Peace Corps Programs in Samoa
Perhaps no other region conjures up so many romantic visions as Polynesia — swaying palms plopping their coconuts onto deserted beaches, the fabled missionaries, and beachcombers. Michener and Maugham have described it, Gauguin captured it on canvas. The names of Captain Cook, William Bligh, Bloody Mary and Sadie Thompson mingle together in a confusion of history and fantasy. Surely the islands of the South Pacific are among the most romanticized and stereotyped areas in our world.
But the Pacific is not a dream and it is not asleep. The South Seas today has parliaments, passports, pollution, popcorn, banks and stoplights. Since World War II the area has been cautiously bringing itself into touch with modern times and today most of the countries of the South Pacific are independent nations. Samoa became the first independent Polynesian nation in 1962.
Yet, the immensity of the Pacific, a setting in which distance and relative isolation, together with the differing island habitats, presents supreme challenges for modernization. The increasing pressures of population, the depletion of natural sea and land resources, the lack of capital, the limited infrastructures and the continual shortages of skilled and educated human resources add to the problems. It is into this setting that the Peace Corps has been invited to work.
