Over time societies have tried out these three different concepts. Some societies fuse well together; others have created separate areas for different nationalities, living together peacefully; we have also tried to mix (think of the Europeans, Asians, Africans and South Americans who now proudly call themselves American).

When I read 'The Danger of a Single Story' by Ngozi Adichie I realised that that most of us presume to know what ingredients make up someone's identity. Coming here I assumed people would be walking in traditional clothing mostly (wrong: the story goes a little differently; just normal casual wear). Another supposition of mine was that they would be living in rundown houses (ah... 1-1 for me ...  I didn't know the complete story though; living on an island makes it terribly difficult and expensive to buy paint since everything has to be imported. Combine that with the climate and we have a very reasonable explanation for the dilapidated housing ... 1-2). Even if the story I had imagined had turned out to be true it does not mean that the story cannot be changed and have another chapter added to it. Identities, lives, combinations of ingredients change, are fluid and dynamic. I have come to the realisation that my thoughts about 'others' in the broadest sense of the word should become similarly fluid.

The biggest impact though was the Memorial ACTe museum in which we could see how inhumane it is to single out one ingredient and call it inferior because of its looks. We assume it needs a little dressing. The dressing Christians chose in the 17th century was a torturous one: let's enslave people, put them to work and impose our own norms and values on them so they can benefit, i.e. taste, from our supposedly superior ingredients. 

After today I still do not know which is best: fusion, salad bowls or a melting pot. Whatever option we go with I hope I will not be as picky about people as I am about my food. I can remove an ingredient I don't like from an actual salad but when it comes to society and the people around us I shouldn't be picky or fussy. On the contrary, it would serve the world and me better if I embrace differences, observe these and don't judge. The exhibition in the Memorial ACTe museum ended with a collage of pictures taken this century. They depicted current examples of slavery. How come we still have slavery? Wasn't this abolished? I was left with a lot of food for thought. 

The other thing that really moved me today was our visit to the Memorial ACTe museum. Having read a lot of slavery during my studies I was not sure whether I was going to be surprised at all at first. Nonetheless, I was moved by the way the information was displayed and the music which added to your experience impeccably. I would definitely recommend this museum to others!

  By Kim Ann Zimmermann, Live Science Contributor

 Later we visited a museum that I removed inside. I recognize that historical memory is important because we inherit its culture, race, language and beliefs, but … would not it have been more reconciling to have made a museum dedicated to those people who have struggled to find and defend the similarities that unite all Humans?

Today’s session was about the meeting of other cultures and the danger of the single story, or grand narrative. 

We learned/discussed that it’s easy to see people from a certain culture in a certain way, especially if you just look at the most obvious characteristics of such a society or culture. Once you start looking at culture as the way in which people communicate with an relate to each other, it because harder to maintain a stereotypical image of such a culture. 

It’s also for this reason a good idea to visit and look at other cultures in the actual regions where those cultures originate from. You can’t learn as much about a culture by looking at how people from such a culture interact with each other, while they are becoming integrated into you own society and culture as you can from visiting their culture and looking at their interactions without the distortion from them being displaced and living in a new society.

While walking in the museum I kept thinking about the Palestinian poet that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie mentions in her story and his remark that the easiest way to dispossess a people is to tell their story and start with “secondly”. Every story changes depending on which point in time you choose as the starting point. I was thinking about this as I walked through the museum, and heard about the inner African slave trade that preceded the transatlantic slave trade, and the founding of the colonies, the transatlantic slave trade itself, the uprises in the colonies, the abolitionist movement, the position of the church and finally the stories of actually abolishing slavery. Any of these points could have been chosen as the starting point and it would and any of those starting point tells a different story. 

When I think about applying this to my teaching, I think it’s extremely relevant, simply because we as teachers are storytellers to. We weave a tale of what it means to be a physicist, or a biologist or we talk about languages and their use and history. When we tell those tales we pick a beginning, and we have to because you must start somewhere, but it’s good to realize that it is a choice, it’s not actually the only possible beginning. It’s also good to realize that the grander picture you paint with those tales, might actually change, had you chosen another starting point.

All this reminds me of the writing of Robert Jordan, who in the opening passage of one of his books wrote: “A wind rose in the Mountains. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings[]. But it was a beginning.” It’s something to take on board when teaching, you’re telling a story and it has a beginning, but this beginning is not the beginning.