Peace Corps

Story Telling

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Part One: Essential Components of Storytelling

Anthony Bloome: Hi. I'm Anthony Bloome, and welcome back for our ICT Tech podcast series. We're delighted to have with us today one of Peace Corps's master storytellers, Deputy Director Jody Olsen. Jody, you were a volunteer?

Jody Olsen: Yes, I was a volunteer in Tunisia.

Anthony Bloome: In Tunisia. But also has played an incredibly important role in helping tell Peace Corps's story. But beyond that, we thought we'd take a few moments to get Jody's suggestions about what it means to be an effective storyteller, both in terms of currently serving volunteers but also returned Peace Corps Volunteers. So, Jody, let me just start by welcoming you. Thank you so much for being a part of this.

Jody Olsen: Well, thank you. I'm pleased to be here.

Anthony Bloome: And maybe just starting off with, what do you think are the essential components of effective storytelling, Jody?

Jody Olsen: Okay, like many returned volunteers, as many of you know, you come home, and you start your story, and the eyes glaze over, and someone serves you the mashed potatoes, and tells you about Aunt Nellie, and you hadn't even gotten to the point of chewing the chicken bones like you used to do in Togo, and you say, "Why is my story not going well?"

Well, I've learned the hard way, at least some of the ways that you try to make a story interesting. Two or three elements that I think about with good story telling is one: be very specific. That, a story works when it can come to life in the person's mind. And, an odd example is that I often tell the story about visiting a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ukraine, in a village—well, not a village, actually a town—that's near the Russian border. And, the story is about how Travis really integrated into the community. But, I begin the story by saying, "This town was the pencil capital of the former Soviet Union." Now, that has absolutely nothing to do with the story I'm going to tell, but mentioning it that it was "the pencil capital of the former Soviet Union" and every kid that took a test throughout the Soviet Union got a pencil from this town; it makes the town a real town. It's something that the listener can relate to even though it doesn't quite have anything to do with the story. So you look for a few of those specifics that have a lot of images that go with them so that people can fill in the spaces and be with you in the story.

Second, I think good stories have an element of surprise in them, and in order to encourage a surprise and communicate through a surprise, I tend to build a story from the back to the front. That, I think about, "What is the point I want to make?" And, in that point, I write the point out, and I think, "How do I build the story to make it to that point so that there's an 'a-ha!' moment at the point that you get to the last line of the story?" And you can make the story long or short, as long as you save that it's the equivalent of a punch line in a joke. But it's that moment that you've got that well-crafted sentence at the end that people go, "Wow, okay. I get that!"

And then, third, keep the story very short. I try very hard to keep it to four or five sentences, so that the potatoes haven't passed me too many times before I finally get to talk about those chicken bones that I used to eat in Togo. So, keep the story short; keep them very specific. But, specific and detailed does not mean a lot of detail or too much detail. You're finding those one or two points that really bring it all to life, and then make sure that you have a point to it.

Anthony Bloome: That's terrific, Jody, in terms of some suggestions about effective story telling. Now, in your years with Peace Corps as a volunteer and as staff and in other areas as well, can you talk about the importance of effective storytelling across the three goals of Peace Corps, because it seems storytelling is not just an abstract in terms of telling a good story; it's also an important part of the Peace Corps experience.

Jody Olsen: Well, I have a particular bias, Tony, as you probably know, namely that not only is storytelling an important part of Peace Corps, it's the only part of Peace Corps. That we love to say, often many of us, that there are 190,000 experiences in Peace Corps and that each one of us that has had a two-year—or whatever amount of time we spend overseas—whatever that experience is, that's ours. We own it. Nobody else owns it. It belongs to us. We have rights to it, and we have rights to tell it.

What the other part of why a story is so important to the Peace Corps experience is that we're not about quantifiable measures. We're not about numbers of chickens that we helped feed or the numbers of gardens that the volunteers in Togo planted. And when I ask a volunteer in Togo about the garden experience, he goes to that one student who got it and the student who came to his house and asked for the seeds and took them back and had them planted and had the headmaster go, "Wow, you actually planted those seeds." That's what he says; that's what his impact is; that's what the outcome is. And so, we are about sharing that impact, and because of the three goals, the impact is about a human-to-human interaction. And that human-to-human interaction is best communicated through a story.

And the, you know, whether, I tell many stories about trying to teach fourteen-year-old Tunisian boys English when it's their fourth language, and they're not sure why they're in that class. But it's not "this is what I was trying to do;" it's a story about how I tried to do it, unsuccessfully. And yet, when people say, "And what was the other part of your experience?" I talk about, you know, breaking the fast at Ramadan every day with the family that I ate with for two years. And, but in that, it's not "well, I broke the fast with them," because people can't relate to that very well. It's the gong that I hear, that I'm in the classroom; I run down the hill; the family's sitting around the table; they've got their forks ready to eat, and they were waiting for me to come through the door before breaking the fast to start to eat. And then you can talk about, with a certain amount of detail, what each dish looked like as it came out. That's what connects, in that case, goal two with people who were listening. And obviously you come home, and goal three is critical through stories because that's how you connect what the experience in another country is; the culture of another country is linked with experiences of Americans. And, you know, I can say that I taught forty fourteen-year-old boys in five different classes for a year, but that doesn't tell anybody what it was to be a Peace Corps Volunteer. It's finding the story so that the person who's listening can connect with the experience.

Part Two: Talking in Classrooms

Anthony Bloome: That sounds great, Jody. It also sounds, in terms of accommodating the audience, and particularly when you're talking about goal three, for example, with volunteers speaking to schools or RPCVs speaking to their schools, would you have any suggestions about how they might accommodate the listening interests of those audiences that they're addressing with stories of their experience?

Jody Olsen: Sure. I want to give an example of when I was in Texas—San Antonio, Texas. And I was visiting a third grade class, and I was talking about World Wise Schools, but I was sharing my stories. And, I am not from San Antonio, Texas; I knew nothing about the classroom, and I was going to be there talking with them for about forty minutes. And I'm not very good at talking with about-ten-year-old kids when there's a class of thirty-five of them, and I'm sort of standing there looking silly. I stood there for a moment thinking, "What am I going to say? How do I begin to approach thirty-some-odd students, ten-years old, in San Antonio, Texas?" And so, I thought, "I need to start where they are." Now I have to think, "Where are they?" And then I can go to where I want them to go.

So I threw out the question to these ten-year-olds, "What is your favorite food?" And as I tossed out the question, I knew that their answer would be, and I had all my five favorite American foods in my head including that Jell-O salad, and assuming that that's what they were going to say. Well, all the hands popped up; they were very excited to share their favorite food. Well, the favorite foods were probably thirty-five favorite foods for the thirty-five students. I had three different forms of Korean soup. I had two different Indian dishes. I had seven or eight dishes that were in Spanish that I couldn't pronounce, and the process went on from there. There were almost no two foods that were the same, and foods that many of the other students couldn't describe when they were noted. And I watched the students look at each other with this look of 'What? You eat that?' and their own curiosities at, once they all stopped being a group in the classroom and went home, they became very different people.

So we had fun with that, and I was practicing pronouncing the names, and I asked them to describe a little bit about what this looked like. And then I said, "Guess what? You all are now going to have to put away all those favorite foods that we've been talking about because you're now flying to Tunisia, and you are now going to eat a food that none of you have mentioned, that probably none of you have tasted before, that's going to be really strange to every one of you." And from that I started talking about couscous. Well, what I realized in hindsight was that I started the group discovering each other, and so that they could talk about what was comfortable for them, and compare 'Ew, he eats that?' and then take all of them in a group to a situation where they all felt strange together. And from that, I asked them questions about, "How did you feel when I described the couscous? Now, when your colleague named the Korean soup, do you think differently about the Korean soup now that you felt really strange and your Korean colleague felt strange eating the couscous?" So, that's one particular example that taught me that you do need to start where the students are and then wind your own experience into that.

I might note that when we did the Coverdell World Wise Schools phone call a couple of years ago, with a volunteer in Malawi and her mother's classroom in the U.S., again of ten-year-olds, and the volunteer was just eager to talk about the food that she was eating in Malawi. And the kids in the class, there were six consecutive questions about animals. And here was the volunteer, you know, answering the animal questions, but she really wanted to talk about food. But it was so clear that the class wanted to know about those animals, that she spent the whole hour talking about animals in Malawi and listening to the kids going, "Wow! Oh, oh that's great! Can you pet it?" So, I think part of it is discovering and thinking about where the classroom is because you can always find something from your own experience that matches an interest in that classroom.

Part Three: Using Different Medias in Storytelling

Anthony Bloome: That's terrific. We've talked about, previously, in terms of phone calls as part of the exchange between currently serving volunteers and schools. Can you think of any other examples in terms of returned volunteers and media or formats that they might use, or are using, to help tell their story? You have the traditional artifacts, and maybe you can elaborate on what they've been using to help tell their stories. But have you also seen examples of other forms of media that are being used for that same purpose?

Jody Olsen: I think that, well, first, just to stay with artifacts for a moment, that particularly when you're giving a talk or, you know, visiting with students, particularly the importance of students and classrooms. But I think sometimes even with adult audiences, that when you bring in an artifact of some kind, and you sit it beside you as you're starting to speak, the curiosity is so high, so you already have their attention because they're trying to figure out, one: what is it? And two: how are you going to use it, and what is it going to be? And so, being able to do that helps create the story opportunity, and an artifact can be so simple. It can be a bowl that you ate out of. Often I carry a head covering because that was so common in Tunisia, but the head covering can be a fairly simple scarf. It's what you weave around it in your story that makes that artifact come to life.

We also get opportunities, and again it comes to radio or to local television. I know and have seen volunteers who have taken their best photos and made a photo display and then have done visual storytelling using the photos as a basis for stories that they tell. And, I think that photos can really bring stories to life, and the photos don't need to be great. You know, sometimes we think, "Ah, they gotta be perfect, or I'll keep them in the attic." But you know, bring them out, mediocre as some of them might be, and go ahead and use them and use those as the basis for stories.

But, I also want to note what I think many of us are doing much more, which are all the interactive, Internet kinds of activities, and now we move to generations that are much younger than me. But, you know, particularly blogs and things like that. I'm just starting to discover that stuff, but as you go and, you know, think about, think about a blog for a moment, which is actually a written communication, that those that come across your blog can then use and think about in a lot of different ways, which is part of how I also think of storytelling.

Let's say you commit that you're doing a blog once a week to friends and family back home, and you're currently serving. And you're thinking, "What is it that I'm going to put in this blog? What is going to come to life that makes a good story?" And I think one component of that, as you're working your way through the week, and a lot of strange things happen, and you get angry and, you know, have been sitting and waiting for the local mayor, and it's three hours later, and he hasn't come, and it's 110 degrees, and you're thinking of all the things you're not doing, and he keeps promising he's going to be there, and what you want to do is yell and scream and run out the door and say, "I'm not gonna deal with this anymore!" Well, what you can do at that moment, before starting to scream, is to take a half a step back and say, "Okay, one: I'm in this situation, but two: let me be an observer to my own situation that I'm now in. What does that look like? What is it? Why am I getting angry? Why is the mayor not here? What's happening?" You have a beginning of a story for a blog, and in that, because you're sort of analyzing yourself, "Okay, here's part of me being an American; here's part of me still wearing my watch and running on a certain kind of time." And you then have a chance to think, "Okay, what is the culture of the mayor? Why is he late? Is this all sorts of dynamics of age and leadership or territory?" or, you know, whatever one wants to think about.

But, in doing that and thinking about that, two things happen. One: you have a story that actually is fairly neutral because you're describing what happened to you, and you describe what happened to the situation, and you're not saying, you know, "Darn that mayor!" You're talking about the environment that you found yourself in and what you learned from it as you were waiting for the mayor. And, second, as part of that, you discovered what you learned from in waiting for the mayor. You understand your own situation better. You will react the next time that happens, because it will happen again. You understand better what's happening in that situation. And I think that finding opportunities to tell stories, to create stories, to do blogs, to do whatever those written, or let's say regular written or regular spoken opportunities you have, particularly for friends and family back home, is a chance to see detail that you didn't see before, think of yourself in the environment in a way that you've never done that before. And you can, I think, appreciate and adjust and understand so much better as you put on those "story eyes" and become a participant observer, or even a silent observer, to yourself and the environment.

Part Four: Reflection on Impact of Experience

Anthony Bloome: Jody, that's terrific. So we started off with the importance of storytelling and some of the aspects that you suggested in terms of effective storytelling, and then broadened it in terms of across the three goals, and then the use of traditional and new media the volunteers are using, but then it ended up back at the storyteller him-or herself, the importance of encapsulating that experience, and it sounds like at whatever point in that service, it sounds like it's something that storytelling and thinking about storytelling is something that volunteers probably do all the time in the field. But, being able to share that with their families or communities back home, but it coming back to being a resource they can draw upon after their experience for years to come. So…

Jody Olsen: And let me pick up on that 'years to come' for a moment. I've been back forty years, and I must confess that for probably the first ten of those years back, I did not focus very much on my Peace Corps experience. I was raising a family, going to school, having jobs, all those things that take our time. And it was only about ten years later, for me. I'm slow. I began to think about and understand better what that Peace Corps experience, what that was happening to me, and, you know, in part because I was changing careers at that point, and my kids were to a certain point that, you know, I could start talking about what all that, what that Tunisian stuff was hanging all over the wall. And with that, I began to feel the stories, and it was telling those stories to my kids that began that process for me of discovering what happened to me as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Not what happened to me in terms of activities that went on, but how did I change? And why did I come back so differently than when I went in? But in finding an answer to that question, and how that had impacted me for the then ten-year sense, I did go back to individual stories. How did I handle the difficulty of learning the names of the students? Because I couldn't pronounce them very well; I was never good with other languages. Right, how did I manage that? How did I manage a certain failure of really working with those names? How did I manage certain successes that I had?

But I had to deal with circumstances that I had never thought about in the U.S. I mean, one particular example was talking to a woman who had just given birth to twins in a very rough-looking maternity hospital. And one twin was at the bottom of the bed, and she was nursing the other twin, and I said, "Why is the twin at the bottom of the bed?" And she said, "We only have resources and energy for one." And I looked at her, and trying to understand what was all of the language behind the language; what was all of the culture; what was all of the history; what was all of the poverty that was behind that sentence that she said to me at that moment. Well, it was ten years before I could work with that, go back and really work with that and understand what that particular impact, the impact of that moment, was on my life at a level that I had not really, sort of, brought forth and worked with. So, we have stories about the experience and, Tony, as you say, 'throughout our lives,' it is throughout our lives. And, I think for each of us to be respectful of that opportunity whenever those stories come and wherever that opportunity might be. And it might be grandchildren when the stories start being expressed. That's okay because we change over time; how we see our experience changes over time, and how others then understand our experience changes over time.

Anthony Bloome: Well, Jody, I want to thank you for joining us today for our Tech podcast series. We've certainly been able to use this new media to capture your story about effective storytelling and look forward to any comments or suggestions from many of our listeners out there, and please share your stories with us. So, thank you, Jody.

Jody Olsen: Well, thank you very much. I enjoyed it.

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About the Author:

Anthony Bloome, Peace Corps Information Communications and Technology Specialist, interviews Peace Corps Deputy Director Jody Olsen about the essential components of story telling, speaking in classrooms, using different medias in story telling, and reflection on the impact of the volunteer experience.

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