Swear-in and Lome!

We just got to Lome after finishing our 2 months of training. It’s crazy how different Lome seems now compared to when we first arrived. To start, it seems incredibly busy. There is so much going on and there are so many stores and little restaurants. Basically, there are so many options here! We arrived at the same hotel that we stayed in the first time we came to Lome and I remember thinking that it was kind of run down when we first arrived. This time, my reaction was completely different. It looks really clean, nice, and there are toilets, running water, fans, and electricity!! It’s crazy how different things look after only 2 months. I can’t even imagine how it will feel to go back to the U.S. after living in a village for two years! Anyways, tonight we’re having our swear-in ceremony. We will be at the ambassador’s house and will all give speeches in local language that will be broadcast on local television! It should be pretty cool and there will be good food there also, which is what I think all of us are most excited about!

Saturday we move to our posts. I’m really excited to be done with training, but I’m also sad to be leaving the friends I made during training behind and I’m nervous to start my service. The first few months at post are supposed to be really hard and it’s pretty intimidating going into it. Our job for the first three months at post is to begin the process of integration that Peace Corps is always promoting. Basically, we’re supposed to just figure out what’s going on in our villages, make ourselves known, start making connections with people, learn local language, and start to think about what projects we want to work on in the future. It’s been emphasized to us by our program directors that work involves leaving our house, walking around, going to the market, and talking to our neighbors. The idea is that if we can successfully integrate into and understand our communities, then it will lay the foundation for future work and projects. When I hear about the busy office jobs of my friends at home, it’s funny to think about how different their “work “ is from my “work” here. I’m going to have to really try to move away from my American notions of work and productivity. Anyone who knows me knows that I like to be busy and plan a lot, so letting go and accepting that for now my job is to get to know people and settle into my new home will be hard, but I think it will be good for me. Also, it will take a lot of time just to set up my home and figure out how to live in Magna. I need to get furniture made (and figure out how to transport it- I may be moving couches and armoires via moto), get a porch made so I have a shaded area to sit outside in, figure out the market situation in order to get the different food I need, experiment with cooking for myself using what I can find here, learn more Anoufo, learn who’s who in my village, and I have some personal goals like starting to run again and maybe acquiring a cat or dog (although I’m a little nervous about this one because people eat dogs and cats in Togo and on more than one occasion a volunteer has returned from a trip to find out that their cat or dog was eaten!). Anyways, although I’m nervous to move to post, I’m also really eager to finally get started as a volunteer. It was over a year ago that I first submitted my application to become a volunteer and after over 14 months, I’ve finally becoming one!