment, of daily life ... are already becoming visible. It is already pretty obvious that there are not just two sides to every coin, but that each situation, each reality is multi-faceted: made up both of obvious contrasts and innumerable more subtle differences.

And if I fail, as I undoubtedly will, to express the complexity of the Philippines, of Cebu, of the Salesians, of the people I work with, of my experience, please bear in mind that I am trying to tell this complex story as honestly as I can, but as an outsider, who knows only a very little bit, of only a very few of the stories there are to tell, and remember that whatever I have been able to express, the reality is undoubtedly far more complicated and there are far more stories left untold.