Saturday, November 8, 2014

IST & More Bad Roads

We are officially done with training until we reach our 1 year mark. This past week we had In-Service Training with our counterparts (people we work with closely within our organization). It was a nice week; we were able to see the other volunteers and catch up, although it honesty feels like we just saw them yesterday. We swore in at a very busy time; every month we have had another event to attend. It seems like just when we are settling in, we are off again. But those days are over…… until Thanksgiving, oh and don’t forget Christmas and New Year’s...After that they will be over until we have our 1 year training in August. The whole idea of the training is to touch base on our observation period and make a work plan for the next year. 
Done.


More about bad roads…. Yes, we know we have talked about the roads. Getting to IST was a challenge of sorts. It is rainy season, so it rains basically every day. Rain + dirt/clay bad roads = really bad roads. On the morning we were suppose to head out, the road out of our district towards the capital was not passable; vehicles had actually been stuck in the road since the night before. What to do? Take the other road out, only issue you need a personal car…done. Issue… half way down the road you discover this route is also bad and you are slipping and sliding. Worse? This route does not have any towns; if you get stuck you are in big trouble. Thankfully, we made it. Yeah. Now to go back home, road is passable, we take public transport. Better yet, we only had to wait 3 hours for the matatu to fill up. Seriously, no jokes, that is pretty good. The trip wasn't that bad either. Ashley was splattered with bird guts, the price of sitting in the front seat when a bird misjudges the speeding matatu, but hey, at least it didn't hit her.Once in our district we saw a few trucks overturned, most likely had been there since the previous weekend. Further down the road a big produce truck was stuck and we were nice enough to get over once he was free so he could pass; now we are stuck, really stuck. Time to get out and rock that matatu. Upside, we only got stuck twice and thanks to all the men in the vehicle we were able to get unstuck, Matt the “obujungu” was even out in the mud pushing. Sorry no pics for this one, the camera was packed in the back.
Happy to be back home!

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