Wednesday, January 29, 2020

W e d n e s day, Ja n ua ry 2 9, 2 0 2 0

global impact OSU ALumni share their experiences serving with the peace corps.

C OV E R S T O RY

OSU in the Peace Corps: Coming back changed Elli e Meler o N e ws Ed ito r @ ele an or _ m el er o

With its rainy, cold and gray weather, Stillwater couldn’t be much more different from the dry heat Uganda experiences in January.

It is that warm weather on the other side of the world that masters student Brandi Murley often finds herself daydreaming about. Murley, a member of Oklahoma State’s Masters in International Agriculture Program, returned to Stillwater in August after she served in Uganda for three years as a volunteer with the Peace Corps.

“That’s how I first heard about [Peace Corps] was through MIAP,” Murley said. “But also, my own interest in wanting to kind of have a step up in experience when it comes time for me to graduate and apply for jobs.”

After three months acclimating to Ugandan culture and learning to speak Acoli, Murley moved to Kitgum where she worked with Mercy Corps, an international non-governmental organization dedicated to fighting poverty.

Murley’s work focused on helping Ugandan youth ages 15-24. She did jobs ranging from training peer educators to raising money to build a basketball court. One of her biggest jobs was to teach people how to make and market liquid soap in a

cost efficient manner.

After two years in Kitgum, Murley moved to Arua and worked for Care International for a year.

Care International’s focus in Arua is on providing protection for women and children fleeing the south Sudanese crisis. Part of Murley’s job was to go into communities and give domestic violence awareness classes as well as help find more secure housing for women than the tent they lived in in the refugee camps.

Murley’s experience living abroad taught her several lessons and changed her view of the world. She said she is more openminded than when she arrived, and she learned a lot from the Ugandans.

“Be respectful of people’s situations,” Murley said. “If you see someone on the street doing something, know that their situation does not define who they are.”

Murley isn’t the only person who came back a changed person after her time with the Peace Corps.

Hannah Kafer and her husband, Jonathon Suttle, graduated from OSU in 2014, and from September 2017 to November they served with the Peace Corps in Lesotho.

Lesotho is a small country surrounded by South Africa. Kafer and Suttle lived in the semi-urban city of Morija, where they both worked in schools.

Kafer taught grades one

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 29, 2020

courtesy of Brandi Murley

Brandi Murley (back left) poses with 30 young entreprenures at StartUp Uganda Camp in Kitgum, Uganda. Murley lived in Uganda for three years as a volunteer for the Peace Corps.

through seven, and Suttle taught math at the all-girls high school where the couple lived.

Kafer had wanted to join the Peace Corps since high school, and she knew people who had done it. She also studied abroad in France during her undergrad, so she had experience living outside the United States. With that in mind, she thought she was prepared for life in Lesotho, but there were still things she had to adjust to.

“One of my biggest difficulties was dealing with public transport,”

Kafer said. “You use a minibus taxi system to get everywhere for the most part, and they don’t have a schedule timing system, so it can get kind of frustrating.”

Public transport was just one of the struggles Kafer and her husband faced.

They didn’t have heating or air conditioning, and for the first few months they didn’t have running water, either. They had to learn to cook from scratch and with less ingredients.

They had to learn to survive on less.

Although there were difficulties, Suttle said life in

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Lesotho was enjoyable.

“I liked learning about humanity and seeing nature and wildlife,” Suttle said.

Kafer and Suttle forged relationships with their students and fellow teachers during their two years in Lesotho, and they were able to learn a lot from them. The lessons they learned helped make their time in Africa easier and gave them a different outlook on life.

The relationships volunteers make while abroad is a big part of what makes the Peace Corps work, which is why volunteers

are supposed to immerse themselves in their communities. For Murley, the friendships she made will last a lifetime, and she misses them now that she’s gone.

“There are relationships that aren’t, going into it, relationships I expected to get,” Murley said. “Like my friend, Jimmy’s, aunt.

She’s like an old grandma that you can go to with any troubles, and she’ll just be like, ‘Here, come into my house.’ Ugandans are very welcoming.”

STORY CONTINUES ON PAGE 6

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S P O RT S

New year, new coach, new young team: Women’s golf preview

Courtesy of OSU Athletics

Craig Robertson, in his first season as coach, brings a team full of fresh faces to the 2020 season.

C h r i s B ecker S taff Repo rt er @ b hris_cec k er 3 1 6

Last season was rough for the Oklahoma State women’s golf team.

After finishing the season with only one tournament win and only two other top-10 finishes in the regular

season the Cowgirls finished their year with a sixth place finish in the Big 12 Championship. After which OSU Athletic Director Mike Holder announced Courtney Jones would no longer be the coach of the Cowgirls.

After a short coaching search former Cowboy

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 29, 2020

golfer Greg Robertson was named the next head coach.

Robertson was on the 1995 NCAA Championship team with Cowboys head coach Alan Bratton and a part of the 1996 Big Eight championship team.

Robertson comes to Stillwater after six seasons as the

coach at Kent State. Robertson made a big splash with the Kent State program. His team won 27 tournaments, six MAC titles, he coached four WGCA All-Americans, six MAC Golfers of the Year and five conference medalists. His Kent State teams played in the last three NCAA tournaments including two match plays appearances.

Holder spoke highly of the hire in a press release to the fan base. Holder said he is excited for what the future holds under Robertson.

“I couldn’t be happier for our current players, recruits and future students,” Holder said. “We’re blessed that he’s accepted the challenge of leading our women’s program and I’m expecting him to do great things.”

Robertson said he is excited to be back in Stillwater.

“Oklahoma State is a very special place to me, and I couldn’t be more thrilled to be coming back to Stillwater,” Robertson said. “If there’s one place that I would call my ‘dream job,’ this would be it. I can’t wait to get started with the team and working towards winning a national championship. A lot of great things are happening with Oklahoma State athletics, and I’m proud to be part of it.”

Robertson has already made an impact on the Cowgirls this season. The team won its first tournament of the fall season six strokes ahead of second place Texas Tech. In their four fall tournaments the Cowgirls already have more top-10 finishes than they did all of

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last season.

The Cowgirls bring in a young and talented class for this season. The Cowgirls bring in five freshmen to pair with four sophomores, a junior and a senior. The freshmen class is led by Isabella Fierro.

Fierro, from Merida, Mexico, won the Betsy Rawls Longhorn Classic with a score of 15-underpar. Fierro was also invited to compete in the Mexican Women’s Amateur where she finished second place.

Fierro is the No. 11 International player in the Palmer Cup rankings and was named to the ANNIKA Award watch list, which is the award given to the best female collegiate golfer.

Robertson said her ability to come in and make an immediate impact on the team is crucial.

“I think anytime you get any of the players that come in and can step up and win a tournament and shoot 15-under, like she did, it helps raise the level of everyone else,” Robertson said. “It also helps those three, four, five players knowing that you have a player like that who is a top player in the world playing in front of you.”

Through four events in the fall season, she has a 70.07 stroke average. That average is the seventh-best nationally and if held onto could be the best in school history. She is the No. 13 ranked individual and the No.7 ranked freshman according to Golfstat.

Maja Stark, from Abbekas, Sweden, is a world top-50 amateur and will be

joining the Cowgirls in time for this season. In April, Stark advanced to the final round of the first Augusta National Women’s Amateur, a tournament of the top-72 women amateurs in the world, where she competed alongside of Fierro at the world famous Augusta National Golf Club.

Robertson has high expectations for Stark this season. He said he believes she could be the most talented golfer on the team.

“I just want to see her get adjusted as quickly as possible,” Robertson said. “I just want to see her get adjusted to school, get adjusted with college golf and kind of our system. She comes from the Swedish Golf Federation, which they have their way of doing things which is fairly close to how we do it. She’s going to have to make some adjustments while she’s here. From a golf standpoint she’s as talented as we have and that includes Isabella (Fierro). There’s no reason that she can’t be one of the top players in college golf by the end of this year.”

After a stellar fall season the Cowgirls will enter the spring slate at No. 14 making them one of only three ranked Big 12 teams.

Texas is ranked as the best women’s team to begin the season and Baylor comes in at No. 25. After Baylor only one other Big 12 team is ranked inside of the top-30 with Texas Tech coming in at No. 29.

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S P O RT S

International recruiting plays integral part in Cowgirls success Matt H ubbard S taff Wri te r @ Matth o c o l ly

Claire Boomer/O’Colly

Sara Rodrigues, a freshman quard from Sao Paulo, Brazil, is one of several internatioinal

recruits on the Cowgirls Basketball team.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 29, 2020

Touting six different nationalities from three different continents, the Cowgirls have forged their successes on international recruiting.

While women’s basketball players make up just 4.4% of international athletes, the Cowgirls’ roster is made up of 33% international players.

Coaches can have issues when recruiting international players, such as the challenges international athletes face when they travel thousands of miles away from home.

Sara Rodrigues, a freshman guard from Sao Paulo, Brazil, struggled facing the way American’s speak English as well as their eating habits.

“For me it was the English and the food because it was so different,” Rodrigues said. “While my English was good, it got better when I got here but, it was really bad, and I was scared to make mistakes so I was just quiet and looking around, and for food, Americans don’t have good habits eating healthy food so it was kind of hard to adapt.”

Bigue Sarr, a forward from Dakar, Senegal, faced similar struggles to Rodrigues, saying that the language was the hardest thing to adapt to.

“The language, it was very hard, because for example for me, at school we were learning the

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British English, the more formal English, when I came here, when I was talking to people, they were like ‘Why are you so formal?’” Sarr said.

“That’s how I learned it, and when they talked to me, I could not understand it.”

Coach Jim Littell said that his goal is to help all of his players adjust to life in college.

“We hope that we help all of these young ladies adjust because whether they’re a domestic student or an international student, there’s an adjustment going from the high school level or the JC level to a BCS school,” Littell said. “It’s kind of funny. There are some language issues that I catch myself with, slang sometimes. They’re taught proper English you know? And I’m country.

Their proper English and my country don’t always collide. Sometimes they’re hesitant to ask, ‘Hey coach what did you mean there?’ So I think it takes a little while with the language barrier.”

Littell also expanded on the struggles that come with international recruiting.

“There’s a lot of red tape you have to go through. It varies from different countries sometimes. Our people in the international office do a lot of work here at Oklahoma State and it’s not an easy process,” Littell said. “We’ve got

kids where we’ve gone to Brazil to recruit, and then we’ve got kids that we recruited from junior colleges that were international students that we saw there. It’s a different recruiting process with each young lady, and it’s one that takes a lot of red tape to get all the paperwork done.”

Each international player has their own story to tell about their recruiting process as well. For Rodrigues, it was about having the right connections along with her talent that she has brought to the team.

“For me it was all connections, coaches knowing each other and stuff,” Rodrigues said.

“My coach in Brazil knew a coach that played here in high school, and they knew each other. Both of them knew coach Littell, so that’s how the connection happened.”

For Sarr, her recruiting process was different, seeing as she came from a junior college.

“At first I was at the junior college in Americus, Georgia, South Georgia Tech, and I was selected to go play in the freshman all-star game, so that’s the way coach Littell saw me,” Sarr said. “It was in July, then he gave me an offer. I came for a visit in September and committed in November. Now I’m here.”

PAGE 5

C OV E R S T O RY STORY CONTINUEd from PAGE 2

The volunteers enjoyed their time abroad, but they missed their families and friends while they were gone. Even though they looked forward to coming back to their loved ones, they learned that reverse culture shock is real.

Kafer said she and Suttle got so used to the Lesotho lifestyle that the transition back to life in the States was more diffi-

FOR RELEASE JANUARY 29, 2020

cult than the transition to life over there, which is a sentiment Murley shares.

“Going to grocery stores [was a shock],” Kafer said. “There you don’t really have the options that you have here, so when I went to Walmart during my first few days back, it was so overwhelming.”

Despite the difficulties that came with the Peace Corps, none of the returned volunteers had

any regrets about their service. They all feel they have been changed for the better.

“I really learned that people are a lot more similar than they are different,” Suttle said. “Here and in Africa there’s nice people, rude people, sad people, outgoing people. In general, human beings are human beings. It helped me to see the world in a different light.”

courtesy of hannah kafer

Hannah Kafer and Jon Suttle pose with an OSU flag in front of the Peace Corps Lesotho Office. They served in Lesotho for two years.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 29, 2020

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Lewis

ACROSS 1 Like much desert terrain 5 Constructed 10 Modeling material 14 Latina toon explorer 15 Bay of Bengal nation 16 Ceviche flavoring 17 Exclusive place for tennis 19 Slavic John 20 Come next 21 Tizzy 22 Keyboard slips 25 Unpredictable leg joint 29 Cleaver nickname 30 Rapper __ Rida 31 Balls in coin-op machines, say 32 Throat condition 34 Ed who plays Santa in “Elf” 36 Con’s opposite 37 Skeet enthusiast 40 Salary 42 Game console button 43 Mary, Queen of __ 46 Air quality watchdog: Abbr.

47 Poem of praise 48 “The thing is ... ” 49 Big Apple power company 53 Big and strong 54 Roman who wrote “The History of Rome” 55 Puzzle-solving asset 57 Unconscious state 58 Gridiron infraction, and a hint to 17-, 25-, 37- and 49-Across 63 Quaint oath 64 Otherworldly 65 Rooms to Go rival 66 Singer Lovett 67 One with piece offerings?

68 Sleep in a tent DOWN 1 Yalta Conf. attendee 2 Mauna __ Observatory 3 Rainbow shape

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1/29/20

By John Guzzetta

4 Corporate acquisition 5 Drill parts 6 Like some directors’ editions 7 Car waiting at the airport, maybe 8 Lucy who voices Master Viper in the “Kung Fu Panda” films 9 It might be opened in a bar 10 Sound of toasts 11 Walking, talking example 12 Hobbyist 13 Urge 18 USCG rank 21 Hybrid apparel 22 “Miracle Workers” (2019) network 23 “Is it soup __?”

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Tuesday’s Puzzle Solved

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39 Drawn from various sources 40 Upper-bod muscle 41 Words of regret 44 Tyke on a trike 45 Where thunderheads form 50 Get away from 51 Skateboard stunt 52 Circus clown’s collection

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60 Alias letters 61 Sleep cycle 62 Put to use PAGE 6

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Hor osc ope

Daily Horoscope

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1/29/20

Solution to Tuesday’s puzzle

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Today’s Birthday (01/29/20). Collaborate for common gain this year. Develop a vision into reality with careful planning and coordination. Invent inspiring new beginnings this winter, despite health or work challenges. Support a group project around an obstacle next summer, motivating new energy, strength and vitality. Celebrate with friends.

To get the advantage, check the day’s rating: 10 is the easiest day, 0 the most challenging.

Aries (March 21-April 19) -- Today is a 9 -- You’re growing stronger and more confident. Make your move. Have an important conversation. Advance to a new personal level.

Beat your best score.

Taurus (April 20-May 20) -- Today is a 6 -- Consider both emotion and reason. Make plans and determinations using logic as well as compassion. Intellect and intuition agree. Rest and plot your course.

Gemini (May 21-June 20) -- Today is an 8 -- Many hands make light work; you can see what needs to be done.

Organize and coordinate for shared ease. Share the load with friends.

Cancer (June 21-July 22) -- Today is an 8 -- You can handle a professional test or challenge. The solution seems obvious. Apply energy and attention for excellent results. You’ve got this.

Leo (July 23-Aug. 22) -- Today is a 9 -- Enjoy an expansion phase. Broaden your horizons with educational discovery and travels. Extend your area of influence. Make long-distance connections. Explore new terrain.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sept. 22) -- Today is an 8 -- Negotiate favorable terms. Propel a shared endeavor to profitable reward. Support others without nagging or complaints.

Collaborate and keep your share of the bargain.

Libra (Sept. 23-Oct. 22) -- Today is an 8 -- Partnership flowers anew. Collaborative efforts yield satisfying results.

Provide a missing link. Keep your promises and deadlines. Support and encourage each other.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 21) -- Today is an 8 -- Nurture your health and energy with good food, exercise and rest.

Healthy practices maintain consistent physical performance. Aim for endurance rather than speed.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 21) -- Today is an 8 -- Love inspires your actions. Hold hands with someone who makes your heart flutter. Practice your arts and charms. Beauty animates you. Dance away.

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Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) -- Today is a 9 -- Lucrative results get won through applied expertise and disciplined action. Go for the gold! Keep your objective in mind. Focus and schedule carefully.

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