IST: Together Again

My two weeks of in-service training have ended after what seemed like a marathon of 45-minute technical sessions, debriefs and recaps. The topics we covered ranged from action planning to tree planting, grant writing to mango grafting, and porridge making to pest management. Many of the sessions were led by older volunteers whose insight into what works – and more importantly what doesn’t – will be incredibly useful. After the first week, my fellow stagieres and I were uniformly pumped to head back to village and start being “real” volunteers with our own projects and actual work to do. Unfortunately, IST lasted another (less inspiring) week and I for one left the Thies training center a bit overwhelmed with all of the possible projects – and their associated pitfalls – we can now choose from. After this inundation of information, blogging took a backseat to cheeseburger cravings and post-session cocktails (my apologies).

One of the nice parts of IST was seeing my training stage and hearing all of their crazy stories from the first two months at site. There are 44 of us left (2 ET, 2 med-sep) and for the most part I think everyone is doing really well. Those of us in the south (Kolda and Kedougou) bragged of the lushness of our regions and abundance of green, leafy trees. Those in the north grumbled about their never ending sand dunes and thorny bushes (however they didn’t hesitate to remind us of their far superior cuisine). Aside from a few mysterious rashes (aka Zombie Rash), lost toe nails, slimmer waist lines and chipped teeth we were no worse for wear.

Although IST was long and my enthusiasm waned by the 12^th day of 7-hour session, there are a few things I really can’t wait to try out in Sare Sara. One, is to begin a child nutrition project that my counterpart and the head of the woman’s group requested. I’m hoping to incorporate baby weighings, growth monitoring, causeries (casual information sessions), nutritional porridge making and potentially a community garden into the project. I would love to do some first aid training, and see about getting a relais or two (volunteer health worker) trained in my village, since at the moment there is no one with any sort of health training. The week before heading to Thies, my counterpart and I began scoping out wells in our village and the surrounding ones in order to continue my ancienne’s well rehabilitation project, so that is also in the works. So much to do! See the next post for why none can really happen for the next 30 days...