Back from IST Hiatus

Sorry for the extended silence, I had a whirlwind last few weeks before, during, and following my IST—In-service training. So many updates to share!
For the weekend of Cinco de Mayo, I was in Labe for my monthly regional visit. Roxanne and I were shopping in the central market during a pretty epic downpour in preparation for our Mexican feast that night. We had just bought meat and we were headed down one of the many narrow alleys towards a stall that would grind up the meat for us. I came upon one of the many shop stalls and on its concrete step was a tiny wailing ball of fur—a puppy. The sound made my heart melt instantly and I asked the shop keeper what the situation was. She told me she had seen the pup flying by/drowning in a small river that had formed from the rain. The woman plucked it out and set it on the step, but insisted that she didn’t want any more responsibility and that we should take it. She gave us a piece of cardboard to carry it in and we slowly made our way out of the market with our crying package. And that was the fateful day that I became a new mom to an approximately 5 day-old pup. I named her Lumo, the Pular word for market, in honor of our first meeting. With the help of many of my friends who are now aunts and uncles, I’ve been raising her, complete with bottle feedings with baby bottles. I’ve decided that her birthday is May Day, so she is a month old now. She was blind and deaf for the first 10 days that I had her, and her vision is still developing (it takes several weeks after the eyes open) but her hearing is all there now. It’s been a LOT of sleepless nights, but she’s so darn cute that I’ve put up with all the exhaustion fairly well.
Right before I left site for IST, I went with my host mom to gather firewood in the bush. Early one morning, we walked for an hour up into the hills to the nearby forest. My mom is one badass lady, she was bushwacking her way through the thick of it, gathered a giant pile of downed wood, made two bundles (one giant one and one smaller one), and fastened them using vines. We then carried the bundles on our heads back down the hill and through the village—I had the smaller bundle of course and it was still extremely heavy and hard to carry, while my mom had the giant bundle and was balancing it with only one hand on it for support. Women here are incredible.
IST was a nice opportunity to see everyone in my stage from the two other regions, catch up and hang out in the evenings. The training schedule was much like our pre-service training, with sessions from 8am to 5:30pm. But this time, they went on from 7 days a week for 2 weeks. It was pretty draining to be sitting and attempting to be attentive for that long, but there were some useful sessions about project design and management, funding sources, etc. I took Lumo with me and everyone had a great time hanging out and taking care of her for a few hours at a time. She got passed around a lot, as everyone wanted a turn bottle feeding her or just holding her. She’s been inundated with love so far. Despite the seemingly endless sessions, IST flew by and before we knew it, the 2 weeks were up.
After a couple of days in the Faranah area of Haute Guinea, I am headed back to site! I’m looking forward to planting my rainy season garden—12 huge beds worth of sunflowers, soybeans, green beans, peas, tomatoes, onions, melons, basil and more—and getting started on launching some projects with my community.