Connecting African Youths and Elders: Positive Change through Storytelling

Our kids do not think like Africans,’ she observes, ‘And I think this is because our elders are no longer telling them stories. How else would they know who they are, where they have come from and how to behave?

Bosede is a Yoruba community leader, language teacher and nurse, who currently works in aged care in Victoria’s La Trobe Valley. Every day, she sees the impact of social isolation on her clients’ mental health, communication skills and physical confidence. While the epidemic of loneliness is not unique to Australia, Bosede cannot help  comparing the life she sees around her to her own upbringing in West Africa.

‘I am one of ten children,’ she says, ‘And our family was well-knitted together. Even if we didn’t always live in close proximity.’

Bosede recalls how the grandparent figures in her life always found a way to tell stories, especially after evening meals. Each story had a moral, which helped ingrain the story’s embedded instruction for living a good life and the consequences of poor choices. ‘Fables, proverbs, metaphors,’ Bosede reflects, ‘This was how we were guided through life.’

Through her work as an office bearer in the Yoruba Heritage and Cultural Association of Victoria, Bosede noticed the widening gap between young people and elders in her own culture. She tracked the diminishing sense of village life, including loss of language and cultural understanding, particularly for the next generation.

Bosede’s project with the Community Fellows Program centres around workshops to bring together elders and young people within Victoria’s Yoruba community. The workshops will incorporate storytelling by elders in Yoruba (with English translations provided by a narrator), followed by younger participants performing dramatisations of what they have learnt.

Bosede is establishing and evaluating the workshops under the guidance of anthropologist Professor Adrian Hearn, Professor in Latin American studies, who has extensive experience working in Yoruba culture in West Africa, Cuba and Brazil.  Professor Hearn points out: ‘Through its workshops and recordings, the project aligns with emerging Victorian Government strategies to support ethnic diversity, such as networking and contributing to social capital, fostering relationships through collaboration, and helping communities to be law abiding.’

Bosede’s research findings will provide a valuable framework for community groups across all cultures -- particularly those based on oral traditions – seeking to mitigate social isolation of elders and loss of language, culture and moral direction in young adults.