" Pick out the scars and wounds on your body. You don't have to show us if they must stay covered. But tell us about them. Tell us how they happened and why". It was an exercise in awareness during a training session.
"I don't have any scars".
Me, "What s that above your eye?"
"Oh that... I was a child. I pulled a donkey's tail and it kicked me".
Another child and youth care worker said, "There's no scar you can see. I'm wounded inside. My shoulder doesn't move properly. He was a giant of a man. We argued, and he pushed me out of a moving car and drove off. He left me for dead. I lost some shoulder movement.
" I have a scar. I can show you. It's across my back from my left side. I was born not able to swallow any solid food until I had this operation. I was 12 years old."
Me, "Do your scars and wounds still live with you somehow? Has the hurt left you with triggers and reactions?"
" Food means much to me emotionally. I have to guard against making a sudden unreasonable reaction in situations where I think food is wasted by young people as well if young people get fussy about what they will eat and what not."
"I get very worried whenever I see young people touching an animal.. especially dogs. I tell them to leave the dog alone, it may bite you".
'I have a thing about big men and I have a thing about being in a car with the young people. I have to be sure that all the doors are locked and that safety belts are buckled up. I haven't learnt to trust big men."
What's encouraging was that the story tellers were able to connect the big dots and link their past narratives to their present life and child and youth care practice. What I missed was the connection of the smaller dots to messages of bigger life and world views. From experiencing locally to thinking universally...globally.
This is where wisdom story telling comes in.
Africa is known for its art of story telling, myths, legends and oral tradition used as a cultural practice to raise those all important "AHA " moments of universal truth and perceptual change.
"Do you remember?" she said "We sat on the ground under a tree. Granny sat on a chair. Sometimes there was a fire. She put four little sticks into her hair. Does any one remember, what was those sticks for? Then she told stories." It was a response from a child and youth care worker at a conference presentation on story telling in Child and Youth Care.
So from child rearing experiences, my observations have been that much of everyday conversation in African cultural space is narrative in style, lively, loaded with humour. We laugh easily. So it is with the style of story telling. Voice changes, singing, body language, hands, eyes, gesture and sometimes drums make African story telling live. Animals feature. Animal analogies abound and so character understood or misunderstood is transported into the understanding of humans and human behaviour.
I have had experience of the Tswana tribe known as Bakwena ba Magoba...'Crocodile on the move'. To be a tribe of the moving crocodile sounds like a people slithery, not to be trusted, dangerous..to be feared. The story of the origin of the tribal totem however throws a completely different view on the common view of the crocodile......a lesson for life. Crocodile is heroised because it saved a princess from danger, drowning and from death. Lesson learnt.
African stories are wisdom stories, learning for life, religion and culture, right, wrong and the treatment of people life events, local events and the world. They connect the smaller dots.
We speak a lot in South Africa if indigenous practice. In Africa story telling cannot be disregarded as a Child and Youth Care tool (If you like) for cognitive restructuring....when pulling a donkey's tail is not just a donkey or a tail....to bring about that all important AHA moment....oh OK, now I get it.
For us in child and youth care work, the magic in story telling is in the stories children and young people will listen to, will hear as told (or perhaps read) by us and the stories children and young people tell. In the listening and the telling lies the magic. We do use helpful story joggers and props to help young people tell their stories. The life-book, the life-line, the memory box, socio drama, puppetry, doll talk.
On going through her memory box "I remember the songs my mother always used to sing", she said ."I can sing them for you". Singing. "I wonder if my mother knows I remember the songs and what she taught me just in her singing when she was alive?"
"Would you like to take your memory box to her grave and you can sing to her?" And so it was. The otherwise untold story told. Healing, safe, supported, helpful, therapeutic, developmental. When children and young people tell their stories, the first ears to hear them are the ears of the story teller. Magical moments.
In Afrikaans it is said " Nou praat ek van 'n ander bladsy af ". "Now I am speaking from another page". But the thought is not strictly a change of subject. It's that we have a huge need for us in South Africa to tell our stories. What we do well in practice. What works for us a South Africans. Our success stories, especially in indigenous practice. There is indeed Child and Youth Care magic to be had in this.
It's this. Story telling in Africa, and so in our Child and Youth Care practice does make a difference. It is magic. It is African Magic
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