"I Swear"

Well now that we all have John Michael Montgomery/Boyz II Men stuck in our heads...

I literally have 14 minutes to write a final post before leaving Internet for... a long time. So here goes:

We are now PCVs! 77 of us took our oaths at the U.S. Embassy in Bamako on the 21st. The embassy is beautiful, and it has air conditioning. AMAZING. I got a HUGE kick out of swearing to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies. I also refrained from acting like a 4th grader and literally saying, "I, state your name, do solemnly swear..." If you're not proud of me for making it through stage, be proud of me for that.

We spent the rest of the day having a delicious picnic at Tubaniso and partying it up in Bamako at the "Pirate's Club". Georgetown kids, you would have loved this place. The stage before us had the task of naming our group. Each stage develops a kind of personality. The stage before is the "Belushi Stage". I don't think that one needs a lot of explanation. The Belushis, after much deliberation, have decided to call us "The Breakfast Club" due to our diverse array of personalities. Obviously, I'm Molly Ringwald.

September 22nd is Malian Independence Day. I celebrated with some friends with sleeping in, swimming in a pool, eating Chinese for lunch, and ordering two servings of ice cream. You can see a picture of my special Malian Independence Day outfit in the photo album whose link appears at the end of this post.

I am now in a hotel in the city of Segou, about to head out to my banking town. I'll spend a few days there before finally making it to my permanent site (Kimparana). At site, we have 3 months of just chilling out and getting to know our villages/towns/cities. I will love not having to work and slowing down the pace after a hectic 2 months of training.

As you probably already know, I will be gone from the Internet for QUITE a while, so I thought I would take this opportunity to make a shameless appeal for mail. You can also call my cell phone and leave me voicemails, but I can only check my phone when in my banking town. My address is:

Susan Dyer, PCV
Corps de la Paix
BP 75
San, Mali
West Africa

Thank you to all of those who have already written me letters (and there are a lot of you!). Replies have been written as well but there are no stamps around this place. It's ridiculous. Hopefully now that I will be closer to a post office I can reply to written correspondence with a bit more alacrity. Here's the link for the last batch of pictures for a while: http://georgetown.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2083305&l=dd02a&id=1404038. As always, I hope you enjoy them. Wish me luck!

TAS out.

"Stir It Up"

I'm baaack. I'm sorry for the recent dearth* of posts, but, as you might imagine, reliable Internet is hard to come by in this neck of the woods. Here's a quick update on some pressing issues:

• I was fairly surprised I didn't hear more about the recent unpleasantness up north from you people back home. In case you haven't heard, a U.S. military plane was fired upon in northeast Mali last Tuesday. You can read the full story here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/13/AR2007091300500.html Needless to say, Peace Corps (and the rest of Mali, frankly) is not really affected by Tuareg rebel activity. PCVs do not serve in the two northernmost regions of Mali for safety reasons. To quote Han Solo, "Uh, we had a slight weapons malfunction, but uh... everything's perfectly all right now. We're fine. We're all fine... here... now, thank you. How are you?"
• Homestay and training (known in PC lingo as PST or stage) has now come to a close. We spent the last few days packing our lives into rolling duffel bags and trunks to be delivered throughout the country to our respective sites. Hard to believe that we will soon be spending two years in the same place after living out of a suitcase for two months. We are all extremely excited and extremely ready to actually get out on our own and start working on what we came here to do (which is surprisingly different for each person).
• We swear in as bona fide Peace Corps Volunteers on Friday the 21st. Dressed in our Malian finest, almost 80 of us will shed that pesky "T" in our titles for the much more elegant, prestigious, and gratifying "V". After swearing in at the U.S. Embassy, we get to have a little party at the Ambassador's residence followed by a day of fun at Tubaniso and a night of... even more celebration in Bamako. However, I have determined that the best part about swearing in is the oath itself which requires a pledge to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies (foreign or domestic). As I am quite a fan of the Constitution, I'm pretty excited about that part. I think I might even pull a Sen. Robert C. Byrd and take my little pocket Constitution with me to the ceremony. Yes, I brought a pocket Constitution with me to Mali.
• I feel obligated to inform you, dear reader, that on Sunday the 23rd I will be leaving for my site in Segou region. I have been told that my village is four hours by bus from the nearest available Internet service. This is just a warning to prepare everyone for the lack of blog posts, emails, and Facebook updates that will certainly result from my geographical predicament. I will say to you what we say to each other (in French of course): courage.

I hope to post a few more times before leaving on Sunday to include some pictures from swear-in and give one little last goodbye. In the meantime, I've posted an album on Facebook of some random recent goings-on: http://georgetown.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2082828&l=53589&id=1404038 Enjoy.

* That was for you, Berkeley. Wherever you may be. It's Sleepytime time.