"They have a cellular phone system that's terrific - better than ours," laughed Sternberg, a retired Illinois Department of Public Health administrator who operates Starhill Forest Arboretum in rural Petersburg with her husband, Guy.
Edie Sternberg was in high school when she learned about the Peace Corps, which was established in 1961 by President John Kennedy. Her grandmother's neighbor, who wrote detailed letters while serving in the Peace Corps in Africa, inspired Sternberg to volunteer for the organization after graduating from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.
"I thought it sounded like an exciting thing to do," she said.
Sternberg spent two years in Samoa, teaching math and science at an all-girls Catholic high school.
"In those days, they did not have the concept of apartments or rental property. We were taken to our villages, and the village had to provide for us," Sternberg said.
Arriving in Samoa with only a duffle bag of belongings, Sternberg learned that the father of the family she was to stay with had died that day of a heart attack, leaving a pregnant wife and eight children. Because of the tragedy, it was decided that Sternberg would live with another family member.
"We generally had about 12 people in the household," she said.
Samoa's climate is tropical, with year-round temperatures typically in the 70s and 80s.
"It's extremely humid. There's a rainy season and a rainier season," Sternberg said.
A traditional Samoan house, called a "fale," has one oval-shaped room, a thatched roof and no walls. Blinds made of coconut palm fronds are lowered during the night or inclement weather.
"General toilet facilities in those days would be to go out in the bush someplace, or they had these little walkways out over the lagoon and a little white outhouse on stilts," Sternberg recalled.
Sternberg often rode her bike or took the bus to the two-story wooden school in nearby Apia, the capital. She taught college-prep courses, according to the British school system's standards, to students in grades 11-13.
She also coached girls' intramural athletics, including a softball team that won the national championship.
The most difficult aspect of living in Samoa was adapting to the lack of privacy, Sternberg said.
But she enjoyed her time there.
"The most enlightening (part) was to have a very good life experience without a lot of material things," she said. "I really got to know my students, the other teachers and volunteers and to see how people interact in a different culture. And it was very interesting living with the family."
After completing their two-year stints in Samoa, many of the volunteers kept in touch and have held several reunions in the United States. At a meeting in Philadelphia in 2005, however, the group decided to mark its 40-year anniversary by returning to Samoa this fall.
In October, 17 former Peace Corps volunteers and eight family members made the trip to Samoa, which has a population of more than 170,000.
"We kind of all felt the same way; we knew it was going to be drastically changed, and we didn't know how we would feel about those changes." Sternberg said. "But every single person in our group had a good experience in going back."
Decades ago, Peace Corps volunteers in Samoa helped with education, basic sanitation and civil engineering. Today, they're involved with computer technology, fisheries, ecology projects and more, Sternberg said. The 79th crop of volunteers arrived in Samoa a week before the reunion.
To the former volunteers' surprise, their homecoming included a special ceremony and feast, where they met Samoa's recently elected head of state, Tuiatua Tupua Tamasese Efi. The group also participated in a parade, attended parties and a special Mass, presented books to the public library, and were interviewed by reporters.
"That was fun," Sternberg said.
Some of her former students are among Samoa's most successful women, owning companies or holding prominent positions, she said.
"It's pretty amazing," she said.
Other than the clock tower and Catholic cathedral, it was hard to recognize some of the places she'd come to know in the 1960s, because hurricanes and new construction over the years have changed the landscape. However, the Sternbergs found the country to be "as clean as a whistle."
For Guy Sternberg, who is retired from the state Department of Natural Resources, the journey was a chance to learn more about Edie's adventure and see the "biology and botany of a very exotic place." But he said he "wouldn't have survived a day" in the Peace Corps.
"It takes a very special type of person to do that, and I certainly wasn't one of them," he said. "I could've camped there for a week, but I couldn't have lived there for two years."
Edie Sternberg said her Peace Corps experience helped steer her toward a career in public health.
"I think we get as much out of it as the people in the countries where we're volunteering," she said.
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