Swearing in…and just swearing!

Well, as of last Friday, I am official.  We convoyed to the U.S. Embassy and were sworn in as the first Peace Corps Response Volunteers in Sierra Leone.  If you want to see the festivities, you can access it here. 

In fact, we are special for another reason.  Both Elizabeth (another fellow PCRV and native of Sierra Leone) and I are among the first group of non-returning volunteers to be sworn in.  The Response program has, up until now, only been for those former volunteers, like Halley, who wanted to do another tour of service with a specified area of interest in mind…shorter stay, more intense.  Just this past spring, though, the Peace Corps opened Response up to anybody whether you were in Peace Corps previously or not.  In case you want to join in on the fun, just Google “Peace Corps Response” for the details.

Okay, that was the swearing in, then came the swearing…the very next morning.  We had to be ready to leave for site at 8:00 a.m. but since Tony, Jessica, and I were all traveling in the same direction, we all had to be stuffed into one Peace Corps vehicle.  As you can see, it was a tight squeeze.  All three of us had small refrigerators, bicycles, stoves, not to mention all our belongings…er, and us to boot! 

Here is Domingo standing up on top of the van (swearing in Krio, I’m sure since Elizabeth is cracking up over on the left) trying to figure out where to put everything.  He and Musa eventually pieced it all together and we gladly got ready to leave.  Here is a snapshot of Tony, David, and Jessica happy to climb aboard!