Swear-In Sept 10, 2009

So until Sept 10, 2009, I was just a Peace Corps Trainee (PCT). Me and all the other PCTs of my stage where taking language class, cultural sessions, technical sessions and administrative sessions. In essence, we were being taught how to survive and be efficient volunteers. I was surprised at how thorough training was. I figured, we’d get some language training and they’d toss us in a village. The director of Peace Corps Mali said it was kinda like that for him when he served (in the 70’s or 80’s???). I figured our director would be some distant, obscure figure head we never really saw, esp for special ceremonies. But in fact our director is mad cool. He met us at the airport when we got to Mali, passing out mosquito repellant and helping get luggage. He sat in on many of our sessions, adding his input whenever he could and I’ve had many opportunities to just chat it up with him.
Anyways, we were all anticipating Sept 10- the day summer camp would end and we’d be real volunteers! The day started at the US Embassy in Bamako. We had an official ceremony where the US Ambassador, PC Mali director, Minister of Education, and five PCTs gave speeches. We all learned a language that (in most cases) we could use in village, depending on where we were being placed. A student from each language was chosen to give a speech, in that language, during the swear-in ceremony. I was chosen to give the Bambara speech! And this was esp an honor because most volunteers learned Bambara; it’s the dominant native language here.
Almost everyone wore Malian dress up clothes we got made especially for the ceremony and a Malian television station and radio station recorded the whole thing! We also had photographers. I was told that later the ceremony would be broadcast over TV and radio!) After the ceremony, one of the radio station reps wanted to interview me. I tried to tell him my Bambara wasn’t good enough to do that but he insisted it’d be fine. After a couple questions, I couldn’t quite understand or answer, he was a little frustrated, switching between Bambara and French. I tell him I only know a little Bambara, and he exclaims “You know Bambara- you just gave that speech!” And I explained to him that was pre-written and practiced. I guess I did give the speech pretty well. (Another volunteer recorded my whole speech!)
Many volunteers stayed in the city to celebrate, esp since we’d all be going to site a couple days later. We had group hotel rooms and went out to clubs later. I figured my clubbin days had ended in Chicago! We got dressed up; I wore a tube top and jeans. This was only ok because we were in the city; I would never wear that in village! Bare shoulders are ok, but showing your knees is never ok unless you are a prostitute. Many of us stayed out til 3am or so, dancing to somewhat new American music. It was good, clean fun!!!!
(See Picasa album- Swear-In!!!!)