Berkshires, MA: C is for Connie

My cousin Connie and I were born 3 days apart, and if one of our family members hadn’t stopped by to inform my mother that there was already a Connie in the family, I would have been named Connie.  After a family discussion (since naming a baby is big deal in the Ugandan culture), I was  named Petronella, the feminine of Peter, after my grandfather.We moved a lot, so I never really grew up with Connie, but our families are very close, and I always heard about how she was doing through my parents.  So over 25+ years later, I’m amazed that even though we were born 3 days apart, our different lives were very different but our personalities are similar.  Connie is married with a handsome baby boy.  She made the challenging decision to be away from her family in Uganda for 1 year while she studied to get her masters in Economics from Williams College in the Berkshires, Massachusetts.

Her classmates, who were from 17 different countries around the world had fascinating life stories: like the lady who received a full scholarship to pursue her Masters and had to leave her 3 month old baby with her Muslim husband for 1 year or the father whose wife gave birth to their first child and his father died while he was away studying at Williams.  I was moved by their passion, sacrifices and their courage to pursue better lives for themselves and their families.

Connie was a rockstar to photograph.  Because she’s so calm and reserved, you’d never know she had an inner Alek Wek waiting to be unveiled.  Enjoy these photos of my beautiful cousin Connie wearing a traditional Ugandan kikoyi (pronounced “chee-coy-yee”) wrap.