When she moved to West Africa with the Peace Corps, Kate Cocks ’00 could only talk about food, fish and why she wasn’t married — because those were the only words she knew.

“Zarma is a spoken language, so I learned by listening,” she said. “I was in a small fishing village and most conversations were the same. My vocabulary was pretty limited at first.”

Cocks said her time in the Peace Corps was one of the best experiences of her life. She was inspired to join in her final months at Ithaca College.

In 1961, the first Ithaca College graduate joined the Peace Corps. Since then, 124 graduates have followed in his steps. Last year alone, 11 students joined the Corps.

“That’s a pretty impressive number for such a small school,” said Teresa Michael, the organization’s regional recruiter for upstate New York.

The Peace Corps is an independent agency of the United States whose mission is to further understanding between the U.S. and the outside world, by completing hands-on projects in 75 different nations worldwide. Volunteers choose to work in many fields, including education, youth outreach, community development, business development, the environment, agriculture, health, HIV/AIDS and information technology.

Michael, who served in southeast Asia before becoming a recruiter, said learning to adapt to another culture is the most important part of the program. But it goes both ways.

“It’s not just about the service,” she said. “There is so much of a cultural exchange. We show them what it means to be an American, which is really unique to the Peace Corps.”

While the Peace Corps is a considerable commitment — 27 months in a foreign country — the average age of a volunteer is only 28. Michael said college graduates make up most of the applicants.

“Lots of graduates are scared of the real world,” she said. “Well, this is the real world. But it’s not the typical nine to five you get after graduation.”

Both Cocks, who recently finished her three-year stay in Niger, West Africa, and Colin Bauer ’02, who traveled to the Caribbean, credited the college with their inspiration to join the Corps.

Cocks said the college nurtured her altruism, and said a class she took during her senior year inspired her activism indirectly. The class, Culture and Society: An International Field Experience, taught by Hector Velez, associate professor of sociology, studied the Dominican Republic before visiting it at the end of the year. There, the students toured the island and observed its dichotomy, she said. They saw the poor villages, but also the church where Michael Jackson was married.

“We went there and we saw everything, but we didn’t do anything,” she said. “I wanted to do something.”

After graduation, Cocks began volunteering in New Mexico through AmeriCorps, an organization that connects nonprofits throughout the country for local, state and national service projects. Finally, she felt ready to join the Peace Corps.

Bauer, a music performance major, said he knew he did not want a career playing music after graduation.

“One day, I was bored [with] music theory, and I started looking around on the Internet,” he said. “The Peace Corps Web site just popped up in front of me. Then two months after graduation, I was gone.”

Bauer served in Grenada, an island nation in the Caribbean, from July 2002 until August 2004 as a youth outreach volunteer.

For Bauer, the work was an easy transition since he used to work at a summer camp, instructing inner-city children in music and drama.

“Take the work I did with the city kids, but think more underserved, more uneducated and even less resources. Then stick it on an island 25 feet long, and that’s my experience in Grenada,” he said.

Cocks also chose work she was used to. After volunteering for the AIDS Walk in Ithaca, she educated the people of her 200-person village on health-related issues ranging from breast-feeding to disease prevention.

“I would try to gear my conversations towards health issues,” she said. “If I was talking to a woman, I might be like, ‘Your baby’s crying. You should feed him now and let me show you a better way.’”

Cocks spent her evenings facilitating a social and educational group for young men. The boys would go to her hut to drink traditional tea and discuss AIDS, safety, women and fidelity.

Though it was the job she was there to do, she said it is not customary for women in Niger to invite men into their homes to discuss personal issues. She was not immediately accepted by the primarily Muslim village.

“I had to break down the barrier of being a woman in a place where women are not respected,” she said.

Cocks felt that at the end of her two-year stay, she had just gotten used to the culture and the locals had just gotten used to her. She decided to stay another year and was able to build a health clinic with the help of the Nigerian government.

Bauer said he thinks the Peace Corps has honed in on improving the American image overseas and said that, as a white American, he took certain safeguards each day.

“You just can’t be so naive to think that everyone loves Americans,” he said.

The volunteers said the relationships formed while serving were key to not getting homesick. Michael said fellow volunteers became her family.

“By the end of two years, you’re like, ‘Home, where?’” she said. “That is your home.”

But they did not only find a new family. Cocks met her husband while serving, and Bauer met his fiancée. The couples moved back to the U.S., but said it was a difficult decision.

Bauer and his fiancée, Tonia, plan to return to Grenada, but said they will wait until Tonia’s 6-year-old daughter, Jada, finishes high school.

“I realized that if I really wanted to help, I would need a lot more experience and money,” he said.

The couple’s hope is to develop a group home for neglected and abused girls, and eventually turn its control over to the people of Grenada.

“It should be their project and they should be able to run it without government assistance,” he said.

Both Cocks and Bauer agreed they felt like they were actually part of another culture, not just volunteers.

“I was the only white person among 15,000 people,” Bauer said. “But after a while, it really was just a skin color. It’s not just your personality that changes. It’s your soul.”

As Cocks left her village after the three-year trip, all the men lined up at the river and prayed for her. She said she had connected with them on a level that surpassed cultural barriers.

“To see them all pray for me was the most amazing thing I’ve ever experienced in my entire life,” she said. “I don’t know that words can describe it.”