Swearing-In: Post-game commentary

As of August 20th, 2005, I am now officially a Peace Corps Volunteer! It’s been 10 weeks of blood, sweat and tears, but it’s all been worthwhile. The ceremony is held on Friday morning, and on Saturday, I’m off to my worksite with my counterpart.

It’s hard to describe the feelings I’m having at this moment, because it’s a mixture of happiness, excitement, fright and sadness at the same time – not unlike any sort of graduation ceremony, you are happy because all that you have suffered for is now coming to an end, and you’ve achieved your goal, but at the same time, you fear what comes next, and you enter the next phase knowing you leave behind your friends into the fray on your own.

Still, passing training is receiving a mark of confidence by the administration, something not entirely easy to come by, and it’s quickly becoming clear that the quality of the site that you’re sent to is somehow related to what they think of you as a person, so I’m told I should come out of this feeling proud and happy, which I do.

The ceremony felt somewhat dampened and anticlimactic because the day began with the news that two volunteers were being sent home for some incredibly unfortunate choices they had made on Wednesday and Thursday, and unlike the past volunteers who had left early on, the two volunteers were very much a big part of the group and provided a good spirit to the group. I think they would’ve have made great volunteers, but to make one stupid mistake and to be sent home on that account one day before swearing-in, after 10 weeks of training… ugh.

Oddly, while our group felt sad on the inside, there wasn’t much of a reaction because the policy regarding their decision had been hammered into our heads so many times on an almost daily basis – had it not been, they might have had a case, but it was very difficult to argue against the administration’s decision to send them home. We took the news and had little reaction because we were so used to losing volunteers by this point, their departure making a total of 8 volunteers who have left our group. Having volunteers sent home devastates everyone, not just the Peace Corps who had spent so much money on them, but also the volunteers’ Kazakhstani counterparts and schools who had waited for teachers.

After the news however, we just deal with it – the rest of the ceremony went rather well. The elation of having completed our training and being together there, with our language coordinators, our host families, our counterparts, and our technical training staff was enough to overcome any feelings we had.

Held in a Sanatorium in Almaty, the ceremony didn’t have a lot of fanfare, but it was nice enough to serve our purposes – the hall was large enough to accommodate everyone, and afterwards they had a nice slideshow for us to watch as well.

The ceremony began with Kazakh performances, and speeches from our technical directors, followed by a speech by Kris Besch, our country director. We also had the deputy ambassador come out to make a speech, which was interesting. Three volunteers were also chosen to make speeches. The first two, by Morgan and Josiah, addressed the general audience – being the best language speakers in their particular group, they did their speech in Kazakh and Russian.



I made the last speech.

It was terrifying, because the last time I made a speech was back in high school – in addition, this particular ceremony did not have a podium, so there was nothing to hide behind or clutch onto. When I raised my hand, you could actually see it trembling, even though I felt fairly calm. Oddly enough, as a teacher I feel fine in front of a classroom or speaking extemporaneously, but it’s when I take the time to prepare and stress for a speech, I get nervous? Weird.

My speech basically considered the different expectations that we had coming into PST – mainly around things like adapting to a new culture, washing our clothes by hand, eating strange foods, but now those sort of challenges seemed actually quite petty and pointless. What has affected our training the most was not those sort of experiences, but the friends that we made here through training.

I finished the speech with a poem from a soviet poet, Vladimir Visotski, that talks about how when you meet stranger, and you’re not sure if he’s a friend or not – climb a mountain with him, and if he makes it with you to the top, then he’s a friend.

Everyone seemed to enjoy the speech, and I got a few good laughs out of the crowd. People also seemed to enjoy it because the speech was sincere at the same time. I also heard later on that the whole ceremony made it onto the evening news, and parts of my speech were shown.

After the ceremony, some of us went out to eat at a Chinese restaurant, and then we went home in the evening to spend time with our families.

Tomorrow morning: Ust-Kamenogorsk.