Juramento

In a burst of semi-anticlimactic ceremony, On Wednesday, 1/14/11, we 22 trainees swore our oaths to become a part of the first official group of two year volunteers to serve in Colombia in thirty years.

Because Colombia was part of the first group of original Peace Corps countries, way back in 1961, our swearing in ceremony was also the last “official” 50-years-of-Peace-Corps celebration in the world. (Who knew that DC has been celebrating it in different ways the entire year…but it has, and we were the last of these celebrations)

In real-life terms, this all meant that we imported Stacey Rhodes, the Chief-of-Staff of all of Peace Corps, from Washington to speak, played some wonderful Peace Corps movies created about Peace Corps and Colombia that had been shown at the Folk Life Festival in DC this past summer, and got a few fun doohickeys of 50 year celebration memorabilia (A pen! A patch! A sticker!)

Highlights from the ceremony included: a traditional band playing the Colombian national anthem while we sang along, a man who warbled the United States national anthem on A LEAF (yes, that’s right, a small leaf became an instrument with which the man produced a pitch perfect rendition of the anthem, vibrato, high notes and all), speeches from the mayor of Barranquilla, Stacey Rhodes, the US ambassador Paul McKinley, a wonderful speech by two volunteers, Jessica and Kasper, and last but not least, the Peace Corps cake.

The best parts were probably seeing the pictures and watching the movie of the original Colombian volunteers, including Maureen Orth, high up in the beautiful mountains of Colombia working with the people here half a century ago. The movie also included snippets of an interview with the current president, President Santos, who talked about having a Peace Corps volunteer stay in his house when he was a child. As far as ceremonies go, it was a success.

And then, of course, later that night there was the wonderful moment of listening to my abuela here describe the history of Peace Corps to her relatives—about how we were called “hijos of Kennedy,” (children of Kennedy) and we promote peace and such . Such a great cultural exchange!

Historical side note: the idea for Peace Corps started when Kennedy arrived for a stump speech at the University of Michigan. He’d arrived at 2am and hoped to go to bed, but upon seeing thousands of students waiting for him, he gave an impromptu speech where he asked if the students would be willing to serve 2 years in another country to share our culture, bring about peaceful relationships, and learn about other cultures in return. The students answered yes, and literally, that’s when the Peace Corps was born. Kennedy signed an executive order creating the Peace Corp two months after he got into office, and that very year the first volunteers left for their countries. We have a volunteer here now who was part of the original crop of volunteers in Colombia and is serving a second time, who describes how his mother heard this speech on the radio and told her sons that they would go into the Peace Corps…and as Bob says, after those years of service, he never left.

Anyway! The whole thing, despite being lovely and such, was anticlimactic because unlike most Peace Corps ceremonies, which mark the graduation of trainees into the real world of volunteers and everyone heads out to their sites immediately thereafter, we returned for class on Thursday and Friday, and after Christmas will have two more weeks of training. Apparently Washington wasn’t able to get us out here originally soon enough to have timing work out, so now we hover in the ether land of volunteer-but-not. So for now, all we can do is enjoy Christmas break, endure 80 more hours of classes, and then finally, mid-January, move on to actually beginning the next two years of the rest of our lives!

 Peace Corps  Cake!

Traditional Band that played the national anthem 

Paul McKinley, US ambassador

Paparazzi

The Barranquillan mayor aka part of one of the richest families here, but is apparently one of the best mayors in the country and thought to be in the running for  president in then next decade

Volunteers!