Swearing in speech

I had promised to provide the speech that I delivered at the swearing in ceremony at the American Embassy September 2, 2011.

"When Peace Corps group 82 stepped off the plane in Kingston on June 29,2011,we embarked on a journey into the unknown leaving all that was familiar to embrace the life of a Peace Corps trainee living in Jamaica.

The past two months have been full of challenges, frustrations, training, tears, fears, laughter, training, new friendships, Devon House ice-cream, and, of course, more training.
At last, we are ready to do "the toughest job we will ever love." The Youth As Promise sector extends a "big up" to all the PC staff and volunteers that have worked so hard to prepare us for successful service. We have truly felt your love and commitment to our learning process, to our health and safety, to our cultural integration, to finding our host families and just the right work and home sites for the next two years.

We gratefully acknowledge the many hours and sometimes "hair pulling" moments you have spent trying to coordinate the myriad number of details that encompass this process;again, thank you. The YAP group are ready and willing to answer the call "how far will you go?" I love inspiring quotes and from Nelson Mandela these words, "A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination". I believe that each member of Youth As Promise has this winning combination, a good head and a good heart, and with these, we will succeed.

Mother Theresa's great words of guidance follow:

"People are often unreasonable and self-centered......forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives.....be kind anyway.
If you are honest, people may cheat you.....Be honest anyway.
If you find happiness......people may be jealous.......be happy anyway.
The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow......do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough......give your best anyway. For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway."

In closing, I would like to sing a song that my host mother in Hellshire taught me that perhaps expresses some of our feelings:
I no Bon yah, but mi a live yah
Mi nah lef yah
Fi go America
No way sah
Pot a boil ya
Belly full ya
Sweet Jamaica

Thank you

cont' funerals and toilet paper

the last entry stopped abruptly so, I will complete:  the journey back to Falmouth, then another taxi carrying additional bags of groceries.  This is such an arduous experience that one avoids shopping as much as possible and sometimes just opts to do without! 
Mornings here are my favorite time - sun filtering through the coconut and banana leaves, chickens and their baby chicks digging in the leaves and grass for breakfast, roosters crowing, men and women and children already walking on the road before 6:00am going to school or work, the almost lyrical sounds greetings in Patois being spoken, "Wa gwaan?"  what's happening and the replies, "mi cris mon, or "everting irie" both replies meaning I am well, I am good mon.

Just this past week, I experienced a cultural phenomena - I heard sounds that at first I thought were a babying crying  but when I looked out my back door, a goat was hanging from a tree, hind legs tied to a limb.  A man with a machete soon ended its misery by slitting it's throat!  I stood transfixed as I was watching an ancient ritual.  The goat was being slaughtered for my landlord's birthday celebration the following day. Jamaicans love curried goat.  The head is cut off and cleaned up to make Mannish Water, a favored soup that is supposed to increase virility and stamina in a man.  I must stop now  but will tell more about the party later.