Swearing-In and Moving to Site!

The moment we have all been waiting for finally came on August 29th, Swearing-In! This was such a fun occasion that celebrated the last 3 months of hard work by all of the sectors and our cohort as a whole. Our cohort moved into the training center on Wednesday and our swearing-in was on Thursday morning, so we had a day to get ready with a few classes on what our first 3 months at site would look like and some of the logistics we would need to know while there.

Lael and Jeremy

On Thursday morning, we got to sleep in! The ceremony started around 10/10:30 am so we, the trainees, needed to be there around

Florelle

9:45. The ceremony was great and included a joint speech in French by Jeremy and Lael, a speech in local language Fon by Florelle, and a speech in local language Adja by Ronan. We had many key community members in attendance and several of them gave speeches like the US Ambassador to Benin, the Minister of Education, and the Minister of Foreign

Affairs. Our official swearing in oath was administered by the US Ambassador as well and our Peace Corps pledge was administered by Kristina, our current Country Director. After the swearing in, we each

Ronan

presented our host families with a certificate of completion for housing a Peace Corps Volunteer. We then concluded the ceremony with our swearing-in song, sung by all of the new volunteers with help from Elise and Armand who wrote the song! We then had a reception afterwards with yummy pastries from the bakery at the Link Hotel. After all of the invitees left and we had

said our goodbyes to our host families we all went out for a celebratory drink from one of our favorite restaurants, Salle des Fetes. We later had a bunch of shawarma and fries (also from salle des fetes) as our evening meal with the Peace Corps staff at the Center. The day of Swear-In is also the only day we are allowed to have alcohol at

the center so obviously we took full advantage of that by setting up a rather tastefully made bar with the shelving in my closet. It was an excellent affair and I had such a great time with all of my friends celebrating this big day. 

The next day we had a “free-day” that we decided to use for shopping in Cotonou. This is about a 2 hour ride from the Center and traveled in true Beninese style with 16 people in just one van, and this was before we did all of our shopping.

Our first stop in Cotonou was Super U aka Erowan. This is a supermarket like you would see in the US and it is pretty awesome. I stocked up on olives and soap and also a lot of basics like kitchen utensils and functional decorative items. My wallet was hurting but as volunteers we now had a move in allowance and salary! After the lengthy trip in Super U we went to maybe the most American restaurant in Benin: Sprinkles. This place has many comfort foods from home like pizza, pasta, burgers (!!!), salads, mozzarella sticks (!!!), smoothies, milkshakes, and more. I ended up having a cookies and cream milkshake, mozzarella sticks, a swiss truffle burger with fries, and what tasted like the best lasagna I’ve ever had in my life.

Needless to say, I was in a lot of pain afterwards and felt like I would never eat again. After our fabulous meal we went back to Super U where our van stayed with our stuff and began loading everything up which was not an easy task. Sammi bought a fridge which was the largest of anyone's purchases, both in size and cost, but it easily went onto the roof of the van along with countless other items to be sorted out once we got back to the center. The trip back was CRAMPED. We had 16 people plus all of our stuff and there were 5 people in my row! But we made it back in one piece and celebrated our last night together by watching mean girls on a projector in my room. It was bittersweet because the next day most of the cohort was departing for their permanent sites and many of us will not see eachother until December when we have On The Job II training. We are also not allowed to leave our site or department (similar to a state) for the first 3 months at site which makes seeing many people from our cohort impossible. The next morning everyone was finishing up packing and loading up the cars that would be taking them to site. For some people it would be a short trip of 30 minutes, but for others it would be around 7-8 hours. I actually was not leaving this day though.

I and 4 other volunteers had to stay behind at the center to work on our French skills for an extra week. As you can imagine, coming here with zero French training did not help make me fluent after just 3 months. And while I am certainly able to communicate with people in French, my language level was just shy of where the Peace Corps requires it to be before you go to your site which is Intermediate-high, while I was at Intermediate-mid.

This extra week consisting of just language classes was helpful in the intricacies of the language but also very draining, as it was 8 hours per work day (we get Sundays off and half days on Saturdays). So we started with classes on Saturday after the other volunteers departed for their sites’. We had our LPI (Language Proficiency Interview) or language test on the following Friday where each person spends about 30 minutes with an interviewer and gives a self presentation, talks about their job, a daily routine, a past vacation, and what they would like to do in the future. This ensures we use all the different verb tenses: past, present, future, and imperfect. While this was a stressful time I really enjoyed being able to be at the center and get certain things done like doing laundry, packing, boiling water, and just taking some time to relax.

Bats!

Another really helpful part of this was being near the supermarche in Lokossa called Credo. This is nothing like what you think of as a supermarket in the US but they usually have certain staples like peas, oatmeal, mustard, paper towels, soap, cookies, plates, and Pringles! (This is one of the only chips available here and usually just original but they had hot and spicy one day!) Anyway, it was nice to have Credo and some of the other shops available whenever we remembered something else we needed. After our week of Language and more movies on the projector, it was finally time for us to leave for our own sites. And so we packed up all of our things into our awaiting taxis and said our final goodbyes between just the 5 of us, and then off we went on the way to our permanent sites for the next 2 years. 

Being here at site now has been a lot. There's so much to learn and so much to set up and so much to do! But I am settling in pretty well. I am really missing everyone from home and my other volunteers in these first few weeks and it doesn’t help that my phone service here at site isn’t great. But I am figuring out where it is better so I’ll be able to make some calls in the near future.

I have been keeping busy by finding out where all of the food mamas are and where there are some good restaurants/buvettes. I also have gotten my house painted and have ordered furniture which I am really excited for so that I can really get into decorating my house. Capers my dog is also settling in. She is a great companion to have here and we are working on potty training right now. Animals are treated differently here so it has taken some getting used to and helped me learn to set boundaries.

Many people here are either scared of dogs or aren’t used to being slow/gentle with them so it has been a bit scary for Capers but it is getting better every day. She may have been born in Benin but she acts like a very american dog. She actually came from another volunteer’s dog who had a litter of puppies so it's kinda like we’re keeping them in the Peace Corps family! She is actually currently sleeping on the table in my office lol

For what’s coming next… I’m not entirely sure. My ONG (NGO) has a project going on in Parakou so I hopefully will be heading up there next week. After that my counterpart, supervisor, and language tutor will all be meeting with me to discuss what our goals are for the next 2 years and what kind of projects I will be working on.

My counterpart and I actually went to a neighboring village last week to discuss their current state of yam production and what kind of difficulties or concerns they have, so this will likely be part of some of my projects. We are also currently incubating some eggs for chicks which will hopefully be hatching soon. So lots of things going on but I will keep you updated with whatever I’m doing!