By DAVID OMOM
Staff Writer
 

"Hi, my name is Eric," he started.

"My name is David," I answered, staring at him. "Nice to meet you Eric," I added quickly to fuel the conversation.

"Nice to meet you too, David," he said, ending the formalities. "Where do you come from?" he asked, noticing my not-too-common accented English.

"Kenya!" I answered.

"How the hell did you get to hear about Bates?" he asked, visibly surprised.

"Well, I wrote the names of all the colleges on earth on small pieces of paper, and put them into a straw hat, and then I held a lottery, and bingo! Bates came tops," I said, grinning.

"No way!" he retorted, his face lit with amusement.

I remember that night vividly - August 25, 1997. It's not because I will cherish it for the rest of my life, but because it marked the beginning of my Bates odyssey.

It was 9:15 p.m. when I disembarked from the Greyhound bus in Lewiston, walking luggageless because my luggage had been misplaced by the very efficient TWA. That night my life, like the lives of many other international students, was at a turning point.

My first impressions of Bates were of near excellence. It was a case of love at first sight, and the next few days were to initially reinforce my convictions about the College. To many international students, this time always marks the genesis of a major transition, and that is exactly what I experienced. But some of these impressions were to change with time.

The first problem was the food. Used to very different cuisines, I had trouble adjusting to the Commons' food that, more often than not, nauseated me. Robert Volpi, director of dining services, does a fairly good job, but for a time I had no option but to be content with Coke, cookies, and junk, which wasn't such a great diet, believe me!

Then, the doors. Embarrassing as it was, most often I was forcing doors in instead of pushing out. Don't blame me, nearly everybody does it that way where I'm from.

In short, everything was different, and sooner or later adjustment was an unconscious inevitability.

Most international students did and do continue to adjust very well, and thus for most of us, this phase of "physical" adjustment is almost complete.

My first week was wonderful; meeting other international students was a great experience, and to most of us, the International Club has been our family away from home. We are and will continue to be a very small minority at Bates, unless the college steps up its recruitment drives, and this made us even closer to each other.

With a variety of nationalities represented , altogether we formed a mini-United Nations forum. Everywhere that we went, from Commons to my first lobster experience at a lobster shack in South Portland (an experience I remember with glee), we were a team.

To most of us, the international student orientation and later the International Club became our first source of friends. No wonder most of my "core" friends are international students.

Then came convocation, and suddenly Bates was swarming with students from all over this country. One confession that I have to make is that most people seemed friendly, nice and kind. Nearly everybody was hospitable, and the misery of being homesick, which many international students feel, disappeared with the wind.

During that period I made lots of acquaintances, met many new faces and names, which I always try not to forget. This was a tremendous psychological boost and encouragement for most of us.

Those smiles often did more than words could, and that was welcome in our lives then. The smiles still linger on to this day, but sooner or later, realities in life come to surface.

Most people are indeed friendly, but few ever seek to be friends, and that is a potential problem that most international students observe at Bates.

Getting to know someone, smiling and saying "hi" out on the pavement, is excellent. But going out of your way to be a real and true friend is even better. As this reality sunk in the first few weeks, the trauma of "not belonging" started to haunt me.

The scenario often builds when most of your "friends" are huddled together in a room having fun on a Friday night, or just chatting late at night, and you're bored and feeling homesick in your room thinking nobody will think about calling you to join in the fun. You feel that you don't belong at all. When nobody seems interested in your welfare or in having you as a close friend, you often begin to question yourself.

To put it mildly, this is an indictment to the U.S.-born Bates student community that doesn't generally reach out to international students to integrate them fully into their lives. We must draw a line between being acquaintances and friends with a capital F, and stick to the F.

This institution intended itself to be a college built on the foundations of liberty, equality and excellence in all features of college life. Bates is an institution which grants oppressed or segregated students a chance to pursue higher education and a chance to realize their dreams without fraternities or sororities. Bates is the fulfillment of that vision.

With every group open to all students, at least in theory, this has made it even easier for us to feel at home and "forget" momentarily about home, and that is probably the primary reason why most of us decided to come to Bates.

Being away from home is hard; you miss your family, your friends, and home, especially during Parents' and Families Weekend, when everyone else's parents are around.

Some of the people that I credit with having made great efforts to make this place a home away from home include Associate Dean of Students James Reese and Director of Multicultural Affairs Czerny Brasuell, as well as many other faculty, students and staffers. To most of us, Reese and others have come to symbolize the other side of Bates - the positive at its best.

As one immediate former student remarked during the students of color Alumni Forum, resourcefulness is the key word.

Bates has lots to offer, and the more you make the maximum of every opportunity the more you will cherish international students as a part of the Bates experience; it is one such opportunity to top our learning.

To us international students, the challenges is to keep on going even when the going gets tough. If we don't maximize our stay at Bates we'll always encourage those bottled feelings of "not belonging" homesickness. The more we utilize all resources Bates has to offer, the greater will be our fulfillment. How true this is, I am yet to find out, for my exploration has just begun.