Now it's official

I guess I should start off by announcing that I am officially no longer a trainee, but a tride and true Volunteer with the United States Peace Corps. Our "swearing in" ceremony was this past Friday (yesterday), and it certainly was an honored event. It was held at the U.S. Embassador's residence, in an beautiful area of Dakar peppered with palatial houses, and Madame Embassador's was certainly no exception. She was so gracious as to allow us to hold the ceremony in her home, including the reception afterwards, and the event had some pretty notable invitees, including the Secretary General of the Republic of Senegal.
And yes, all 40 of us trainees who arrived in Senegal on September 11th were sworn in together. It's apparently quite rare to have a training group to be sworn in in it's entirety, having not one person terminate early. I'm also honored to be a part of this group because not only are we all still HERE, EVERYONE reached the language level required in order to swear in and essentially pass training (they call it Intermediate Low...I was pleasantly surprised to find out that I got Intermediate High). Needless to say, our country director has some pretty high expectations of us.
It was also cool but a little nerve-racking of an event for me because I actually was allowed to give a speech at the swearing in, in front of the Embassador and the all the news cameras...yikes. It wasn't so much a speech as a way for the Peace Corps to show what we had been learning with regards to local languages, and for us to have an opportunity to formally thank everyone in those native languages. They had three people do speeches in three of the major languages spoken here: Mandinka, Pulaar, and Wolof; I was the Pulaar one. I actually got some compliments on it afterwards, at least in terms of my pronunciation, and probably not so much for the content (Hi, my name is....I'm going to...thanks to the teachers...bye). It was a little more involved than that...but not much more.
What was also particularly cool about yesterday was that we were allowed to go to what is commonly referred to as the "American Club" in Dakar, which is basically just a nice resort with a pool and a bar and a volleyball court which allows free-access to Peace Corps Volunteers....and given that we had JUST been sworn in...we didn't waste much time. I felt very European because I forgot my swimsuit and said screw it and just swam in my boxers (sorry Mom), which were still bigger than a lot of the bathing suits there.
After hanging out there for a while, we had to get back to Thies to the center, because we had all been allowed to invite one member of our homestay families, who have done so much for us over the past 8 weeks, for a party with some great food (eaten the American way at tables with plates and not around the communal bowls we've become accustomed to) and an opportunity to honor our family members. My "Dad" came, which I was happy about, and even got up to talk about his experience with me in front of the whole crowd when they asked for volunteers to share them. I also gave him a couple gifts to take home to the family:photos I had developed in Thies of them, and a couple drawings I had done that were of family members.
Then came time to spend some quality time with, who else, each other. It's definitely a testament to not only this new training module that we have been guinea pigs for, but also to the caliber of the relationships we've formed with one another since coming here. We've all been a great support network for one another, especially when we want to vent about what we're going through and we can't do it with family for fear of scaring them or current Volunteers who have already been there, done that, moved on, got the t-shirt. We also have a lot of FUN whenever we're all here, which has also been a big motivation for us to stick together.
So, tomorrow at 6am, I begin the journey to Kedougou. We'll be making the trip over two days, staying one night in the Tamba regional house, and then we begin getting "installed" on Tuesday. Mine is on Thursday with Chris, the country director, so I'll have a couple days at the Regional house to hang out, and probably get me another warthog sandwich...those things were damn good. It promises to be a pretty stressful next week, but I feel ready, especially to finally have a place to begin to call home, where we've been hardpressed to feel settled anywhere during training with going back and forth so much.
Hopefully I'll be able to be back in touch soon after installing when I make it back to Kedougou, but thanks again to everyone for all the love and support. I made it (though you didn't have any doubts...right?)...

Naade go,

Samba Diallo
...formerly Adraman Barry
...always Steve Sullivan

Pics: Watch out Africa, I'm a Volunteer; the majority of our group during Swear-In; the Embassador's "backyard"; our Pout training group; me and my Senegalese "Dad" during training.