Samoa – Peace Corps Worldwide

The Peace Corps Returns to Improve Samoa’s English Literacy

Dec 16 2022

Samoa’s Minister for Education Seuula Ioane and US Peace Corps country director Gini Wilderson at the signing of a five-year memorandum of understanding (MOU) to continue their partnership. [photo: US Peace Corps] Apia, SAMOA — U.S. Peace Corps volunteers are returning to Samoa by early next year with the hope of improving English literacy for many young Samoans and other youth around the Pacific. The Samoa Observer is reporting that during the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting this year, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris had announced the return of the Peace Corps to the region, something which had been stopped due to the COVID-19 Pandemic and as a political decision by the then administration. Following the intensifying of geopolitical tension in the region with China, the U.S. has sought to bring the volunteers back as a means to have more engagement in the region. On Dec. 1, 2022, the United . . .

Gregory Jackmond (Samoa) | archaeologist in Samoa

Nov 08 2022

Gregory Jackmond (Samoa 1974-76) carried out extensive archaeological field work in Samoa during the 1970s when he was a PCV in the islands. He surveyed pre-historic ruins from Sapapali’I and another large settlement in Palauli district where the Pulemelei Mound is situated. The features visible include platforms (for houses), star mounds, terraces, walls, walled walkways, elevated walkways, large earthen ovens (umu ele’ele or umu ti), drainage channels, large pits, forts and just piles of stone. Umu ele’ele, according to Jackmond, were large earth ovens which were used about 500 to 1000 years ago to make sugar from ti trees. “The ti root apparently was cooked for about 10 hours in a lot of heat. The result was sugar for the people at the time,” he said. He found remnants of stone structures that dated back hundreds of years and upon his return to California in the U.S. at the . . .

Review — MY VIEW FROM THE HOUSE BY THE SEA by Donna Marie Barr (Samoa)

May 09 2022

My View from the House by the Sea Donna Marie Barr (Samoa 2007-2008) Independently published February 2022 (paperback), December 2021 (Kindle) 415 pages $15.99 (paperback), $7.99 (Kindle) Reviewed by Regina DeAngelo (Ghana 2000-2002) • When the average person imagines a Peace Corps experience, they might picture a red-dirt landscape in a forsaken locale. But some RPCVs get to tell a different story, of perhaps a palm-lined, tropical idyll, set beside a clear aqua sea. This is the spot on which a 57-year-old retiree named Donna Marie Barr found herself with Peace Corps “Samoa Group 78” in of June 2007. Like many PCVs who join later than in their youth (myself included), Barr took a circuitous route to a place she’d always wanted to go. After a service in the Air Force, raising three sons, and a career in real estate management, Barr found herself starting over in her mid-fifties . . .