Ethnographic Field Research in Sierra Leone
Storytelling
In the summer of 2011, I spent a month living in Kagbere, Sierra Leone as part of the Honors Sierra Leone Study Abroad Program. My individual project focused on storytelling and how the telling of stories creates community and alters power. The stories gave me a portal into Kagbere, and my experience in Sierra Leone has in turn given me a lens though which to view the world and my place in it.
Though my initial project proposals were largely about change, the theme I observed in Kagbere was consistency. Most often, stories were about maintaining the fragile status quo, the good and the bad. Stories tell people to be satisfied with what they have, to not ask for more. Humbleness is rewarded, and covetousness is punished severely. Sometimes the stories were simply a recounting of daily life as a reminder of the steps to get rice into bellies, sometimes a warning about what happens when you get too greedy. The status quo is often frustrating, maddening, devastating to see, and there is the temptation to want to insist that stories should exist to try to change it. But such a view would be my story, and though I could perhaps be a small character in it, the story of Kagbere grows much deeper and taller than what I could glimpse, glean or try to understand from it. Though my official project was centered on storytelling, my time is Kagbere was full of learning of all kinds all of the time - from children and elders, from classmates and teachers, Photos at right, paper below. |