Swearing In

Taku Paku Maori War Dance

I just arrived fresh from swearing in as a full blown four alarm Peace Corps volunteer to my permanent village of Sapoe and so the two years begins. It has been a mix of emotions as you could imagine. My training group and I got pretty close and it was hard to say goodbye but I think we were all ready to be done with training and start what we came here to do. We had the swearing in ceremony back in our training village with the whole village, Peace Corps staff, a couple members of parliament, and the Charge of Affairs from the US consulate to recite us the oath in English. I gave the speech on behalf of our group afterwards, which was basically listing all the funny and stupid mistakes we had made in the village and a little roasting to our trainers followed by a formal thank you in Samoan. After we cleared the floor there was a presentation from the village of fine mats and seven or eight roasted pigs, we said our final goodbyes to our families, and piled into a chartered city bus.