The Single Story

With a heavy heart, tears in my eyes, and a reluctant spirit, I embraced Rachael for the last time in the foreseeable future. Inside Terminal 4 of LAX, my head was going through a mix of emotions. I was excited that within the next hour I would be boarding an airplane that would take me to my first days as a Peace Corps Trainee. I was anxious about the time to come, the people I would meet. What would my cohort be like? What would my flight be like? What is my role, and who will I be as a PCT? It took all of my willpower to walk away from my girlfriend and enter the unknown void that is my journey in the Peace Corps.

We took a lot of Polaroids before I left

During my flight to Washington, D.C., I opened my pack to pull out my headphones, and there I saw a book-shaped item. I pulled it out confused, as I had not packed an item that looked remotely like it. I opened it up to find out that Rachael had written me a heartfelt letter. I am embarrassed to say that I broke down like a child in the airplane, and I had only been on for about an hour. Regardless, it made my decision to leave even harder.

Arriving in Washington, D.C. Within the first few hours of meeting my cohort, I came to understand that I was the youngest member in it. Now, not only was I scared about the family and friends I had left, but also I was afraid that every one of my peers had more experience than me. If everyone around me has two plus years on me, then what was I doing there? I felt immature and out of place.

However, these feelings quickly subsided. Although I was very much still scared about leaving the United States, the people in my cohort began to encourage me and provide a space where I could express myself freely. They saw more potential in me than I could possibly see in myself. There was a me that my cohort saw, that I am yet to find. Often times we are the quickest to judge ourselves and need others to encourage and affirm us into doing the things we need to do.

Friday (06-1) came and I was packed and ready to go to Kosovo. Perhaps ready physically, but nowhere near ready emotionally. I was leaving the country. So what? Growing up as a Missionary Kid, I had done that millions of times. Why should it matter now? I think it was the fact that I was going alone. Every time I left the U.S., I had my parents and siblings to bank on. Now I was on my own. I could not, and never would have been able to prepare enough for what Kosovo has been like so far.

I landed on Saturday (06-2), and upon leaving the airport the first thing I noticed was the green. Living in California, we lose a lot of the natural greens that other parts of the world have. The seemingly endless rolling hills of green grass were mesmerizing and beautiful. I teared up when I saw it because it had been a while since nature really took hold of me and moved me in that way. Immediately I began to calm down and try to fit into my spot in Kosovo. The biggest jump I had to take in the beginning was not being in Kosovo but going there.

The past few days have proven to be an incredible experience. Regardless of if I am stuck in meetings all day, the times where I get to explore the country and interact with people from here have been a real reassurance of what I am doing here. The city I am in has a lot of nice cafes and streets. The people are nice, and although we get the normal "who is this foreigner?" stare, they are always appreciative and helpful when I try to speak in their own language. The coffee is incredible. "A bën ekspress" is a phrase I am glad to have in my book, and I have said it a few times each day I have been here.

My view outside my hotel here in Kosovo

However, the greatest encouragement I have had since I have arrived was an exercise of identity we did in a meeting today. On a piece of paper, we had to write our names and all of the things that we define as ourselves. Whether it is our gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, religion, or any other category, we had to just put a quick snippet of the things that made us, us. The activity became very difficult because our facilitator asked us to take all of the things that we wrote on our paper and cross off things until we were only left with two descriptions. The difficulty only increased when we were asked to pass our paper to the person on our left. They were going to cross off one of our descriptions so that we were left with just one. Immediately I felt a bit of irritation building up in me. Who does my facilitator think they are, telling me that I cannot be all the things I wrote on my paper? Moreover, who does the person to my left think they are, telling me I am only this one thing? The difficulty was not in the fact that I did not like what was left, but rather that I was being narrowed down to only one description.

Immediately after this exercise, the facilitator saw that we were all a bit frustrated and explained to us that we were going to be watching a video of a TED Talk by author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie called The Danger of the Single Story. In this video, she explains that coming from Nigeria, people always have one thing that they think Nigeria is. Whether it is negative or positive stereotypes, she always felt that people narrowed her down to one thing. Was it the color of her skin? Was it a false idea of what it meant to be from Nigeria? There was always one thing. She said although we might identify a person by a trait that they have, they are so much more than just that one thing. They in and of themselves are the sum of all their traits. If someone looks at me and only looks at me as an American, they are missing out on everything else that forms a part of my make-up. The Single Story is, in fact, dangerous. It is dehumanizing to narrow someone down to one part. The problem is that we all do it. We both form part of a community that narrows people down to one stand-out feature, and experience being narrowed down as well.

What do I do with this information?

The people I talk to are more than just Kosovar, Albanian, male/female, big, short, round, etc. They are everything that they are. I have to do my best to try to not narrow them down, but to get to know who they are completely. We all have a story, but it is not mono-faceted. We are all the sum of our stories, and it is important that we try to hear all of them.