Trainee No More

Peace Corps has a lot of acronyms, which are taken very seriously.  For example, PCT stands for Peace Corps Trainee.  PCV stands for Peace Corps Volunteer.  There is a large distinction between the two.  Trainees are pretty much in awe of current volunteers, who seem to actually know what they are doing. On Friday, May 11, we swore in as Peace Corps Volunteers at the US Ambassador’s house in Dakar.  This ceremony marked the end of nine weeks of technical, cultural, and linguistic training and the beginning of our actual two years of service. 

One of the first things that we were told at training is that we would be responsible for obtaining traditional Senegalese outfits for Swearing In.  Fashion is a big deal here, and it was really fun to look around and plan my outfit.  My host sister Mami took us to buy our fabric at the market in Mbour, and then her tailor came to our house.  I thought that we would look at some pictures and we could pick something out, but after a conversation in Wolof with Mami, he left the house.  When I asked if he was going to come back with pictures, she laughed and said that she had picked something out for us that was stylish but affordable.  We thus had no idea what to expect, which was nerve-wracking, but we knew we would get something authentically Senegalese.

This is what we got.  The sleeves on mine are a little out of control, but overall we felt very African and fancy, which was the whole point. 

My outfit is called a complet and Pat's is called a boubou

Another aspect of swearing in is that someone who is learning each language is selected to give a speech in his or her respective language.  I was selected from the Mande language group, which includes Jaxanke, Malinke and Mandinka.  This had been a goal I had set for myself from the beginning of training, so I was really excited to do it.  Typically, the ceremony is aired on national television, so I felt like I had a rare chance to tell the people of Senegal why I was here.  I wrote the speech with the help of my host family and my language teacher and with input from the other members of our language group.  Since these languages are not used for written communication, it felt weird reading the speech, so I decided to go ahead and memorize it.  Pat was a saint and let me practice it over and over, but I was still more nervous than I have been about anything for a long time.  Nervous as is I had a lump in my chest so big that I was convinced that my malaria medication had gotten stuck there until it was gone after the speech.  I think it ended up going really well—I didn’t tell anyone that I was going to try to do it from memory in case I chickened out, so it was really well received when I pulled it off as a surprise.  Hopefully a Youtube video will be available soon.

The actual act of swearing in was a surprise.  I actually didn’t know what we would swear to, but it ended up being about defending the constitution and nothing specific to Peace Corps.  Regardless, swear in we did, therefore becoming PCVs.

2012 Health/Environmental Education Stage

After getting our hands held for the last few weeks, the extra responsibility that has come with the TàV switch has been a bit overwhelming.  Two days after swearing in, we said goodbye to our stage (training group), and squished into a sept-place for Kedougou.  A sept-place is a really old station wagon that is used for public transportation.  We had to fit four of us and all of our stuff (originally packed, acquired in Senegalese markets, given to us from Peace Corps and sent from our lovely families and friends) into one sept-place.  It took about two hours longer than the trip down for Volunteer Visit, and included new adventures like our illiterate driver getting a ticket for having too many bags and bikes strapped to the roof and trying to help him discern what the ticket said, actually having to stop at all the police checkpoints that Peace Corps vehicles are allowed to bypass, and the back seat caving in and making all of us squish together even more than we had been.  However, the lengthy and uncomfortable car ride became worth it when we got to Kedougou and I went with three other volunteers to swim in the Gambia River.  It was a scene right out of a poster for Peace Corps—biking through a bush path to a lazy river where mobs of children were swimming and women were washing their clothes.  After a glorious while swimming around, it started to get dark, and everyone got out all at once—apparently that’s the time of day that the hippos come to the swimming hole. 

In Kedougou, which is our regional capitol, we had one day (ONE DAY!!) to acquire everything we would need to start our life at our site.  This isn’t quite as bad for Pat and I, who actually do have a few shops in our site, but it was still really intense to navigate the market and the bank in the limited amount of time that we had.  Pat put it really well: "I learned a lot today.  I'm not sure what I learned, exactly, but it was a lot."  We both were pretty stressed by the end of the day—Pat’s bank card wouldn’t work, so he couldn’t withdraw any of the money Peace Corps allotted us for setting up camp, and vendors were out of several of the things we needed to buy.  Plus, it is freaking hot.  May is the hottest month of the year, and we are making this transition right in the middle of it. 

Tomorrow morning we take another sept-place to our site, and it really begins.  The first phase of service is referred to as the five week challenge, where volunteers are encouraged to stay at site for five weeks.  We aren’t really expected to do traditional work for the first three months, so our time will mostly be spent greeting people (so important here) and continuing to work on our language skills.  And coming up with strategies to stay cool.  In the past day I have adopted the following strategies: taking multiple bucket baths each day, eating mangoes whenever possible, drenching my pajama shirt in water and putting it on in order to fall asleep.

Bring it on.