Reflection on IST (In-Service Training)
06 Feb 2011 Leave a Comment
Blog written on February 1, 2011: Reflection on IST (In-Service Training)
Dearest Family and Friends,
My internet is still not working so when you receive / see this blog posting, I will be permanent online unless I encounter the same problem with my USB stick modem. So, I reloaded my monthly package when I was at training in Seeta (12 km from Kampala, so great service) where they have 3g network for my MTN modem. So the internet was really fast there (obviously cuz it’s 3g, which is incredible for Africa). So, when I came back to Kamuli, every time I hit connects and saying “Connecting to MTN mobile Internet” and a few seconds later it doesn’t pick up the network (I live VERY close to the cell tower that gives me service), and says “Connection Terminated. Redial? Cancel?.” So, sometime over the past few days I went to the MTN place in Kamuli, who couldn’t fix it, but referred me to the Jinja service center, where I went there once and the service center was closed, went back again…. I get there and the guy plugs the modem into my USB drive. And guess what? It worked no problem there because I was in a 3g zone. That’s the second time I’ve gone somewhere to fix the modem, but when I present the problem to a MTN official/employee, it connects to the internet no problem, instead of saying “Connection Terminated” I get back to Kamuli and now it resumed saying Connection Terminated”. So I still can’t get online. Has that ever happened to you where you think something’s broken at home and then you take it to get fixed, but before they do any fixing (or test) of the problem, it corrects itself, making you look embarrassed or crazy, idiotic? Perfect (sarcastically).
Enough about my internet problems, because by the time you read this I will probably have the internet problem fixed. So on January 13th, my whole group of volunteers went to a hotel in the Seeta area for our first IST (In-Service Training). It was great to see the other 44 of our group and that we were all still here! In almost every country, at least one person would have ET’d (Early Terminated, their choice), administratively separated, or medically separated (to sick to stay in country) by now. When the country director came and opened up the meeting to our group of 45, he said that the record in Peace Corps Uganda for a full group to stay in Uganda is one week after IST (which is about 25 weeks of being in country). And as I’m writing this we’re all here and have stuck it out, so if we’re all here tomorrow, we will have beat Peace Corps Uganda’s record since PC started in Uganda in 1962. [It's the 6th of Feb. and we're all still here! Woo! We win!]
This is truly a testament to how special and tightly nit of a group that we have. And our group of 45 is one of the largest groups sent to Uganda, so for not one person to leave, that is quite an accomplishment .We all have our few best friends in the group, but we are all friends with everyone and we didn’t really have too much internal problems / social issues. I truly love everyone in our group and this training was the first time to see the many people who live in the west side of the country. Since I’m in the east, I’ve seen them a decent amount, and always is good to see them again! But I know that if I was having a really bad day and that I needed to call someone, I could call anyone in the group and they would understand and / or be going through the exact same thing.
It’s both hard and easy for me to believe that I’ve been living in Africa for almost 7 months, but once I’ve gotten used to the surroundings, started meeting people, and settled in at my workplace, it just feels normal now. I do have certain epiphanies (I guess you can call them that) where something truly Ugandan happens around me and I think “WOW! I’m really living in Africa now.” I’m truly a Kamuli resident. There’s always times in a volunteer’s service, including my own, where we consider ET-ing (leaving early), especially after a really frustrating or lonely day. I make a conscious effort to call someone or keep myself occupied when having those thoughts.
The Peace Corps staff has also changed over the past few years, to become a much stronger, understanding staff and gotten better at training us. So, I think they played a good role in all of us staying. They’ve done a great job at matching us to organizations that need us, which if not done properly can make a volunteer want to leave in a few weeks after training!
So, the first few days were language training, mostly for people who had failed their Local Language test at the end of training. These days were mostly spent relaxing, and having teaching sessions with out Lusoga teacher Dan, who really just translated things that we wanted to know how to say in Lusoga. This was really helpful because now I know how to say “Go Away (Vawo)”, “You are rude (Olina empisambi)”, “How is the weather there? (Obwire buli butyeyo?)”, “What jobs/projects do you want to start? Mwenda kutandiika emirimo ki?,” and many more things, that only after living somewhere I could figure out what I needed to still learn. And this week I learned that okufuka means “to pee,” but okufuuka means “to become.” So when I use that one I have to be carful lol. We also discussed the problems with our organizations, housing, and people that we work with as volunteers; so that they can be talked about when the supervisors come to the training (I didn’t have many problems, just advice to give). Then, we had a spectacular Sunday day off, where we all went swimming in the pool and relaxed and shot the shit with each other which was awesome, because we were at a nice hotel with clean rooms, good food, a pool, and good people.
Then, on the 17th our supervisors arrive and we had a full day of training regarding our problems at site, issues, confusions between co-workers, and what our role as a volunteer in the organization should be. My organization is great and we really don’t have any problems, mostly because we are all laid back people, we get along well, we keep open communication about everything, and being self-funded helps, too. Many of the organizations are funded by outside partners, so they expect us “rich, foreign colored” volunteers to be handing them money freely, or having their purpose at the organization to be writing proposals for grants and loans, etc. The role of the volunteer is to build the organization’s capacity, so they can do their work more effectively in the future and introducing new ideas and practices, rather than doing their current practices for them or filling a missing position in the organization. My manager understands all of this completely, so I haven’t written one grant, I’ve been teaching them things, exchanging cultures, helped with their budget, and would never ask me for any money.
We than did some project design work (which in my opinion should have been a two hour session instead of a 2 day session) or have us at least have a project in mind to design before we arrived at training. And then we learned how to teach Life Skills to youth. Life Skills is “a comprehensive behavior change approach that concentrates on the development if the skills needed for life such as: communication, decision-making, thinking, managing emotions, assertiveness, self esteem building, and relationship skills.” It also, has a very big concentration on the HIV/AIDS. This was really fun, because it involves a lot of games and things (to keep kids involved), and Anna, my good friend, was leading the session.
Life skills is something I never planned on teaching as a business volunteer, but I feel that it is something that the people in my community need and it would be great to teach at the schools I’ve already been teaching business skills at. I’m also going to make a box at leave it at the schools for people to put in questions on slips of paper anonymously, so they can ask me things they would like to know about (HIV/AIDS / sex / condoms / business, etc.) So, next Tuesday I’m going to a Junior Achievement (the program that I teach at with schools for kids to build their own businesses) seminar in Kamuli with head officials from the program where I will be introduced as one of their partners in the community. Then, next week I will be re-starting my business sessions at schools, and this is where I will introduce life skills – starting with creating personal and business goals and the steps to achieve them.
I was going to talk about my white water rafting trip on the Nile last week (Preview: it was spectacular!) and the aftermath of returning home from feeling like a tourist for 3 weeks, but this has gotten to be too long of a post! So I’ll leave you at this cliff-hanger!!!!! Thanks for reading! Give me a few hours and I’ll write you a spectacular post about my rafting trip. Plus, it’s 12 in the afternoon, here on Sunday which means most of you are sleeping right now (it’s 4 am there) except for a select few probably, most likely my dearest friends who are complete night owls like myself.
Love you all,
Dan
