Swear In

Peace Corps Swear In

Swearing in to Peace Corps was a fabulous thing… the night before Swear In I read an e-mail from my sister Normandy… she gave a Swear In speech in Zarma during her service in Niger… so she was telling me that most people have only two minuets of fame in their life and that hers was in Niger, as a Peace Corps Volunteer, giving her Zarma speech… well indeed… Normandy was right… I had quite the day of fame on Swear In day here in Mali… My host father… Amano Ag Issa… dressed me up in his best Toureg clothing… in the cloths he himself wears when performing in weddings and baptisms… so I went to Swear In dressed up in full Toureg attire… and everyone loved it… and they seemed to love me… perhaps because I was the only person dressed up like a Toureg… and the Toureg people look very cool in appearance… very different than the other Malians… and because this was the first time Peace Corps had taught volunteers to speak Tamashek… they really made a big deal of it… it was a day of fame for sure… I am glad our language instructor, Abdalla, helped all four of us Tamashek students write the glorious speech I gave. I was so happy to deliver it… even though I was sweating under my Toureg attire. So how famous am I… well… I was on T.V. in Mali… and I gave my speech on the lawn of the U.S. embassy in front of the U.S. ambassador… later I had my picture taken with him… when we (all new Peace Corps Volunteers ) went to the ambassadors house for a delicious lunch. Life was good this day of Swearing In… people loved me for what I did and how I did it… and I had… like my sister said… fame… but for two minuets only… because not long after I gave the Tamashek speech… my good friend Kevin tomahawked me in the eyeball with his finger during an intense game of basketball. I was then sent to the hospital in Bamako. So what started out as a great day of fame, resulted in a day that required three days of recovery… oh well… I guess that’s my story of fame… a little fame for a moment… and then a long recovery…

Pictures of Swear In

Jared practicing Tamashek speech with language instructors, Abdalla and Elmedia.

Host father, Amano Ag Issa, making sure everything is going fine

The Tamashek class, language instructors, and Susmita's host parents

Iknet Ag Amano

Bess at the U.S. Ambassadors House

Jared and the U.S. Ambassador

Jared on the way to the hospital in Bamako, hours after giving speech,

can you notice the difference in pupil size, my left pupil was very small while my right pupil was very large.

O.K. fame time over...