Pisikoa Samoa c. 1986

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:01][Music] it's a wonderful experience it's just a great way to have a grip on some other way of thinking another culture a whole nother process besides America although we're multicultured it isn't the only culture because this is Samoan I have to remind myself that over and over again you know you can't expect things to be like they are it stays you get very tired and fed up of being always always different always noticed when you're riding your bike down the street because you're you're a white person like how long you on the way into town you must have half a dozen at least five five belongings until you want to scream at the people as easy as small kids just looking for attention each each run of them by itself is not so bad it goes up to a level you just want to scream leave me alone sometimes [Music] I have to say best person western style more working with individual people [Music] there's many things here that work very well and they would not work in our culture but in this culture they work very well [Music] I think the biggest pie I've had here was uh just with the sheer natural beauty of Samoa especially the Sea and the Sun Life and the air and the flowers and colors is a very colorful place foreign [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] thank you [Applause] it's a question but if you're not using the s in front of the Lewis because same thing with name I know you have a name you should have a name you know a lot of things because you're in class but as soon as you get out you start talking to your family they hear all these words that you're like what did you say somebody says something to you and you still don't really know what they're saying but every day you have this humorous Clues you can pick up more things that they say and they want so badly to be able to come back with the right answer property [Applause] thank you [Applause] and it's gone please [Applause] [Applause] I don't know [Applause] I am [Applause] in my eyes [Applause] [Music] and along with that hard work is often frustration anger uh uh the feeling of being alone and I ask you strength we ask you strength in supporting one another being sensitive to one another in this very difficult learning process and approaching uh our task with a sense of humor please look out for us amen [Music] [Music] all right foreign ly becoming a post this house is the Party House dinner house but this is Ray he's getting ready to go for a morning jog another race many volunteers in Samoa go judging my little kitten I'm gonna take this baby off usually you got a lot of lava there you go foreign oh at night you can take it off [Music] [Applause] this is Ray getting ready to go to work here's right there Miata bicycles to work Peace Corps in Western Samoa are Infamous for their red bicycles mother Ray and there he goes tofare huh [Laughter] [Applause] [Music] what is it you must listen how have you become a specialist have you become a specialist s foreign [Music] [Music] but we also see feed a vegetable type of soup like uh with some fish or something inside of it and we tell them how to make the soup okay she says her baby eats uh soup with um and also likes mango very good and all kinds of wow very good likes everything Tassie [Music] what's Tony you not like that but you I just like in the sign language I the letter i onto your chest B this is B down here foreign are in here like this position foreign [Applause] local time this isn't your cat a cocoa seedling grows straight up it reaches about a meter and produces fan branches and no more straight up how do we get rid of water and salts is it sweet sweat okay every time you sweat water and salts come out and that is another waste okay all right so hard for these kids because they don't speak English as their first language and the exams are in English and so they've got the double burden of having to learn the science plus learn the English language at the same time in order to pass their exams all right the difference of the Y coordinates divided by a difference in the x coordinates so in your slope intercept form of a line a new form we learned yesterday what number in that equation is the slope of the line it's very close very close very close what must I do here is that the same thing are these two equations equivalent I really didn't know what to expect when we've heard of the assignment when we were back in the States that it was to set up a new industrial Arts facility I was really overjoyed most of these students have never used anything but a machete I've had to really lower my expectations of what I can accomplish here in two years I've been here about six months now and now I'm starting to think well in the next 18 months what can I realistically accomplish here and it's certainly not going to be as much as I thought they would we're required to teach in English but the English is very poor and we often have a communication problem I thought I could teach anybody anything but you really have to be very basic in fact in class you have to speak like this foreign in the states we learned to depend a lot on machines and stuff a lot of my a lot of my classes I came here right from school and a lot of my classes dealt with machines different modalities that we could use and there aren't a great deal here so you learn to do with what you have health care the prevention rather than the Cure hasn't really been been established yet nobody has really accepted that idea people come to the hospital to be cured when it's when they already have some sort of an injury rather than taking precautions these are some bunch of things that I got on the pending file uh We've written several proposals that were submitted to the Australian High commission and I was in fact I thought they went down to foreign fairs yesterday and to the Australian High Commissioner Dr Kerry that guy in foreign affairs never sent that stuff over it's just a hell of a battle for like about six months trying to get anybody to do anything I came down here and they have yeah I bet you they had three kind of rock that they had already taken out of the stream and put along right where this kid is and I told them that they couldn't do that that this is reserved and that they had to put it back knowing that they probably would never do that but at least stop them and they stopped from doing it and then about a half an hour or two quarters an hour later an old lady came down and she was the one that they were getting the rocks for and she asked you know late they needed to rock for some reason or another turned out I think that they were building a pilot and they needed them for a foundation now we told them that they couldn't I told him that they couldn't do it and the next thing I knew is they were all hauled out of here you guys are not brand damaged so you should know what's going on right take a file or arrest not down not around Sprint everybody get a try square and a pile or a wrap and one box of wood and go set up in the bed okay thank you but the whole thing is the uterus what's the wallet it's just the side all right when the female rat is ready to release an egg blood will fill in here just like in a human's huh and the eggs were attached on the wall of the uterus on both sides thank you the family health is a kind of a fancy name for a family planning and on my official Title Here is counselor who unfortunately our executive officer left here about three months ago quite suddenly so at the present time I'm pitching in as the executive officer and doing all this involved in that answering letters and and putting things in order but I'm still available as a counselor and we will soon have a regular executive officer and I will then go back to my original role of being a counselor we have one of our clients here Maternal Child Care what is more appropriate and his mother to be and the mother who is and he's a frightening of your camera teaching Electronics seems pretty esoteric when you're considering that a lot of people in The Villages most people in The Villages don't have that much contact with electronics apparatus except that video cassette recorders and tape recorders and radios are a very big thing now in Samoa when these students came into my class they didn't even know what electricity was and their knowledge of the use of tools was very limited now they can do very basic repairs on tape recorders and radios there's nothing I had to start from scratch so I mean when a new balancer comes in it'll be a lot easier if they had some notebooks or some notes to refer to curriculum wise because the only thing I had to look at was a really basic syllabus [Music] make a lot easier this woman here is a diabetic and she has Obsessed in her left foot which is a common case that I see in the Q day usually the diabetics don't come into the hospital until they have some kind of infection in their foot and I'd like to catch them at this time to try to talk to them about their guys [Music] oh [Music] does anybody know what the name of all these cells together open ing what's happening the name of this whole Collective part here is part of the system this is a solar panel or you can call it a knock knock does anybody know it's a long word for this is what what's the head where's College I'm sorry good evening boys look at something Rachel where are you in Samoa you have to be very resourceful at Technical Institute you have to be even more resourceful the students in the refrigeration program here at the technical institute are developing skills which will help carry them on even to New Zealand or Australia if they prefer to the work they're doing here is highly unskilled at the moment but it's something that they go can go from it's a foundation they're building on thank you [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Applause] [Applause] thank you [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] in West Virginia solution [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] from that one [Music] foreign [Applause] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] tonight [Music] spread their legs and make a diamond shape underwater volleyball [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] what's over here yeah [Music] this is one of the ways we cope somebody said to get along and some more you have to play sweepy drink beer and play volleyball it helps [Music] thank you this is really boring literally we got real we made this is a lemon tree there we've got some green onions here and some turnips here that are not doing very well we've got a pineapple and lots and lots of rocks all of the rocks on the path I've dug out of the garden though I can easily see living in up here getting caught up in just what's going on there who everybody does I mean just living just like you are at home you're just like you just moved to another city to live I expected to come to small and be in a rural situation where there's no electric an outdoor toilet living in a in a village situation and I was very much surprised and I guess in looking back I can say very much collided in living applying Style Style life where I had most of the conveniences that I had at home it's too been too easy for me here it's not the reason my Prime objective for joining Peace Corps has not been met I think I would have liked to experience the village situation I would have liked to have been tested on how well I adapted to not having electricity and refrigeration and and being more in touch with nature no bugs no insects no mice no creepy Carly things but I had mosquitoes I had rats I would be sitting at the table studying and have my house wrap running between my feet back and forth because there are so many places you can run in and out and duck into all the time and mosquitoes a lot a lot of lizards a lot of spiders a lot of Cockroaches cockroaches are about this big here nothing nothing poisonous to really centipedes but they're not lethal I decided that I would come and try to be part of a family here because I wanted to know what life was like for us online so I wanted I figured the best way to do that was to stay with the Samoan family and experience their daily life it's got advantages and disadvantages to it one of the advantages is like I said that you do them a lot of different aspects of Samoan life that you wouldn't see otherwise and um I see a lot of subtleties in the inner interpersonal relationships that I wouldn't otherwise yeah um the disadvantages I think the reason that other peace corpses don't do it is because if you stay with the someone then you have to adhere to their rules which means that you don't go out a lot there are a lot of things that I would be doing if I wasn't staying here but just because you're not supposed to be The Village at night and things like that but I don't go out as much as I would otherwise um also there's the matter of of having there's the idea of personal space that is very different there really isn't any and in America we're so used to having having our own room and our own this along that and that just doesn't happen here so it it takes a while to get used to well I've been here two years you know for me it was quite a test to see how well I could deal with different kinds of people and uh at times I it's it really has stretch my capabilities and I've learned a lot from it yes um interesting so the ways that people treat each other the fiestas I love octopus I love to eat octopus and papa Sami sometimes when you feel that people should be speaking in English because supposedly they're supposed to speak in English in the schools they don't speak in English and that can be very frustrating where you sit down and have staff meetings the whole staff meeting is carried on in Samoan and you don't have any idea what's going on I think uh probably the greatest facet of learning the Samoan languages uh it enables you to flirt extensively with the women across cultural relationships first thing let me say be careful when you walk into a bar because you might confuse a girl with a papa feeding it's a gay person in Dragon I was delighted to find that there were things available here that uh in which I before which I can keep up my physical fitness program it is not to the extent that I was doing at home simply because I choose not to run uh number one the stamina I don't have it in the I guess it's the humidity and insofar as you're running early in the morning this dog scare the hell out of me so I will not run however there is the gym where I work out three times a week with weights and there are lots of aerobics classes seven times a week as far as being married though I think it makes it more difficult to socialize with your counterparts in Samoa we found it frustrating my wife and I because Samoan our age group they don't tend to go out and socialize his husband and wife you go out and drink with the guys or party with the guys whatever you do and then the girls stay at home and the girls go out themselves but it's hard to circulate together the most frustrating thing about living here in Samoa I would say is riding your bike through town and approaching a group of young Samoan men who begin to send you comments to you because you are a belonging girl and of course they think you don't understand which is frustrating in itself but the most frustrating part is not being able to respond to them in a manner which you would be able to venture frustration here to watch your own bottle they always have tendency to let it run out and they don't have a change I think the biggest problem I have with the Samoan culture is that goods are shared pretty much by all and things get somewhat perverted in my own eyes to the point where people think they can just take things and it's all right for instance I live in motuetua and in the time I've been here which has been a year and a half our house has been broken into three times the most pleasant experience is when you get to the end of the bike ride you're at the yacht club or at palolo deep and you can sit on the beach and look at the ocean I'd say that it's it's really important to be um to put on your Observer glasses and and and try not to be judgmental you know when you first get here um and I think maintaining connections at home is really important too um to make friendships here certainly learn Samoan that is a real asset and and make someone friends make Peace Corps friends here but also make those keep those connections at home because if any one of those things falls through at least you still have your home connections and and you are going back home most likely [Music] [Laughter] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] in my life [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music]