4 weeks to go… (very scary!)…
Alex August 15th, 2008
It’s now only 4 weeks until I’ll be flying off to Ethiopia – my flight details arrived this week. I also now have only 2 weeks (till end Aug) left working at the OU, I’ve been at the OU for over 7 years and don’t think it’s sunk in yet that I’m actually going , though having the flight details makes everything somewhat more real!
I’ve just come back from my final VSO training course at Harborne Hall, “Training Skills”. Peter, who I met on my first VSO course (”Preparing to Volunteer”), was also on the course and by coincidence, him and his wife are the same Ethiopian town I’m going to (Mekelle/Mek’ele/Mekele/Makelle or various other spellings!) – and I met a couple of the other volunteers who’re going to Ethiopia (there are 24 of us altogether going in Sept).
I found the training skills course to be the least intensive of the 3 VSO courses I’ve been (only one day where the course ran till 8pm), but was fun and I learnt a lot nonetheless – possibly because it was the course I was most prepared for and had a better idea of what to expect. The best aspect for me was getting to practice running training sessions. We had a very short practice session of 10 mins, then a longer one of 25 mins, each time training the other course participants. The others in my group ran courses in… ‘What is communication advocacy’, ‘How does school self-evaluation fit into the school development cycle’, ‘How to measure pulse’, and ‘The ethics of corporate sponsorship’ – so a wide spectrum of topics!
Mine was different again, I did a session on how to create a blog (2 blogs successfully created: here and here). It’s been long time since I’ve had to train a group of people in front of computers so had forgotten about the different speeds at which people work and how difficult it can be keeping them engaged if they’re waiting for me to answer someone else’s query before I get to them (and I only had 4 people to train!).
My remaining worry about my placement at the moment is how I’m going to train people in IT with unreliable power and internet connections, and how I can do IT training without computers – if anyone can point me at some good resources for this then they’d be most gratefully received 
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Alex Little. Licensed under
Just found your blog Alex. Good luck in Ethiopia: I’m sure you’ll have an amazing year. I bet it will be strange leaving the OU after all this time.
I presume you are going to keep updating your blog? I’ve bookmarked it to keep up to date with what you are doing.
Helen
Hi Helen, Yes I’ll be keeping this blog up to date whilst I’m away – providing electricity and internet connections are up and running! A
As a pupil on your course, I can say it went fine – my blog is up and running, and already 4 people have looked at it!
I’m going in 2 days now and couldn’t sleep last night thinking about all the things still to sort out so am writing this at 06:30.
Hope your preparations are going well. Talk soon.
Andrew
Hi Alex,
good luck in Mekelle! It´s always funny to read when people are going to Ethiopia for the first time! Mekelle is a nice place.I lived there with my friend for 4 years, and we were good friends with a bunch of VSO there. We are currently all working elsewhere again, but very often still in contant. Ethiopia does that very well.
September is the most beautifull time of year, very green with yellow meskel flowers everywhere, and quite some partying going on (can be found all year round, but september is very special) for Ethiopian New Year and Hashenda (girls jumping you in groups in the streets while singing and drumming, hold (at least a little) on to your money, life is expensive for VSO in Mekelle!).
Have fun!
Eva