Story time, anyone?

It was a bright day at Sipi Falls, Uganda, and despite the fact that I had recently sprained my ankle, I was determined to enjoy the scenery by hiking out to a waterfall with a few friends. We had to walk through the local village to reach the trail, and as we walked, our skin color performed Pied Piper magic by attracting all local children to follow us in parade fashion, singing, "mzungu, mzungu!" The parade skimmed out until just a few children were left in tow as we reached the mountainous part of the hike that required us to climb quite a bit. A Ugandan friend led the way, and while he moved forward, or rather upward, at a rather quick pace, our exhaustion from climbing and my throbbing sprained ankle helped us persuade him that we should stop for a break. As we gathered together to rest, our Ugandan leader told us that this was the time for a story, and he asked us which of us had a story to tell. I looked around nervously at my group of five American friends, and it seemed that all of us echoed each other's uncertain faces. What kind of story was fitting for a situation such as this? I hadn't had story time since I was a child, and I only vaguely remember the stories. Not to mention the fact that we were all old enough to be considered adults, and a fantastical children's story hardly seemed fitting. As we attempted to explain to our Ugandan friend that none of us really had a story to tell, he didn't really seem to believe us. However, he proceeded to tell us a story of his own as if storytelling were the most common of daily activities. And perhaps in his culture it was, but I can't say the same for my own.

As I read Walter Benjamin's "The Storyteller," it seemed that he was describing this very moment when our Ugandan friend asked us to tell a story:

Less and less frequently do we encounter people with the ability to tell a tale properly. More and more often there is embarrassment all around when the wish to hear a story is expressed. It is as if something that seemed inalienable to us, the securest among our possessions, were taken from us: the ability to exchange experiences (1).

It's rather odd now that I think about it. When I was a little kid, I came up with all kinds of fantastical stories, and yet that inclination to tell stories sort of dwindled down as I grew up and learned to read and write stories on my own. The process of learning how to read and write almost trains us how to not tell stories to one another, because reading novels on our own and then discussing them is the much more appropriate-seeming thing to do. But that doesn't require actual story-telling skills. Looking through the lens of Marxist literary theory, it's interesting to note that our industrialized culture adopts the novel as its preferred literary form, whereas in less-developed Uganda, storytelling is an essential part of community.