The swearing-in ceremony was yesterday. I meant to upload some photos, but don’t have my camera with me. I’ll try to do it Monday.
We were supposed to leave for Dakar at 5:45, but at 6:30 realized we were all sitting there waiting for a police escort to arrive. (yeah, that struck me as strange too). We hit the expected traffic jam on the way to Dakar, so our escort decided we should drive on the opposite side of the road, with him 20 yards ahead, waving his arm to clear traffic out of our way. This move was met with cheers by some other people on the bus, but I was sort of pissed. Drunk people drive on the opposite side of the road. Also, this wasn't some country road - it was the highway to the capital.
Still, I figured there was nothing I could do about it and tried to go back to sleep. Next thing I know everyone’s shouting and we are squealing to a stop. Our escort had collided with an oncoming motorcyclist and was thrown from his bike. I think both the bikes were totaled, but I can’t be sure. Both men were wearing helmets and were walking around after a minute. Then again, they could have both collapsed after a few steps and I’ll never know, because we continued on three minutes later, leaving them by the side of the road in a growing crowd. I hope they got home all right.
The rest it was pretty uneventful. The Japanese volunteers did a funny skit (I was a little worried throughout training that we would be asked to come up with a skit - the Peace Corps seems to like skits). The highlight of my day was a speech delivered by an American official. I’m not going to recreate it here, but it was pretty funny.
When it was time to swear-in we all stood up, Japanese and Korean volunteers too, and vowed to uphold the American constitution. Surely that was the result of some miscommunication and maybe the Japanese and Korean volunteers stopped repeating the vow after a couple words, but that’s what it looked like from where I was sitting.
A clip of the ceremony was on national television last night. I wasn’t featured.
P.S. The speech I liked so much wasn’t popular with all the other volunteers - some are calling it unprofessional. I’m going to give the guy some credit here and just say he had a dry wit. I know I enjoyed it.
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