Swear-In & Beachgiving

As of Wednesday, I am officially a Peace Corps Volunteer! After two months of full class days and language trainings at our home stays, two months of vegetable-filled prepared meals, two months of 55 Americans raiding one ice cream place, we are now off on our own adventures, ready or not!

The whole crew in our completes.

We had our Swear-In ceremony at the Chambre de Commerce in Thies. Honestly, the actual ceremony was pretty uneventful - a lot of speeches in French, Wolof, and some English, then we got a piece of paper in a water proof folder with our name on it. But afterwards, there were two Senegalese bands, delicious hibiscus or baobab tree juice ("buy"), and what looked like delicious catered food that several of us did not get to try.

Main lesson: if you ever want to eat food at an event with Senegalese people, RUN. Run to the front of the line and get your hands on anything you can, because before you know it, several Senegalese will have very heavy plates and you will have been patiently waiting to witness that everything is gone. To give a little credit, though, some of them share that food with their families.

That afternoon, we were shipped off to a beautiful beach house for two nights in Toubab Dialow where we were to spend our Thanksgiving. The host is very nice, very chill, and has a good relationship with the Peace Corps, so we stayed there for $2 each! (Note to those visiting: this is an option for us). Every hour I was there I had to remind myself I wasn't dreaming - such beautiful sunsets, yummy restaurants on the shore, and what can beat being able to swim in your backyard?

Photo courtesy of Tina Verilli

For our meal, we slaughtered two turkeys and roasted them for 5 hours over a charcoal fire; mashed garlic potatoes in a mortar and pestle, cooked stuffing and spicy squash soup we drank out of cups, and had pumpkin spice beignets (fried dough mixed with American-shipped pumpkin spice can) for dessert. We put it all in a communal bowl and ate on mats. The best combination of American-Senegalese tradition for Thanksgiving!

The day after we got back from the beach, we were sept-palaced (a rusty volvo) off to our respective regional houses for install, where you take a few days to buy your living items and obsess over internet, cold things like soh and cherrie (yogurt and millet) and possibly a pizza. Everything whizzed by and suddenly I'm here. I don't exactly feel prepared, particularly with the language and my energy levels for meeting a lot of people, but I'm ready to try this thing out; ready to be living out of a stationary instead of constantly moving suitcase, to have my own backyard and bathroom space, and to start to belong to a family and space.

 

Saying goodbye to my temporary home stay. We shook left (dirty) hands as a way of saying, "now I have to come back to visit you because we both shared germs."