On Saturday morning I was sitting in the In-Country Resource Center checking e-mails and scanning the articles posted on the New York Times. A PC staff member walked in with a large bag of t-shirts, he greeted me and asked if I was interested in playing a soccer game with a group of international volunteers. “Yeah I will!” (Eyeing the large bag of t-shirts). He handed me a few and asked if I knew anyone else in town that would be interested. The next volunteer I saw, Henry, was also equally excited as me to play and to get a free Peace Corps t-shirt. After that it was easy to find two or three other volunteers to participate.
Monday morning I arrived at the Peace Corps Bureau in Bamako to travel with Peace Corps staff to the International Conference Center for the inauguration of 100 Malian volunteers. We set up a PC info booth and then sat in the conference room for an hour and a half waiting for the arrival of Malian’s President Amadou Toumani Toure (A.T.T.). Guest speakers from various organizations gave speeches. Peace Corps was represented by a Peace Corps Response Volunteer working in Bamako. She did a wonderful job; the crowd was pleased and surprised by her ability to speak Bambara, as she spoke of her experience as a PCV in a rural village near San, Mali, and gave blessings to the future Malian volunteers. During the event there were several animations, one that stands out the most was a Malian rapper that gave a lip-synch performance. It was riveting. I have only seen lip-synch performers briefly on ORTM (a Mali television channel) so it was a treat to watch one live.
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| Standing for the President A.T.T.'s entrance |
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| Malian lip synch rapper |
The Malian volunteers stood and took an oath swearing-in to serve their country.
Immediately after, Peace Corps staff and I along with other volunteers present scurried down the stairs to the Peace Corps booth to wait for A.T.T. to pass by with his entourage. We all got to shake hands with the president and offer a Peace Corps pin that he placed on his suit. Enjoy the following pictures below.
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| the hand shake |
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| Peace Corps booth: Volunteers and Staff with U.S. Ambassador on far right |
We then had 2-3 hours left before the volunteer soccer match scheduled at 4 p.m. So we grabbed lunch and rested before getting PC transport to Stade Coulibaly. The field had real grass! The 4 other volunteers and I ran on to the field to kick a ball around.
Around 4 p.m. they begin passing out blue and yellow futbol uniforms. The teams consisted of a mix of Malian men and women, British volunteers, Japanese volunteers, Chinese volunteers, and Peace Corps volunteers. I was on the blue team. With in the first 5-10 minutes the yellow team scored, but by the half it was 1-1. The game ended in a tie so there was a shoot-out and my team blue won. Some guy then grabbed me and said I was going to represent my team as the captain to receive a trophy from the president of sports. It was all a little over-dramatic in the way it was being presented and with the tv station recording the event I decided to be a little over the top. When the trophy was presented to me I kissed it and raised it into the air and then some guy next to me grabbed my hand to bring the trophy down to a level that he could kiss it as well. It was too much, but awesome at the same time as we cheered to our small victory. Then sadly as we were leaving we had to return our yellow and blue jerseys. “What we don’t get to keep them, lame.” Walking out to the car we passed a row of photos on the ground taken from the event, there were some good ones, but as usual the price per photo was more than what any of us Peace Corps Volunteers were willing to spend. Which is sad, because they were only $2, what the hell are we going to do when we get back to America and are expected to pay 4x that for a similar sized photo.
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| Dancing during the half |
