Shopping for Post and... Swear-In!

The last couple of days have been an absolute blur – we got our move-in allowances on Thursday, so we’ve been shopping like crazy since then. Then yesterday we had swear-in in the morning (Yall, I’m a REAL volunteer now! Yaaaaay!), shopping and eating in the afternoon, and a big party last night. And more shopping today with my host sister Madjidath (she helps me avoid getting ripped off). And probably tomorrow. I’m exhausted.


Swear-in was held in the ambassador’s back yard in Cotonou, which meant that we weren’t really allowed to take many pictures (sorry!). Each sector chose one tissu design, and each person in that sector takes a couple of meters and makes an outfit out of it. It looks pretty cool when everyone’s together, actually – it’s surprising to see how many different things you can make out of one piece of cloth.


Oh, okay, so besides the clothes, swear-in: we got there, sat down, began the ceremony, and it began to monsoon. It did not stop monsooning for about 2 hours, at which point we were drenched and coated in a fine layer of mud. There were lots of speeches, most of them boring and/or in a local language that I don’t speak, and after the ceremony they gave us a bunch of meat- and cheese-filled pasteries… Mmmm. I think I ate 15.


After heading to the PC Bureau to do a whole bunch of paperwork and admin stuff, we went to Eravan, which is Benin’s Target. It was absolutely crazy to walk in there: it was air-conditioned, there were shopping carts, and there were American foods like Snickers and Pringles. We were so overwhelmed when we walked in that it took us a second to start actually shopping… I’m going to be incompetent and weird when I get home.


Fast forward a couple of hours, and we were back in Porto Novo having a party on the roof of a hotel. It was fantastic – good music, fun dancing, great people, and finally a chance to cut loose and shake the stress of stage off. I’m going to miss these kids over the next couple of months – we’ve gotten pretty close over the past 9 weeks, and I’m fairly certain that by the time we head back home, we’ll be our own little family.