First Storying Session ever! (Journal Entry)

Well, we had our first storying session.

It was…different than what I expected in many ways.

Anne was there when we got there, so we sat and talked with her some (in Hindi). I tried in my broken Hindi to explain what we were going to do. We listened to the Kahani recording first. When it was finished she asked, “Is there more?” I said, “yes, but we’ll do this part today.” She understood and said okay- then she asked if she was supposed to retell the story. I said, “no, we’ll listen to it a few more times, and talk about it.” She was relieved as she said, “I can’t remember all of it!”

Sam came in right about that time, and apologized for being late. He sat down and I explained slowly, (in English) the same thing I had just to Anne. He didn’t really respond, so I asked in Hindi if he understood what I said- he said yes.

We started with Genesis 2, thinking that would be a simpler story to start with. But Sam stopped us about ½ way through and said, “what about the first seven days? Did you just skip them?” We explained that we didn’t skip them, we would do a story about them- we were just starting with Gen. 2 for today. He was still confused for a long time as to why we didn’t include that part. Anne was of course left out since she doesn’t know the story of creation. It required a lot of patience from us as he kept saying, “on day one, day two- you have to include that…”

We kept listening to the recording… Sam stopped it again and said, “The names of the four rivers isn’t important.” Great! A great crafting note- we know not to include the names of the rivers. We asked Anne what she thought the Kahani people would think about rivers and names of rivers- she also said it wasn’t important.

Sam left at one point and I asked Anne what other part she thought was important or not important. She said that having that God made Adam and that from Adam God made Eve was very important. I didn’t get to ask her “why” it was important.

We asked Anne if had a story like this. She said yes, but she didn’t know the whole thing. Sam said that there was the science story that said we came from a monkey. I think he doesn’t know the Hindu/cultural stories. He has grown up a Christian and therefore, is also unaware (as we are) of the Hindu cultural stories.

Then, the instructor for the sewing class came in. We moved to another room. We had 30 minutes left, and at that point realized that no recording was going to happen today. We discussed the story- which was all in Hindi. I went through and asked how the kumaoni people would like/not like certain parts of the story. I asked what parts of the story were important and which parts weren’t. All of the answers came from Sam. Anne just sat there. I directed several questions to her, but he answered. A few times, I said, “okay, this is just for Anne”- she would kind-of answer, and then Sam would also comment. It was really hard to get Sam to be quiet and to hear what Anne's thoughts were.

It was hard becuase sometimes I could ask a question, but didn't understand their answers at all. So what was the point in even asking the question? Man, I have to learn more language!!

At the end of the session, we asked when they could meet next- Anne offered Monday...All in all, it was a good first session….but we have a long way to go!