A quick recap of swear in: So day begins with all of us
getting ready in our pagne outfits. Back during stage, our group decided to
pick green as our color, so we all went out and bought green-esque pagnes and
got clothes made for our ceremony. It
was fun in the morning to see all of us getting ready after nine weeks full of
biking and stage-sicknesses to get fancy together. The ceremony was held at the
ambassador of Burkina Faso’s house, which was very exciting, with live music
and, big highlight, a huge cake.
The ceremony itself was actually a little odd. I thought
swear in would have our names be called or some mentioning of the purpose of
Peace Corps… you know, peace, global friendships, understanding…. something at
least along those lines of swearing to fulfill the three Peace Corps goals.
But! Instead, it felt like I was joining the military. We all stood up together
and swore to protect our country and the constitution from our enemies and such.
Weird right?
Mamourou!
Our stage- G27- Swag Stage
Sanga PCVS with our host families
The best part of the day though was seeing our host families
again! The families from my host site, Sanga, all got together and rented a car
and drove up together. I wasn’t expecting to be sad that family and friends
from home weren’t at the ceremony; but I couldn’t help wishing people who knew
me were there to watch and share the excitement. So it felt like a quasi-substitute
to know Mamourou had come up for the event.
After the ceremony it was a whirl wind of activity: Country
Director for lunch, pack up stuff, dinner, out for the night, and then by 5 am
people were leaving the hotel to be dropped off at site… And we were off on our
own, officially Peace Corps Volunteers- PCVS. Bizarre!
