Day after swearing in!

Yeah! We are officially VOLUNTEERS now! golly, that took a while :) Yesterday morning we went to the U.S. ambassadors house and had the ceremony. It was very nice, pretty simple, and they had a wonderful array of food! Of course we are very excited about anything that isn't rice, but seriously it was awesome. I could have filled up on desserts alone, of which they had about 20 different types. So, we took the oath, and now have our id's and no one, no one may call us "trainees" anymore! We were happy this morning when we came to the office and the guards asks us for our id's for the first time:)

Well, I'm sure you will get more details from Andy's blog about training village and I think he spend a good chunk of time yesterday putting up pictures up so make sure to check those out.

This will be the last full day here in Kombo before we go back to our site to officially start our service tomorrow. Tomorrow is going to be very chaotic, I foresee, (actually this isn't a big leap because it seems everything orchestrated for us is!) because we have a ton of mattresses, gas burners, propane tanks, metal trunks, food, etc. that everyone provisioned for the "3 month challenge". Getting all those things in cars with the right people going the right direction in the country, and making sure it's strapped down enought to withstand the leaps it will surely take because of the roads, is going to be a great challenge. The "3 month challenge" is something that our PC people request you take on. It is a challenge to you to stay in your site for 3 months without leaving it to spend the night somewhere else, or travel outside of your village very far. They want us to really force ourselves to get to know our surroundings very well, so that after the three months we will be able to know what the community needs and will really know our family well. For Andy and I it won't be very difficult because our site is a pretty good size city. We will be able to get everything we could get in Kombo there too. Though we surely will have a hankering to get out and explore the upper regions of the country after three months.
The place we will live in is called Brikama. When we first drove to it on site visit (last week) I was a little apprehensive because coming from Bambako a pretty small village, it felt like a big bustling city. I still think that it is a pretty good size bustling city, but only in the Gambian sense! There is a large market about a K from our house. It is open every day instead of just once a week, like most of the village markets are. There is a lot of fresh produce, and fresh meat (large livestock slaughtered and alive), and all kinds of things.
The Gambia college is located about a kilometer from our house, (really quick bike ride or short walk) All the teachers in the Gambia are trained through here, so I'm hoping that I will be able to make a substantial impact because I am at the center of the action. Andy will be working there too, though he seems like he might want to spend more time with the National Beekeepers Association. There is also an insane "carpark" which is where all the gelley gelley drivers go to pick up passengers to cram into their vans and take across bumpy roads to pretty much any destination in the country. You can not even imagine the chaos that ensues when a "toubab" (too-bob=outsider or white person) is near the carpark. Everyone is trying to hustle you into their van, and you have to be very wary of pickpockets we have heard. There are a ton of cars trying to go from a culdisack type area through a bottleneck entrance and exit. Horns are honking, the van driver's apprentices are yelling at people different destinations, men are yelling at each other, there are people winding through the narrow spaces between the crammed cars selling things like bananas, boiled mangoes, etc. from trays they carry on their heads, it is crazy! Last week when we walked down there to make our first trip from Brikama I saw this man sitting on a mat on the ground, surrounding by severed goat heads, and he was roasting one. I did a double take! Did not see the other parts of the goats though.... hmmm..??.. Anyhow you get the picture.