Greetings!
It's been a long month since my last post, but I've been busy finishing a report on my village (VSA) for In-Service Training (IST) in Bagamoyo. I've been at IST the last couple weeks and haven't really had time to post.
It's been great to see everyone from my class after an interesting first three months at site. The first week of training consisted primarily of presenting our VSAs (mine was 39 pages - absurd) and technical training. We chose our own schedule and attended classes that will help us more effectively raise awareness about HIV/AIDS and malaria prevention, mother and child health, environmentally-friendly farming and development as well as how to design sustainable programs that will survive after our service ends next year.
This second week, our counterparts - villagers each of us chose to bring to Bagamoyo for training - arrived. The counterparts received technical training and learned to teach to secondary school students while we got to practice working as facilitators. They'll be the first people we work with in our village, although we'll be working with additional counterparts as we become more active with projects.
The social aspect of IST has been interesting. Some highlights included going to a local professional soccer match, attending a faux wedding set up by Volunteers and visiting a coffee shop in Bagamoyo town that served iced coffee.
I'll probably do a post later on Mkululu, which will give you a better visual of the village where I live. For now, you can finally see my house!
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| My house. Not my chickens. |
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| My living room after a couple weeks. |
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| My living room just before leaving for In-Service Training (IST). |
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| One of my spare rooms after a couple weeks. |
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| That same spare room now. |
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| The utility side of my spare room. |
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| The jiko side of my spare room. |
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| My other spare room after a couple weeks of nothing. |
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| I turned that room into a small classroom. |
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| My back yard. |
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| My choo, now with toilet paper and a mirror! |
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| My bedroom a couple weeks in. |
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| One side of my bedroom just before IST. |
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| Sean Connery just before IST. My bedroom is in the background. |
Overall, I've got a pretty nice house. When I came here, I was expecting a couple small rooms (which is all some Volunteers got). If you look closely at my bedroom, you can see I've added a solar panel (50W), which allows me to charge my laptop about once a day, and that's been a tremendous stress-reliever.
That's all for this post. Hopefully I'll get another post up within the next few weeks.
Until next time, all the best!
