6/10- 13th PST Training
I’ve mentioned it, maybe not “officially”, but while LR8 is in training I applied to be a resource volunteer. That means whenever Becky needs me to come in for training, I go in and help. There are a bunch of volunteers who applied to help, so it’s not my one or something, rather part of a resource volunteer network. Well, Becky messaged me and asked if I would come in Sunday-Wednesday to help with the gender sessions. Sunday the trainees were leaving site exposure back to Kataka for their adoption ceremony (getting their homestay families). After putting my trainees in a taxi, I ran back to my house to pack and clean before heading out myself. Not small confusion my community had on why I wouldn’t go to Kataka with the PCT. I was asked a million times why I didn’t go with everyone else. To me the reason made perfect sense, I had to clean and get everything in order before leaving for a few days, so I didn’t come back to a mess. To Liberians it was the stupidest thing I could have ever done ha-ha. I picked up Claire dress, and got a taxi to Kataka. I arrived just as the adoption ceremony ended and got to see Auntie Maya and meet my new homestay sister. It was so funny because the weeks leading up to LR8 arrival Princess swore she only wanted a boy trainee because she could never love another sister as much as she loved me. Clearly, she was being dramatic, and it was hilarious to me because she would joke and say she wouldn’t do anything for another girl again (again clearly a lie). When I saw that they got a girl PCT I loved it. I knew Princess would love it, and really, I recommended they have a girl in the first place because my relationship with Princess was the one thing I loved most about homestay. All the LR8 went home that night with their new families to get to live the same painful awkwardness I know and remember as if it was yesterday. I actively remember Princess saying my name a thousand times and feeling so painfully awkward, I LOVED that they were about to go through the same pain (not really pain as I actually love it). After everyone left we (Lauren (gender coordinator), Nathan, Carson, Kerry and I) sat down and planned out the gender sessions for the next day.
The next day the trainees arrived by 8am and the first thing we did was the debrief of their first night at homestay. There was a lot of net related burns, which I don’t remember having a lot of when we went through training, so that sucked, but the most part everyone’s questions/ concerns were very normal, and it sounded like most people had a good night. After that we jumped into gender sessions. What happened was one or two of us would present a topic and if anyone else had any questions/ comments to add you would just add up, as Liberians would say, as you saw fit. Lunch gave us time to really interact with the trainees. Gave them a chance to ask us questions or talk about any concerns they might have. Then it was back to sessions. In our free time (when we went needed for sessions) we went to the back office to help with packet making, laminating, stapling and what not. When 5:00 pm rolled by all the trainees families came and picked them up. Once they were gone we ate dinner, Yamah cooking still being 10/10, and had a meeting with Becky and some of the staff before getting to work on the next days plans.
As you can imagine the next day was very similar to the previous day. Princess had called me obsessively, clearly worried I may be angry they got a girl child, and I had missed her call like 6 times, which didn’t help her thinking I was angry. When I finally got her call, I met her outside, she asked if I was angry and I said of course not, she told me she loved me and that Auntie Maya had a pumpkin for me she would bring the following day, I said okay, we hugged and she left for school.
They had non-gender related sessions in the morning so we all went to the back office to put together packets. During lunch we got the chance to ask about homestay and address some of the awkwardness they were feeling. Carson and I did a scenario session about who in the scenario had power/consent and then Lauren and I did a club’s session. The club’s session was my favorite because it’s the first time (well maybe not the first) but one of the times we drop this huge bomb on them being like, welcome to Liberia, its been crazy for you, now you need to have a club every weekend for the rest of PST, have fun! I say that, but Lauren had done a lot of the club grunt work already, this year we decided to pair them with a school for easier recruitment, so Lauren had already done a lot of the recruitment work. When we had this session at PST last year we were not happy yet looking back it wasn’t a big deal. We got tons of questions, one being like, it feels like you are forcing us to do this, I was like yes, yes we are haha. We also got to tell them how its socially acceptable to tell kids to move from here, as a form of telling them to leave, something I often use ha. We ended sessions that day by telling them they all needed to call their school contact and set up a meeting with them as their first recruitment task for clubs. I talked to my new homestay sister after sessions and I joked (was totally serious) that during homestay I was basically Princess bitch, she laughed and agreed. I told her that I actually really appreciated being told what to do and such because it made the awkwardness way less and it actually helped prepare me a lot more. She told me that she had helped with dishes, I was like oh nooo.. I never did that ha-ha and told her not to let Princess boss her around too much.
That night, being we left Wednesday, we didn’t have much to do so I took advantage of the free time to book some flights for my European adventure in august. The next day I met Princess in the morning and she gave me a massive pumpkin from Auntie and I told her to be nice to my new homestay sister. She said that her new sister liked to do work, so she was giving her plenty work to do, I laughed and told her not to give her too much and that she better be helping her plenty.
Carson. Kerry, Lauren and I helped Becky in the office until lunch time. We ate lunch early and Nathan, Kerry and I got a taxi back to site.