Swearing In

Well it's official. I have finally sworn in as a Peace Corps volunteer. Swearing in is the time that we go from Peace Corps trainees to Peace Corps volunteers. It is a pretty big day for everyone involved, so naturally it should start out going completely wrong. My van was picked up at 7:30 am, which means that I woke up at 6 am to take a bucket bath, and was taken to the location of the ceremony. As we sat and waited for the rest of the trainees to arrive people slowly started to notice that none of the staff was there either. This was some what strange, but no one thought too much of it. Luckily one of our language trainers started to wonder what was taking the other vans so long, and she called another trainer. Turns out we were at the wrong location. The night before our ceremony some people were informed that there would be no electricity at the college where we had been working. So in light of that information, plans had been changed and a new venue was selected. Apparently not all of the drivers were given correct instructions on where to take us, and we ended up at the wrong place. Fortunately we weren't that far from where we should be, so we were only about 30 minutes late, which in South Africa is nothing.

From there we had some coffee and cookies while we waited for the event to start. That took about another 45 minutes, so all in all we were only starting about an hour or so late. Here there is what we call South African time, which basically means that if you say something is going to start at 8 am, it really means that is will start around 9:30am or later. Time is fluid in this country, and for Americans it is a very hard transition. I'm sure my family would agree that I am a little psycho when it comes to time, and that I get very frustrated when things don't take place when they are supposed to. So to use Peace Corps' favorite word, I am learning to be flexible when it comes to things starting on time.

Aside from the little hiccups at the beginning, the ceremony was very nice. Our language tutors and the rest of the host country staff got up and sang a beautiful song for us that we very touching. I am still shocked at how well people can sing here. Then, after we were sworn in by the Country Director, and given a great speech by a representative from the US Embassy, we were official volunteers. Unfortunately, for some this was not the happiest time, because for them it meant it was time to say goodbye> most of our sites are around 10 hours away from Pretoria and about 12 from where we were staying. Immediately after swearing-in some of our now good friends had to head off to their new homes. Some tears were shed, but everyone knew that this was when our real adventure would begin.