I'm often one to believe that it's the little moments in life that come to define us. Those moments that at the time seem extra ordinary but looking back feel extraordinary. Having been in Madagascar now for a couple weeks there have already been so many of those moments. It's the first time my youngest sister felt comfortable enough with me to hold my hand. It's the times I walk around after class with people who I now call friends and we are able to share our trials and tribulations of being in a new culture. It's the times around the dinner table that the whole family is laughing and joking around as we play our millionth game of Uno. It's my mornings run where I have time to reflect on the beauty of my astounding surroundings. It's the time spent tickling and getting tickled by my sisters. It's the times I walk to class and get a warm greeting from everyone I pass. It's times like these that remind me of the universal language of love, joy and friendship.
Today at one of our sessions we watched the TedTalk "The Dangers of a Single Story" and one of the things it talked about was how a single story emphasizes the differences rather than our similarities. Since being in Madagascar I've been reminded that humans are humans and we tend to have so many more similarities than differences. It never fails to blow my mind how truly universal so many of our good human instincts are. Basically what the danger of a single story means is that when we generalize or make assumptions about groups of people or places we get a very incomplete picture and often make very inaccurate assumptions. Today we talked about how this relates to being in the Peace Corps and living in a new place. There are so many facets around the dangers of a single story but a couple in particular stood out to me. One of them was how as volunteers we choose to portray our time here in Madagascar. In my experience a lot of people back in the US don't really know much about Madagascar or the Peace Corps. My group here often jokes about how all of us have been asked a million times about the movie and while we know it's usually just a joke, being here now I feel a responsibility to share more about this amazing country as well as the Peace Corps and to do so in an authentic and real way.
Not every day do I have amazing moments where I am walking down the streets hand in hand with a toko of children. Some days are harder than others where I have no clue what the person is saying or what I'm supposed to say and I get so frustrated with myself or I point at our cat which is a "Saka" and accidentally end up saying "sakafo" which means food and I'm forced to just laugh at myself. And not every single thing about Madagascar is amazing either. But that's the problem with single stories; they don't encapsulate what a person or place is truly like. Through my two years here I will share my story but that's just it, a single story. This beautiful country is so diverse and the people living here are all unique and so my experience is still going to be an incomplete story. I'll be living in just a tiny sector of the country and my life will never accurately depict all that Madagascar is. I'll do my best to share as much about Madagascar and the Peace Corps as possible because these two are both things I have come to absolutely love but just know that what I share is just a tiny piece of a larger puzzle.
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