Fellows Blog: Day 18
Good morning from your favorite fellows! Honestly, the night was too short for Amber and Haleigh, who are severely sleep deprived and couldn’t get out of bed in morning, but too long for Kyrillos, who was having an awful stomachache and couldn’t sleep. We made sure to have protein bars for breakfast and somehow managed to get to the training.
Our colleagues at VTCA had called 40 boda boda drivers. Although we are only supposed to train 25 in each training, we’ve noticed that when we call 30, only 16-18 tend to actually show up. However, by the time the training started, we had a whopping 48 (?!) people show up. We were pleasantly surprised, albeit scared many of them would leave before the end of the training and that crowd control would be harder to manage.
Less than 200 feet away from our tent set up, there was a very loud birthday party for the Uganda president’s son; although, expectedly, he didn’t show up. Apparently the people here have been celebrating his birthday since April???? Anyways, they decided to play the loudest music they could sporadically throughout the training and during the administration of our post test, which, believe or not, was not the most convenient thing in the world. Another issue was a bunch of people showing up as we were starting the presentation an hour late— this meant we had to administer the pre-test to them off to the side and explain what they missed. It’s also a hassle to check every sheet to ensure each question on the pre and post test has one answer, but we came up with a system of forming lines that seems to be working better.
It was definitely a very chaotic training, but with the help of 11 TOTs, we ended successfully with 47 newly certified boda boda drivers (and 87 total so far)!! While our TOTs are definitely getting more comfortable with the material, we want to be sure they know all the main points and smaller details before teaching by themselves.
Next up on today’s episode of worldwide adventures, Kyrillos, Pine, and Amber took on sugarcane and Uganda milk. Sugarcane—Standing at 6 feet tall, this perennial grass with stout jointed fibrous stalks are rich in sugar. Cut it up, chew, and enjoy the sweetness of sugarcane juice. When you’re done, spit it out. We enjoyed this snack on our walk home.
While Amber and Haleigh avoided making the hot chocolate that they had been so badly craving by entering data, figuring out how to automatically update columns in google sheets, and making a playlist of Ugandan music, Kyrillos drew the short stick. He seemed to enjoy the thought of milk in a bag though. With most of the milk spilling onto the stove, wall, and floor, we are questioning how far his chef abilities really extend, but we appreciated his efforts. See the video here.
In other news, Isaac the gecko has returned, and Amber unlocked a new fear in everyone by immediately pulling up this clip from The Parent Trap.
It’s okay though, we’re objectively learning how to coexist with the little guy’s presence (and absence). However, after entering all our post test data today, Amber may be hallucinating: “All I see when I look up at the gecko on the ceiling is excel spreadsheets.”
Amber and Haleigh have also begun playing a fun game called “whose water bottle is this.” It involves one of us picking up one of the many many half empty water bottles in our living room, asking if anyone wants to claim this water bottle/if it belongs to anyone and then drinking it anyways. Kyrillos always claims he has no bottles in the room but we’re quite suspicious of this.
Haleigh power napping on our supply bags before the training
Kyrillos power napping at our 4pm “lunch” after the training
Amber didn’t power nap today (shocking we know) but rather settled on making art with pens since her CPR music video launch never happened
Participants practicing splinting a leg this time!
We love seeing our trainees out and about with their vests and supplies!!
Hi everyone,
Kyrillos here. Thanks for tuning in. Please enjoy this picture of Devir teaching me about goat mammary glands.
On the way back, Devir bought us fresh sugarcane! Don’t worry parents, we watched them cut and peel it in front of us :)
Kyrillos looks so disappointed in his milk :(
“It’s actually decent, like dark chocolate milk, 4/5 stars” -Haleigh
“The nesquick chocolate syrup made it fairly edible, 4/5 stars” -Amber
“It could be goat milk (but I’m happy for the circumstances) 5/5 stars” -Kyrillos (Amber believes the fifth star also partially comes from effort justification)
The return of Isaac, captured by Amber (the picture of course, not the gecko).