1 Month in
**Disclaimer**
The point of this is not to be a good or artistic retelling of my highs and lows of the famed “Peace Corps experience.” But simply a single place to put my thoughts other than my chicken scratch diary and brain of doom. Never once have I claimed to be a writer. In fact, writing is my weakness. Grammar, spelling, quippy-ness, the whole shebang. Concise explanation in general is one of my frequent pitfalls. You will realize that soon if not already. Give me grace. If you’re interested, you’ll read, if not, look at the pretty pictures when included ;)
Despite being in the Peace Corps, these thoughts, opinions, experiences do not reflect those directly of the greater Peace Corps Organization. It’s all me and these are just my personal thoughts and experiences. Don’t come for my fellow pisikoa (“peace corps volunteer” in Samoan).
Cohort 95 in staging in San Fran!
The Structure and Timeline
So, just as context for all readers back home, I wanted to outline what I’ve learned about the structure and timeline of the Peace Corps Samoa post (if you know about this already, skip this section).
After you apply, get an interview, get an offer, and do your whole extensive medical and legal clearing process, you leave. For staging that is. Depending what side of the country is closer to your destination you fly to a large city in the States for something called staging (ex: if you’re going to Africa or Europe, you fly to eastern cities like DC or Pennsylvania. If you’re flying anywhere in or around Asia, you fly to western cities like San Fransisco). This is where everyone in your cohort flies from their home of record to meet up in one city, meet each other for the first time, and do almost two days of info training. You learn about PC values, history, strategies, and stories. It also means everyone in the cohort gets dropped off at the same airport and has to endure the travel day together. MEGA BONDING TIME. And you know what, I’ve never had a more pleasant experience checking luggage than with these people. So I knew it’d be a breeze after that.
Anyway, you fly to your service country together and for one week stay in some type of hotel while getting adjusted and doing basic info training on the host country, PC staff, and language. After that week, we get placed with host families for a three-month-long pre-service training (PST).
During PST, we live in the same one or two villages and follow a schedule that’s kind of like school. We have breakfast, walk or drive to our “hub,” have sessions about things like language, culture, job position technicals, and PC policies, then go home for dinner. On weekends we hang out with our families and go to church.
Then after PST, we get “sworn in” as a Peace Corps Volunteer officially and get to go start working and living in different host families for two full years (hence why it’s 27 months, not 24 months). For the first three months of real service as volunteers, we are on a probationary term where we are not really allowed to travel or take time off. It’s time dedicated to really connect with your families and community members.
After those three months, the rest of the 21 months all operate the same way. We have periodic check-ins in the main city of Apia where we can see other volunteers and we also are given opportunities to take time off to travel or host guests. Then a few months before our end date, we have close of service (COS) where we start the process of closing our local bank accounts and finish our work projects and do final reports. Then you go back to your home of record. For us since we started in July of 2025, we are scheduled to return to the States in September of 2027.
You would’ve never guessed all these dapper, smiling people just traveled for 20+ hours.
Cohort 95
I don’t even know where to begin with talking about my cohort.
There are 24 of us. 12 training to be English Literacy Educators and 12 training to be in the inaugural “Ridge-to-Reef Resilient Samoa” Environment Program (aka Education and Environment volunteers). We are from all over the country. We have collectively been to more countries than I thought possible. We all are between the ages of 21 and 35. And every life story is cooler than the next. For privacy’s sake, I won’t share much about these stories but just trust me, if you met any of these people, you’d think they’re the coolest person you’ve ever met.
During our first few days, some of them made jokes about how I always have extreme reactions to stories like jaw on the floor or an extensive line of questioning coming from a place of pure infatuation. This honestly shocked me more than the actual stories. Simply because I was shocked at how everyone else wasn’t in extreme awe of each other. They all think their pastimes, hobbies, travel stories, and general lives have been normal. THEY’RE NOT! These stories, or what we’re calling personal “lore,” warrant my extreme reactions, praise, and curiosity. These people are too humble and nonchalant. I mean the lore ranges from writing and fully publishing books, being scuba certified, having families with the craziest of jobs, having connections to cults and celebrities, getting floor tickets to Beyonce for FREE, having Da Vinci-level art skills, building hiking trails, being border-line professional swing and line dancers, having every wildlife safety certification known to man, going to college in different countries, being polygots, doing Ameri Corps, teaching kindergarten, having crazy tattoos, traveling to 95 countries (just ONE person), saving literal lives, and everything else in between (I mean IF there’s anything else). LIKE C’MON PEOPLE!! They ALL should be published authors just with their memoirs. AND THEY’RE ALL UNDER THE AGE OF 35?! Ya no. Insane. I wrote down in my journal “I’m surrounded by 23 little culture and life fairies who are downplaying insane successes.” ON TOP OF ALL OF THAT… They’re all just genuinely nice and kind people. Puh-lease!
But this is what makes me feel like I found my people. This is the type of reaction I feel like people have given me when I tell them stories and it scares me sometimes (just like I lowkey scared them with my reactions). My response is normally like “what, I'm just interested in doing different things.” So I get it. And for that, these people really make me feel understood and like I’m the least interesting person in the room. And it’s been the most welcoming, exciting feeling ever.
The happiest people you’ve ever seen in a 2.5 hour bag check line.
My Training Site
So as I said, for our 3-month-long PST, we all get placed with host families in the same village. Because our cohort is so much bigger than past groups, we actually are split between two neighboring villages. This made me sad at first but it’s really not that bad of a walk to get to and from the villages if we want to hang out. And plus, sitting all day every day in classes makes walking at the end of the day feel necessary sometimes.
The village I’m in is the cutest, most beautiful village ever. More so, my house. It has the best golden hour view. I have a host dad, mom, and a sister who’s eight and another sister who’s four. My parents are some of the most giving and loving people ever. And my sisters are really good sisters. Classic small fights but they’re good to each other. In their free time they love to paint with the watercolors I got for them in Apia (they actually used all of the paint in one day…) and they also trade off who gets to read the Mazda car manual they got in May. It’s in Japanese and they hold it upside down. They also will watch anything on the TV from shark attack movies to Horton Hears A Who to political Samoan news shows to televised church services. They all are equally good at drowning out the sounds of geckos on our ceilings eating mosquitos and large beetles hitting the window shutters.
For a weekend I got to know their pet chick named Barbie whose home was an empty family sized fruit loop box. She was my 4 year old sister’s best friend. I don't know how but my sister had that chick trained to wait for her at the front door until she got home. Every time we would leave the house Barbie would chase my sister into the car not wanting her to leave and then when we would come back the chick would be waiting in the same spot on the front patio. One morning I woke up to my 4 year old sister screaming and crying because she accidentally killed Barbie. There was a grave made next to the special graves of passed family members in the back of the house so he will be forever honored and remembered. My parents and I now exclusively call my sister “chicken killer.”
RIP Barbie. Forever in my heart. I miss tripping over your Fruit Loop box <3
Church
One of the big things about coming to Samoa for PC besides living with a host family the whole time is being highly encouraged to go to church. They tell us it’s easiest to adapt and learn about the culture and language if you go to church at least once a week. Coming from a very limited background and knowledge of religion, I was anxious about it. But it’s been one of my favorite parts so far.
My current host family is Pentecostal and goes to an Assembly God (AOG) church two villages over. That’s where all their friends are too, not as much in the village our house is in. We go to Sunday school and a service on Sunday mornings and then a service on Sunday evenings. It was a lot at first but now it's all I look forward to because it’s so much fun to get to know people.
The pastor and his whole family are so nice and the sermons are so funny and theatrical. The pastor shouts me out and prays for me in the middle of church (I only know because he says something, then says “Pela” my Samoan name, then smiles at me and everyone claps, then I ask my parents about it when we get home lol). I asked the pastor how he was in Samoan one morning and he told everyone about it during service and was like “none of you ask me how I am but Pela does” and my host parents said they were proud of me. There was a 65th birthday celebration after service one day and I begged to help serve food, cake, ice cream, and drinks to people and it was the first time anyone had seen a palagi (foreigner/ English speaker/ white person) serve them. My parents said they were proud of me for doing that too. So even though my family and people at church may laugh at me when I forget a name or mispronounce words or dance funny or whatever, I know I must be doing something right!
Me helping scrape some coconut to make a dish called “palusami” for lunch. Warning: don’t sit on one of these benches with an ie lavalava (wrap skirt).
Lessons So Far
The second I decided to even apply for Peace Corps last November I was planning on using this as a learning experience. About myself, others, life, and every existential thing in between. I learned a lot about how I view life and what I want to do with it. I learned that since I am a competitive workhorse who strives for everyone’s approval to an occasionally unhealthy level, I will either do really well in corporate advertising/ HR or I will crash and have the greatest quarter life crisis of the 21st century. I decided I have my whole life to figure that one out so I wanted to give myself a break. But I also have no money so I couldn’t really travel freely. I wanted to experience new cultures, meet new people in a new place while learning new things about myself and others, and spend no money. Broad start, yes, but it really did lead to only one answer. Peace Corps has always been something in the back of my head since I grew up hearing stories about my uncle in Cameroon as a PC Volunteer but never considered it until all of these realizations a few months ago. And like I said, I’ve been learning ever since. So here are a few of my favorite lessons I have learned since starting my PC journey:
“What you get out of this is not legacy, it’s love.”
This is something my fellow Peace Corps Trainee, Dewey, said during an activity at our staging meetings. Dewey just finished a whole PC service in Thailand and loved it so much he was home for a few months until leaving for a second tour in Samoa with us! So he is our wise, all-knowing source of comfort and information. And also just so happens to be the happiest, funniest, best person of all time.
Anyway, he told our table a story of one of his friends in Thailand who focused a lot on a project they were doing at their school and what legacy they would leave with this project. When some logistics didn’t work out, they let it taint their experience and got very upset about it. Dewey’s take away he shared with us was that we should not focus on our legacy or actions during service. Rather, our focus, and honestly the focus of the Peace Corps, is connecting to others. It’s about loving and embracing each other with our different cultures, families, foods, religions, languages, and ways of life through shared experience and genuine connection. And once he said that, I knew I was in the right place and with the right people.
“We might not have money in our pockets but we have it in our hands.”
This is something my host dad said casually at dinner. He said it and my response was the most obnoxious, loud, and disturbing “BARS” you’ve ever heard. It was just a gut reaction. I mean how frikin BEAUTIFUL is that?!
I was talking about how, even though appreciated, I didn’t need them to buy me gifts/ clothes while I was out of the house because I felt bad about how much money it was costing them to host me and cook all my meals. They of course in true Samoan hospitality fashion laughed and said not to worry and they liked to do it. We then got into a conversation about how much food costs and how generally expensive it is to actually live on Uplou in comparison to where they used to live in American Samoa (yes, they’re different). But my host dad said they have many blessings in their life and some people don’t. So even though they don’t have a lot of money, the little they do have they like to give to family, friends, store clerks, doormen, cashiers, and homeless people. This is how they also are with food, clothes and honestly everything. Food leftovers? Ya they don’t go in the fridge for them to eat later but he drives them to friends in other villages for dinner. Clothes? Ya my host mom used to just sew people's clothes whenever they asked for next to nothing. They say it’s their way of following God’s love. And that’s how I’ve connected most with them. Even though I didn’t grow up religious and they did, we both follow a path of spreading love in all we do in life. And I think that’s really cool.
It’s ok to be laughed at. Laugh along.
I stick out like a sore thumb here, especially in church. I can’t speak the language, don't have quite the right clothes, can’t dance siva (the local dance kind of like hula dancing) and don’t come from a religious background. But I realized that it’s okay to be laughed at. I was dancing with some kids from church and my host sisters while they were trying to teach me siva and I moved too fast, moved my hands the wrong way, and was a beat or two behind the whole time while trying to do it while watching them. My whole family laughed but I realized it’s not in an offensive way. So I laughed along and it made learning it a whole lot easier rather than being shy or in my head about it.
Americans lean. Stand up more.
I didn’t realize this until we all talked about American stereotypes as a part of a session but Americans are known as “leaners” I guess. I catch myself leaning now and proving that true. So now I’m trying to stand up more. Literally and figuratively.
Language is not something you can learn overnight.
This one is a daily reminder to keep me from terminating early. Gosh, language lessons are so hard and I get soooo in my head about it. So much so that I’ve had to ask for extra help just because I keep freaking out that I’m not learning as fast as some other people are. But an overall theme for pre-service training is “give yourself grace” and right now, it’s most applicable to learning the Samoan language.
Looking Ahead
Thorn: The Samoan language itself is actually easier than most but learning it is so hard for someone who learns by doing and seeing. Just hearing it and trying to pick up on it is making my head slowly turn to mush. Someone asked me “have you taken language classes before?” YES! Spanish for 14 years and I’m still not even conversational so you can imagine how I am feeling. BUUUUTTTTT I know we’re only four weeks in. I need to stop being so hard on myself and give myself grace. I know I’ll learn it eventually. The staff is being nice and reassuring us all of that.
Bud: Getting placed with our two-year hosting family! I will meet not only my family but also my principal! I could get placed in a site on either the island of Upolu (the main island with the capital city, Apia) or the bigger island of Savaii.
Rose: I’m doing better than I thought I would. Taking it one day at a time. Talking with my host family, texting my real family daily, and talking to my friends — pisikoa and home friends alike — is all getting me through.