Yesterday started off early. We hit the road around 6:30am with a busy day of site seeing on the horizon
We made it to the town of Kokosa nearly 4 hours later after a bumpy ride through villages and countryside. All of us were really hungry, not having had time to eat breakfast. I was really grateful at the beautiful platter of food that was prepared in expectation of our arrival—I was starting to tip on the side of hangry after the uncomfortable ride.
We spent a while out at the Kokosa project site, visiting with the community members and hearing their testimonials. It’s very impressive to see how passionate they are about these issues once WFG implements the behavior change programs that expose the poor sanitary and hygiene practices. A lot of the people mention or say something like “I can’t believe how different we used to live” or “I wish my parents or grandparents would have known this and taught it to me when I was young”.
We had another really long drive straight from Kokosa back to Hawassa. We needed to hurry back because today there’s a meeting with some stakeholders that people need to prepare for with the insight and information we gathered during the field visits.
On the way back we stopped at this lovely overlook where we could see down into the area of Hawassa (and out over the whole lake itself in all of its grandness). It started to rain soon after we got back to Hawassa which was lucky because were it to have rained before our journey, a few of the roads may have been made impassable. I went to sleep really early last night after the tiring travel and hot sun beating down throughout the day. Today will be fun, there are some people coming from Hawassa university and Addis Ababa to meet about future project.