Jackie Faasisila

Full Circle Jackie Faasisila

Full Circle traces major events and changing perspectives of a farm girl from the Black Hills of Dakota who is transplanted on a small Pacific Island as a Peace Corps volunteer. She was born and raised in rural America but moved to inner city Kansas City in the late 1960's to attend university. This opened the door to a bigger world, and she accepted Peace Corps' invitation to develop curriculum in Western Samoa where she not only fell in love with the communal culture of Samoa but also a young Samoan chief. Adapting to a new culture, language and family provide the context of the story which deals with birth and death and the stages of life in between. The book documents her changing personal perspectives against the backdrop of Samoa's development and natural disasters. It describes both happy times and sad ones, like the premature death of her husband shortly after their twentieth wedding anniversary. Her tales of love, loss and dealing with responsibilities for an extended family shape the decades of her life. Her work as the Academic Director for World Learning's SIT Study Abroad Samoa for over twenty years allowed her to share her Samoa with hundreds of young Americans. Her life comes full circle when she retires and decides to leave Samoa to care for her elderly mother in South Dakota. Her reflections explore the realities of cross-cultural learning and illustrate how Samoa had been etched in her psyche.