Annessa Ann Babic ’98 majored in English and History at KWC. She earned a Ph.D. in U.S. History from Stony Brook University in 2008 and currently teaches at New York Institute of Technology and SUNY College at Old Westbury. She is the co-editor of The Globetrotting Shopaholic (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008), has written scores of academic pieces and uses a pen name to write fiction. She lives in Astoria (Queens), NY.

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It’s that time of year again, when young and old all across the land head back to school.  Back in the day, I stood in line as a new kid to get my polyester gym shorts and white tee. You could smell the fear in the room. Ugh, gym class and middle school. Neither were good combinations, particularly those polyester shorts. Ugh, gym shorts.

The power of literary technique allows me to jump forward seven or so years to my days at Kentucky Wesleyan. Those first days for new freshmen are always filled with wonder and awe, and in many cases a lot of angst arises. Unfortunately, this angst does not necessarily dissipate with the swing of the new semester. More often than not, though, this angst can pass rather seamlessly like the turns of the seasons. These are the things I often try to convey to my own timid freshman, or drifting and worried upperclassmen.

I graduated college in 1998, and yes we had the internet. My college days were shortly before the birth of Google, long before the advent of internet blackmail known as YouTube, at the beginning of cell phones becoming commonplace, right before the installation of key cards versus keys, when the computer lab was the only place to do your work, and at the end of the era when cable was not in dorm rooms. We gathered in common rooms to watch South Park and yell at ESPN games. In the midst of this, course work fell and campus legends loomed.

First, professors do not sharpen their pencils with their teeth or grade your papers with their blood. Trust me. We do not idle away at our desks and computers looking for ways to make your life miserable, and when we say come speak to us you should. Course syllabi are like maps for the semester, and like any good road trip, things may change. So when a professor adds a reading, or changes a due date, he or she is doing it because the nature of the group calls for it. Believe it or not, we have lives. We like ball games, we like dinner with friends, and we like to do things non-academic. Hence, when something is due turn it in. When you have trouble, don’t wait until the last minute to get help. Emailing a professor at 1:00 a.m. the night before the final will not help your grade.

On that same note, but slightly different, college is about more than the books. My fondest memories of KWC involve strolling through the quad and sharing a soda with those I met along the way. There used to be an infant tree outside what is now the Old Grill. In 2000 a tornado came and took it down, and to this day I am still saddened. Why? I read Jack Kerouac under that tree, studied for my favorite class, and Melanie Basham, Sonya Martin and I planned how we would change the world.

My point: remember in the hustle and bustle to stop and talk to those around you. Those first few days you won’t know many or even anyone. Within a week you will certainly know at least twenty-five, and the beauty and joy of KWC is that it is a small campus. There is always a friend around a corner. Though too, the pain of KWC is that it is small. If you do something outlandishly stupid you will be reminded four years later after you walk across the stage. More so, remember to have fun.

Stay tuned for Part 2, coming soon …

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Check out this interview of KWC basketball signee Jason Hall on ESPN’s First Take. Jason earned a scholarship even though he has born with only three fingers on each hand:

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 Laura Leach ‘95 is working as a Peace Corps volunteer in Uganda. She will be sending regular updates to KWConnect about her experiences in Africa. Click here to read her story from the beginning.

(Tororo is on the right, just above the box.)

One of the toughest emotional challenges during Peace Corps is losing members of your training class. After that first weekend with our host families, a married couple that we came over with decided to go back to the United States. They had dreamed of being in the Peace Corps back in the early years of the Peace Corps, but they had been discouraged by their parents. All of their kids are now grown, and they had recently retired, and decided to pursue their dream. The wife was an education volunteer, and the husband was an economic development volunteer, and both brought with them a wealth of knowledge and experience.

After that first weekend, they decided they had made a mistake and could not spend two years away from their children and grandchildren. With a bat of an eye, they were gone and there was nothing for the rest of us to do but move forward.

Snacks and Weddings
Things were looking pretty sunny for me at my home stay. I had chosen carrots and cucumbers for my first night snack, and this turned out to be a good move. Ugandans are very warm and welcoming people. They go out of their way for their guests, and as soon as Jane found out I enjoyed carrots and cucumbers, they become a regular part of my diet throughout my stay.

My first weekend at home stay, Jane had a wedding reception she was catering, and I got to tag along. I can’t imagine crashing a wedding reception in the United States and the wedding party being okay with that, but there I was at a wedding reception where I didn’t know anyone and no one knew me, and I was greeted and told that I was “most welcomed.”

I was the only white person there, which means I got a lot of attention, especially from the children. This wedding was a western style wedding being held in Kampala. The main difference between an American wedding reception and this one was that there were many more speeches given at the Ugandan reception, and then the cake was served to the guests by the bridesmaids and groomsmen. I thought that was a nice touch.

Heading East
Pre-service training is all leading to you getting your own site where you will live and work. Although we had to wait until our last week of training to find out the exact community where we would be located, we got a big hint when we were divided into our language groups. I was put in the dhopadhola  group with Mary Beth, Greg and Racheal. Only one district in Uganda speaks dhopadhola, and that is Tororo. I would be heading east.

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 Laura Leach ‘95 is working as a Peace Corps volunteer in Uganda. She will be sending regular updates to KWConnect about her experiences in Africa. Click here to read her story from the beginning.

Do you like children? Yes. Do you require a lot of privacy? Yes. I was filling out my home stay questionnaire. During our pre-service training, each volunteer is placed with a home stay family. The idea is for us to interact with Ugandans, learn about the culture, and also learn how to do things the local way – like wash clothes in a basin and cook using a sigiri (small charcoal stove).

I’m sure there is also an emotional element there, too … we hopefully would bond with our Ugandan family, so we wouldn’t bolt and return to the US because we missed the families we left behind. The host families also filled out questionnaires, and the night before we left for Wakiso, Irene (the cultural trainer) was matching volunteers with host families.

The Mom

Laura and her home stay "mom," Jane.

When the big day came, we were all given an index card with the name of our host parents, which parish they lived in, what religion they practiced, and how many children they have. My card said Jane, two children, Catholic, and I won’t even try to remember how to spell the parish now. It turns out the card was a little misleading. Jane is Catholic, but she is virtually a non-attending Catholic much as I am virtually a non-attending Christian. She does have a son and daughter, but the daughter was away at college and the son was away at boarding school. Jane is a school teacher in Mengo, which is a suburb of Kampala. She also has a side business as a caterer. In short, Jane is a very busy woman.

Jane is a widow, but she has a houseboy named Joseph who was responsible for cooking, cleaning, collecting water from the well, opening up the house in the morning and closing it up at night, doing the laundry and running errands. I later learned that Joseph was Jane’s nephew and that it is not uncommon for families to have a relative working as a house boy or girl. Joseph didn’t speak much English at all, and I didn’t speak much Luganda, so we had an interesting relationship that consisted of a lot of laughing, smiling, and pointing.

On the big day when we met our families, all of the volunteers were seated in the dining area at ROCCO, a guest house that had been hired out to serve as our training site. The host families didn’t all arrive at once – they sort of trickled in. I sat and watched the hugging and hellos, and waited for my turn. Those of us whose “parents” had not arrived yet looked like the animals left at the end of a pet adoption day at the local pet store. You could sort of sense the rising desperation that we wouldn’t be picked. Certainly it wouldn’t be unheard of for someone to change his or her mind about having a complete stranger stay in his or her home for 10 weeks.

Eventually my “mom” did arrive, and we sat down and talked a bit with my friend Mary Beth, a volunteer from Missouri whose home stay Mom was friends with Jane. Slowly, host families and volunteers started going their separate ways.

The House

Jane's house, where Laura stayed for 10 weeks.

Jane’s home was beautiful. It was a four-bedroom house with a garage. She had electricity, but no running water. The latrine was outside, but the bathing room was right next to my bedroom, and there was a door that opened from my bedroom into the bathing room, so no streaking through the house in a towel. Yes!!!

There was also a refrigerator, which I didn’t appreciate the significance of at the time, but certainly do now after going a year without having one. After we got all of my things moved into my bedroom, Jane asked me what I wanted to eat. I didn’t know at the time, but how I answered this one question would impact my future happiness for the next 10 weeks.

Stay tuned …

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At the entrance of Lweza

Our first few days in country were spent at Lweza Training & Conference Center in Entebbe. The pace was slow as we were all recovering from jet lag. We met Shirley, who was our training director, Irene, who was responsible for teaching us about Ugandan culture, and Ruth, who was acting as the safety and security director at that time.

Safety
The safety and security session was the most memorable, but then again most scarring events usually are. Seriously, by the time this session was finished, I was convinced I would never travel anywhere within country during the course of my stay.

They had a current volunteer come and talk to us, and much of her discussion was about riding matatus (passenger vans that are used as taxis). Don’t give them your bag.  Don’t get in until you confirm where they are going. Don’t pay them until you arrive. It might be a good idea to copy down the license number before you get in, and my favorite piece of advice … don’t get into an otherwise empty vehicle with someone you don’t know because of the “human sacrifice problem.” WHAT??? Um, we’re new to this country…everyone is a stranger!

During that training session I also became frightened of walking down the street because it was likely someone would try to steal my bag. I also discovered riding motorcycles was strictly prohibited because so many people are killed or injured from motorcycle accidents in Uganda there is an entire ward devoted to accident victims in the hospital. My means of getting around were looking pretty limited at this point. I later found out that I was not the only volunteer terrified by this session, and I believe they have modified it since our group’s induction.

Shots and Language
During our time at Lweza we met our program directors (APCD). My program director’s name was Jolie. She served as a volunteer in Togo. When we met, she was very relaxed and asked things about our trip there, how things were going so far, how my family felt about me coming to Uganda, and what I was interested in doing regarding my assignment.

We also met with our medical officers who reviewed our files with us, and gave us our malaria prophylaxis. I was really surprised because I thought I would have to get tons of shots before I left for Uganda, but instead we received shots throughout our pre-service training.

We also started our Luganda language training during our time at Lweza. We divided into groups, and my group was led by Irene the cultural trainer. I was really nervous before leaving for Uganda regarding learning a new language. I had taken a little French and a little Spanish in school, and had mastered neither of them. We were given access to some basic training materials online before leaving, but I had not memorized anything yet. I found that most of the volunteers shared the same concerns regarding language.

Volunteers on the grounds at Lweza

The Food
Besides getting inducted to our training, and our culture, we also were introduced to Ugandan cuisine during these first few days. My friends had rightfully made fun of me before leaving for Uganda because one of the main crops in Uganda is bananas, and I HATE bananas. Ugandans pick them while they are still green, boil them, and mash them. They cover the pot with banana leaves while it cooks. The result is a golden mashed food they call matoke. I tried matoke once. I did not hate it, but it definitely is not at the top of my list.

Other popular dishes here are rice and beans, posho (which is a starchy food made out of maize and cassava flour), millet bread, several different types of greens, roasted pumpkin, cabbage, fish, goat, beef, pork, chicken, and my favorite, chapatti, which is a flat bread fried and sometimes served rolled with an egg, and called a rolex.

My favorite time of the day is tea time. During training we had breakfast, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea, and dinner. The tea consisted of your option of regular black tea, African tea that was made with milk and a little spicy, coffee, and Cadbury drinking chocolate. This was accompanied by mandazi (fried dough), doughnuts, samosas (small triangular shaped crust filled with either a vegetable mixture or meat mixture and fried), or g-nuts (same thing as peanuts). It was delicious, and I’m convinced if I wasn’t sick so much during my time at training I’d weigh 200 pounds by now. 

Short Calls
After a few days in Entebbe, it was time to be transported to Wakiso town.  Wakiso is where we would be living with host families for the next 10 weeks during training.  If there was anything I feared as much or more than learning a new language, it was the prospect of being a house guest for the next 10 weeks. I am a very private person by nature, and while part of me looked forward to connecting with a local family, the other part of me dreaded having to share living space with strangers for so long.

On our way to Wakiso, we were going to make a quick stop in the Ugandan capitol of Kampala to do some quick shopping. We were told we all needed to buy a little bucket. Why do we need a little bucket? It is in case you need to make a short call at night. Short call? Apparently it would pose a risk to our host families to go outside in the middle of the night to use the restroom, so the bucket was for us to go in during the night. Again I found myself wondering … what have I gotten myself into?

Tune in next time to read about pre-service training and life with a host family.

Find about more about the Peace Corps.

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Laura Leach ‘95 is working as a Peace Corps volunteer in Uganda. She will be sending regular updates to KWConnect about her experiences in Africa. This is her second entry. Click here to read her story from the beginning.

High Cholesterol? Really?
It wasn’t easy getting into the Peace Corps, and as you can imagine, I was pretty excited when the time came to leave. Actually, it took over a year from the time I applied to when I left for my service. The culprit that delayed the process is a little thing called high cholesterol.

I completed the application, got three people to write letters of recommendation for me, went through the interview, and then went in for my medical and dental appointments. When everything was said and done, the U.S. government decided that I needed to lower my cholesterol and sustain it at a lower level for six months before I left for Uganda.

This amuses me in retrospect only because once I arrived and had my medical review with the medical staff here, they said my beloved Crestor pills were not listed on my medical chart, and I haven’t taken one since I arrived in country.

Technology
The fact that there are high medical standards that have to be met before you can leave for service didn’t surprise me, but what did surprise me is that I never had a single face-to-face encounter with anyone from the Peace Corps throughout the entire application process. The interview was via phone. Updates came via email. My acceptance letter came through the US Postal Service, and conversations about placements and delays took place via the phone.

I’m curious what the application process was like back when Peace Corps first started up in the 60s before the World Wide Web came along. One thing that has become increasingly clear throughout this entire experience is that this is NOT the same Peace Corps of the ‘60s. Sure, some of the problems that faced developing countries back then are the same problems we are still working on today, but today’s villagers come equipped with cell phones (at least some of them do) and better access to news and information from around the world.

In fact, one of the initiatives taking place in Peace Corps is called TAP (technology against poverty). The mere fact that I am sitting here in my office in Uganda typing on a laptop is a sign of how things have changed over time since the Peace Corps began 49 years ago.  I would have had to send my blog on an airgram back then. ;)

One of the nice things about technology is that I got to meet some of the fellow volunteers from my volunteer class via Facebook before we met at staging in Philadelphia. There were originally 35 volunteers scheduled to go to Uganda with my group – 10 economic development volunteers and 25 education volunteers. Two volunteers didn’t show up in Philadelphia, and one volunteer got some bad news from home the day before he left for staging and decided to turn around and go home rather than continue on to Uganda.

Staging
Staging is mostly a blur to me now – partly because it is a very short process, and partly because I was teetering between excitement and totally freaking out the entire time. The main event at staging was completing paperwork and making sure all the i’s were dotted and all the t’s were crossed. Staging was also a good glimpse at what to expect during the next 10 weeks of pre-service training…group activities, flipchart paper and magic markers, and skits. I don’t know how someone who was so involved in theater growing up could loathe having to perform skits so much as an adult, but if I ever have to perform another skit again it will be too soon.

After one night in Philadelphia, we were on our way to New York City to catch our flight to Uganda. When we arrived at Entebbe, there was this old guy wearing jeans, and a baseball cap. He looked like he could have easily fit in with the buddies that my Grandpa used to meet for coffee in Hartford, KY. I assumed he was an overly enthusiastic retiree volunteer who was heading up the welcome committee for the new volunteers. Turns out he was Larry Brown, the country director for Peace Corps Uganda. It was at the moment that I discovered that this was our fearless leader that I finally relaxed and decided that I might just fit in okay here.

Tune in next time to read about our first few days in Uganda.

Find about more about the Peace Corps.

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