The Sudesters |
ME and my LCF, Angela |
D'Gary |
Wednesday, 8/27/14
Today Peace
Corps put on a Thank You Community celebration for our host families. The ceremony was held on the basketball court
in the PCTC, where they had set up a stage and tents. While waiting for the ceremony to start we
were able to hangout and talk to our families for what would be one of the last
times till our return to PCTC for IST.
For me, my Neny, younger brother, and oldest sister showed up for the celebration. The ceremony was really nice. It was started with a speech from Robert, the
Training Director, which was followed by a speech from Deanna, a girl from my
Stage that we voted to represent us at the ceremony. After Deanna’s speech a few of the trainees
sang a Malagasy song they had prepared for the event and then once again we
were all surprised by being asked, without prior knowledge, to sing ‘Bon
Voyage,’ a song we had been preparing
for our swearing in ceremony. After our
song, which I have to say went very well, there was a speech given by the
representative of the community, followed by a speech from the mayor of
Mantasoa, and lastly by Dee, the Country Director. The whole ceremony was ended with each family
being called up, in turn, and presented with a framed ‘Thank You’ certificate
and photo graphed with their trainee.
After the
ceremony had concluded, everyone made there way to the dining hall where PC had
prepared snacks and refreshments. During
this time a bunch of the trainees preformed the thriller dance for the families
and PC played music for everyone to dance to.
Many people took this time to also converse and to take pictures with
their family members. Many of the
trainees also took this time to take group pictures with their LCF’s/classmates
and region mates.
Once the
families had all left we had our very last tech session of PST; Malagasy music
and dance. For this session PC invited
D’Gary to come play music for us. D’Gary
is an internationally know guitarist who plays Malagasy Traditional music (for
those who have never heard his work you should really look him up). His guitar playing skills were amazing. After D’Gary had finished his session we
switched to the dancing part of the session.
In this section, PC played music from the different regions of Madagascar
and the LCF’s demonstrated the traditional dance to that music and the trainees
joined in to dance as well. After the
LCF’s had gone though all of the regions the night just turned into a dance
party and we celebrated our last night in PST.
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