IST in Hawassa

I’m beginning to think I’m failing at this blogging thing, I’ve got so much to catch up on I’ll have to break it down into multiple posts! Well, here’s the first one:  IST in Hawassa!

First of all, let me just describe Hawassa to you, remember this is after coming from Tigray, land of sand and rocks.  Hawassa is this beautiful oasis town with a large lake at the center of its livelihood.  Filled with monkeys, hippos, and a wide variety of birds to satisfy any birdwatcher, Hawassa is beautiful.  In fact, the only thing most of us could find to complain about in Hawassa was the humidity and heat. Though not unbearable, I guess we all felt like we had to complain about something, especially since Peace Corps had placed us in a beautiful hotel with HOT WATER showers and a POOL (mind, the pool was filled with lake water, but hey, let’s not get too picky) right on the edge of the lake.  This is also, I might add, after Peace Corps had flown us down from Tigray region (I mean, it would have been a two day bus ride otherwise) and put us in a hotel in Addis Abeba for the night and them bussed us out the next day- I  was feeling pretty pampered. Besides being a beautiful lake side town, Hawassa has gotten a bit of an ex-pat vibe to it and you can find delicious Italian restaurants and high-priced resorts along its clean, cobblestone streets. 

Anyway, enough about the town and a little more on our in-service training (AKA, IST):  A 10 minute walk along the lake every morning led us to the hotel which was hosting our training sessions, a delicious Ethiopian/ferenji buffet lunch, and, of course, some tea/coffee breaks and snacks.  We had almost two full weeks of lecture sessions combined with hands-on field work, one week with our counterparts and one week without.  During our sessions we could see out the window monkeys swinging past or that rare hornbill that suddenly took our attention as far away from the lecture topic as possible.  I have to admit, it was increasingly hard to concentrate each time a little monkey poked his head in the room to scan for food (several times one jumped right in, claimed someone’s banana, and ran right back out- so cliché monkey, so cliché..).  Somehow, amid all the distractions, IST training was great and I felt like a gained a lot of valuable information.

About 4 or 5 days in, our counterparts joined us for a week in training in which we received some valuable project design management training, hands on training with things like drip-irrigation systems, land rehabilitation techniques, and tree nursery establishment practices.  This time around (as opposed to our first counterpart training during Pre-service training) was far less awkward and even fun to work together and really get some planning done.

Some of my favorite times during training were taking a boat ride out to see the hippos (and getting far closer to them than I would have thought acceptable), spending evenings at the little fish shacks on the beach eating less than a dollar, fresh, deep fried and served with hot pepper fish and watching the fishermen bring in their daily catch, or working together with the counterparts in hands-on projects and just enjoying the work, and, of course, spending time with people I hadn’t seen since our Pre-service training.  Each night was like a reunion and almost a little weird to be spending so much time around all those ‘ferenjis’. 

At the end of our conference, we had elections for different committee positions in Peace Corps; we have a Peer-Support Network committee, a Program Advisory Committee, a Volunteer Action Committee, and a Cross-Culture Committee.  The first one, the PSN, is pretty self-explanatory as far as their role, and they also give support for new Peace Corps Trainees (PCT’s) by way of projects and sessions during training.  The second one, PAC, works directly with the project framework for the incoming group and helps revise and determine what trainings should take place during Pre-Service Training (PST).  The third, VAC, is the committee to address volunteer in the field problems, comments and concerns, and then meet and work with the Peace Corps staff to problem solve and find solutions.  The final group, the cross-cultural committee (why they don’t get an acronym I don’t know) also help with PST and PCTS in cross cultural sessions and concerns. Whew, where I am going with this is that I was elected for the VAC committee and was very excited about it.

Long story short, I headed home to Tigray after IST, only to return to Addis a week later for VAC training and my first meeting.  It went well and I really enjoy being on the committee.  Now I am back in Tigray after a month and a half out and really starting to get some things started… but wait, more on that in the next blog J



Marabu Stork would hang out on the beach near all the fish huts just waiting for someone to throw out some scraps!




These Colobus monkeys were scavenging the yard in front of my hotel neirly every day...




Beautiful lake Hawassa




Hippo!  In lake hawassa




Just posing for a picture on our way in from seeing the hippos




Fishing on lake Hawassa