IST

Now that I'm in Thies, I have more access to the Internet than before!

It was so good seeing all the other volunteers that I came to Senegal with and it's great having them around to talk about project idea's. Also, I get to eat a bunch of good food like vegetables, fruit, ICE CREAM, pizza, etc.

The actual training has been good, too. For instance, I learned how to make a vegetable garden. It seems like it would be the simple action of putting seeds in the ground, but in the Futaa, the soil is so depleted of any organic matter that you have to enrich it with manure. I now hope to start a small garden by myself and once I can show my village what I produced, hopefully, they will also want to begin gardening. I also learned how to make a tree nursery, which was pretty cool. There are a lack of trees up North, mainly because of the heat, but I am feeling ambitious so I will try to plant some Moringa trees.

We also had a session on Life Skills and Behavior Change, because after all, that is one of our goals as Peace Corps Volunteers, behavior change. A lot of times my community fails to see the benefits of handwashing or they make excuses for their lack of development. Another challenge to behavior change is developing dependency. A lot of times, people in communities will lack motivation to change because they know that development agencies, NGOs, or other people will build them a new school, or a water tower, or a hospital. Sometimes our percieved generosity or good-willingness can backfire and create a dangerous dependency.

The second part of the session was dedicated to successful techniques for change. Some of them were trust and relationship building (which I have been attempting for the last three months), repetition, knowledge-sharing, and a general realization of where they are coming from. Often, the people in rural communities, such as mine, don't come from a tradition of abstract thought. So, they may see their crops diminish during a year of poor rainfall, but they don't know about global warming or desertification on a larger scale.

So far, IST has been beneficial for my service, which I am excited about.