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In the African tale, The Basket, two people see very differently. The stories, Show and Tell; Believing/Seeing; and Vision; reveal how belief can affect what we see and how we act.
Show and Tell Believing/Seeing Vision The Basket (San People/Africa)
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 In 1965 I had a grant from the Mental Health Association to help improve the self-image of inner-city children in low-income neighborhoods. To stimulate the children’s imagination and creativity, I used a combination of drama, storytelling, puppetry, painting, sculpting and props, always encouraging the children to feel good about what they made, what they did, and to tell their stories with confidence.
At the end of a meeting with first graders, I asked the children to bring in something they wanted to show to the group and to tell us a little about why they brought what they did. I assured them that whatever they chose to bring would be fine. They peppered me with questions: Is this all right?” “Can I bring that?” “How big?” “How small?” I told them there was no right or wrong choice—to bring whatever they felt like sharing with the class.  I was home after spending 19 days in a London hospital, saved from dying from an undiagnosed illness by seven different antibiotics and more blood transfusions than my body could tolerate. Sent home so doctors in the US could diagnose an underlying undiagnosed illness.
I was home, alone, after being taken care of by a neighbor for a week, exhausted from family phone calls--relatives wanting me to visit my mother who was ill, not believing I was ill.  In the spring of 1992, I was invited to teach English as a foreign language at a university in Hungary. After the first session I realized I was facing cultural, political, and pedagogical issues I’d never faced as a professor in the US. When the Russians were in charge, teachers dictated; students wrote what had been said, repeating words they didn’t understand. Papers were marked for accuracy. Essay topics ranged from electrical transmission lines to dog licenses, but nothing about people or feelings or dreams. Although the Russians had left two years earlier, authoritarian teaching was still the rule. According to my students, my way of teaching was not only strange, it transgressed what was permissible in a classroom.
 Once upon a time there lived a man with a large head of well-cared for cattle that he regularly grazed in fine pastures and milked twice a day. But one morning, when he went to milk them, he found they’d already been milked. He found this very curious. He tried to take even better care of them, but that night, and the next morning, when he tried to milk them, their udders were wrinkled and dry. That night, he sat up in his barn to see if he could discover the cause. About midnight, he saw a cord come down from the stars, and climbing down the cord were a group of people. When he ran toward them, they ran for the cord, but a young woman with a calabash and basket remained. She so filled him with light he asked her to marry him. She agreed but said, “There is only one thing I ask of you. Never look into this basket without my permission.” He promised. For a time, all was well. They lived happily together, sharing the work. She cultivated the fields. He looked after the cattle. One day, when he returned to have a drink of water, he saw the basket and looked into it. He saw nothing. In the evening, his wife came home and after one look at him, knew he’d opened her basket. “You looked in my basket, didn’t you? Even though you promised you would not do so.” “Yes, I have,” he admitted, “and I don’t understand why you made such a fuss. The basket is empty. There’s nothing in it.” “You saw nothing in the basket?” “No. Nothing.” With great sadness she said, “If you see nothing in my basket I cannot stay.” She turned away from him and vanished, back to the stars from whence she’d come. |
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Nancy King is a widely published author and a professor emerita at the University of Delaware, where she has taught theater, drama, playwriting, creative writing, and multidisciplinary studies with an emphasis on world literature. She has published seven previous works of nonfiction and five novels. Her new memoir, Breaking the Silence, explores the power of stories in healing from trauma and abuse. Her career has emphasized the use of her own experience in being silenced to encourage students to find their voices and to express their thoughts, feelings, and experiences with authenticity, as a way to add meaning to their lives.
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