In this interview, you’ll hear from Rachel Bucher, a Peace Corps Education volunteer in Lesotho. Rachel shares what daily life looks like, the work being done, and how service has shaped their personal and professional growth. You’ll learn about housing, cultural differences, project work, language learning, and what it’s like to live and work in a new country. This interview offers a real look into Peace Corps service and what future volunteers can expect.
Table of Contents
- Volunteer Experience and Motivation
- Living Arrangements and Cultural Integration
- Surprises and Challenges
- Advice and Support
- Practical Tips and Language Learning
- Final Thoughts
Volunteer Experience and Motivation
1. What do you do as a Peace Corps Education volunteer in Lesotho?
Grades I teach
As a Peace Corps Education volunteer in Lesotho, I work at a primary school teaching students in grades 1-7. In Lesotho, Education volunteers teach English, numeracy, and/or life skills. During my first year of service, I was primarily teaching English and life skills in grades four and seven, but at the start of this new year, my school has decided to shift to a subject-teaching focus. Now I find myself in grades 4-7 teaching English and in grades four and seven teaching life skills.
My school
My school is relatively small, with only about 100-150 students total, making my class sizes very small. I currently have 18 students in my fourth-grade class, 20 students in grade five, 10 students in grade six, and only 9 students in my seventh-grade class. My school is fully staffed, so I work with a counterpart almost every day. This is extremely helpful with younger grades and students who struggle more, where more in-depth translation might be useful, seeing as learners are expected to be taught in English for all subjects, apart from Sesotho, from grade four upwards.
Daily schedule
The school day starts at 7:45 am with our morning assembly. Despite working at a government school rather than a church-affiliated school, we still pray and sing hymns every morning before classes start at 8:00 a.m. Classes are usually around 40 minutes each, with some subjects having double periods depending on the schedule for the day. We have a break at 10:00 am for twenty minutes, where the kids can go outside and play. We have an hour-long lunch from 11:00 am – 12:00 pm, and school lets out at 1:00 pm for grades 1-3 and 2:00 pm for grades 4-7. Most of the teachers live in town and take a taxi out after school, but I live in the village, so I am just a five-minute walk from home once school lets out.
Helping with exam preparation
Additionally, in the second semester, I work after school with the seventh graders as they prepare for their end-of-year examinations. In Lesotho, seventh graders have to take a national assessment at the end of their primary school education in order to determine qualifications for high school. High-scoring students may be eligible for scholarships, since only primary education is free in Lesotho, and lower-scoring students may not be accepted into the nearby high schools at all. With my seventh graders, we worked every day after school during the third and fourth quarters for an hour to two hours. We specifically focus on composition writing, letter writing, reading comprehension, and listening skills for English.
Free time
Outside of school and lesson-planning, I spend most of my time at home and in my community. I spend a lot of time reading, writing, and playing music on my guitar, talking with my host family, talking on the phone with my family and friends back home and in Lesotho, or crafting.
As a second-year volunteer, a lot of time is also spent doing needs assessments, meeting with community members to identify potential projects, and writing grants. Currently, I have an active Peace Corps Partnership Program (PCPP) grant that is raising money for building improvements to fix windows, gutters, ceilings, walls, floors, and walkways at my school in order to create a safer environment for my children to learn in.
In addition to Peace Corps-associated grants, I am also helping my school apply for outside grants so that we can accomplish as many things as possible before my service is completed.
2. Why did you decide to join the Peace Corps and serve in Lesotho?
My motivations for joining the Peace Corps were really very simple; I wanted to serve people and communities in need, and I wanted to see the world. As an anthropology major in college, I also developed a deep love for learning about and celebrating different cultures and environments. When I think about my goals for my Peace Corps service, most are centered around my desire to bring as many opportunities and resources to my students and community members as possible.
As Peace Corps volunteers, most of us do not have much to offer in terms of money, specific cultural experience, language, or years of technical experience. However, for two years, we have been able to offer our lives, hands, compassion, and all the opportunities and resources provided to us as Peace Corps volunteers.
When I applied to the Peace Corps, I applied specifically to Education and Youth in Development openings. I knew that I wanted to work closely with children. I felt that this was where I was most capable of helping, as a Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) certified applicant. When it came to deciding a specific region, I could not choose, so I applied where needed most and allowed the Peace Corps to do the deciding for me.
I ended up placed in Lesotho, which just so happened to be the location where my one RPCV friend had served, and the rest is history. I do not know that I ever would have picked Lesotho out of all the many options laid out before me. I fear that if the choice had been up to me, the small but mighty Mountain Kingdom might have gotten lost in the shuffle. And what a mistake that would have been. I could not imagine my service being anywhere else.
Living Arrangements and Cultural Integration
3. What is your housing like in Lesotho?
In Lesotho, we live with host families for the entirety of our 27 months of service. During our pre-service training, we live with a host family and cook all of our meals together as well. As volunteers at our permanent sites, we live on the property of host families, but we live in our own homes and cook independently.
That being said, I have never been known to turn down a makoenya or motoho offering from my mother. My host family consists of my host mother, Maliketso, and my host brother, Katleho, who is just a few years younger than me. My host mother is a truly wonderful woman and is perhaps the most generous person I have ever met. She truly adopted me and loves me like her own. I am proud to have been named by her and to share her last name. While my host brother likely speaks better English than I do, my host mother speaks only Sesotho. I am very thankful for the opportunity to foster my Sesotho with her and all the bo-’m’e in my village.
I live in a rondavel, which is a traditional circular house with a thatched roof. My village is quite rural, so we have no electricity or running water, but the tap and solar power do just fine. By public transportation, I am roughly an hour from the nearest town and three hours from the closest volunteer. Due to the lack of resources, I have a pit latrine and bucket for doing my business, a handy big basin for my bucket baths, and a gas stove for cooking. We hand wash all of our laundry and line dry it in the sun. As volunteers, we have to boil and filter all of our drinking water. Life is much slower and much more peaceful.
Surprises and Challenges
4. What has surprised you most about living or working in Lesotho?
I think the thing that surprised me the most early on was how quickly my village became my home. It will never cease to amaze me, no matter how many places I travel or how many times I feel this way, that really and truly humans have an innate ability to make home anywhere we go that has a community to support us. It also helps immensely that my community welcomed me with open arms.
As I have been here longer and adjusted to teaching, what surprised me was how much I fell in love with it. I had no intentions of making teaching a full-time job for myself, but now I find myself looking for jobs as a teacher back home. I thought the hardest thing I would ever do would have been moving here, but instead it will be leaving, and I have no one else to thank for that but my community and my wonderful, hard-working, and beautiful students.
5. What challenges have you faced in your Education work, and how did you respond?
Different punishment styles
The most challenging thing for me, being a teacher in Lesotho, is the educational system. There is a deep history of corporal punishment in schools in Lesotho that can be very jarring for an outsider to experience. It is a cultural difference that has been hard for me to handle. This is a challenge that I am unable to change during my presence these two years. However, through knowledge sharing and observation of alternative teaching styles, my fellow teachers and I have reached a place of mutual respect and understanding. There is value in teaching without the use of corporal punishment, and while I might not be systemically changing anything, through developing relationships and trust, I have been able to slowly show this.
Teaching effectively
Another challenge with my work as a teacher is simply learning how to be an effective teacher. Teaching, like any job, comes with a steep learning curve. As a Peace Corps volunteer, I was often looked up to as a mentor figure in a field where I felt like I did not have much to offer, when many of my colleagues had been teaching for over a decade.
My first year of teaching brought with it a lot of troubleshooting, failing, getting back up again, and just endlessly trying things. I was learning alongside my students, and I think the biggest challenge of this was just gaining comfort with not knowing. As I enter my second year, this challenge has not gone away, but I feel more comfortable and secure in my role and value.
6. What secondary projects have you worked on during your service?
My biggest secondary project up until this point in my service has been my work after school with my seventh graders. Entering my second year of service, I have now been allowed to apply for grants. These will serve as my major secondary projects in my second year, alongside continued work with the seventh grade.
PCPP Grant
Through my current active grant through PCPP (Peace Corps Partnership Program), I am working to improve learning conditions at my primary school by repairing two aging classroom buildings and creating a safer, more supportive environment for students. The project focuses on essential repairs such as floors, ceilings, walls, walkways, and gutters. It also focuses on building long-term maintenance skills within the school community. Educational murals and painted learning aids will also be added to support literacy and numeracy in a fun and child-friendly way.
This project was identified and designed by the school community itself, with community members contributing labor, materials, food, and transportation. Much of my last quarter of school last year was spent in meetings with the school board, parents, teachers, and my supervisor to both identify the intended project and also plan and write the grant application. The main aim of this project is to create safer spaces for the children, but also to restore community confidence in the school.
We have low retention rates year to year, and we hope to prevent the loss of students to other nearby schools. The number of students is directly proportional to the amount of money received by the government to help support the school, so without repaired classrooms, there might never be an opportunity to gain support and high class sizes.
Other grant projects
Apart from our PCPP grant, I am also helping my school to apply for an outside grant to build a building with a kitchen, office, and storeroom. Currently, the government-provided food bags, gardening tools, big containers, building materials, and cooking materials are stored in the classrooms with the children due to a lack of space. Similarly, the principal’s office is currently a sectioned-off area at the back of the Grade Two classroom. Our school also has no kitchen. The school lunches are currently being cooked in an outdoor shelter made of corrugated metal sheets. This is not weather-friendly and makes for unsafe cooking conditions on overly rainy or windy days. We are hoping that if we can gain the funding for this building, our school will be even safer and more sustainable.
Advice and Support
7. What advice would you give to future Education volunteers in Lesotho?
I think the biggest piece of advice I have to offer future Education volunteers in Lesotho is to be open-minded and have honest conversations with your school and community. Working closely with your students, teachers, supervisor, and community members to identify projects and expectations is crucial to sustainability and being of the best use you can be. We are here because the community has needs that they hope we can address. It is impossible to serve our communities in a beneficial way without knowing those needs and the reasons for requesting a volunteer.
8. How did Peace Corps training prepare you for service?
Tip for PST (Pre-Service Training): Technical sessions can be long, and a lot of information is thrown at you all at once. If there is one thing you lean into during your pre-service training, let it be language. This is the most important part of your first three months in the country, and it is also the only part of the technical training that is much harder to learn on the job if you do not have a strong foundation.
Practical Tips and Language Learning
9. What would you tell future volunteers to pack—or leave behind?
- A power bank, or two, or three: Living in a rural community with no electricity and a rainy season, I would not have access to electronics if I did not bring power banks to charge my devices.
- A sturdy, nice-sized wearable duffel bag: I have the Black Hole Patagonia 55L duffel bag, and it is the best piece of luggage I own. You will travel a lot in the Peace Corps, both in-country and internationally. It is so nice to have wearable, sizable luggage when navigating public transport and lots of walking places. A nice 25L hiking backpack has been amazing to have as well.
- Sturdy boots: I have not met a single volunteer in my cohort who has not praised their Blundstones at least a million times throughout their service.
- E-Reader: If you like reading, or even if you do not currently, an e-reader was hands down my best purchase. You will read a lot here, no matter your prior reading habits. We have so much downtime and nowhere near enough space to carry the number of books we will want to read.
- Tapestry/Photos for your walls: I brought a big tapestry, and it instantly made my house feel like a home, with minimal effort. Pictures for your wall help to ease homesickness.
- Watch: I never wore a watch back home, but when charging my phone is not a guarantee, and there are not a lot of clocks around, my watch has become my best friend.
- An instrument, if you play one: My guitar is my favorite thing I have bought, and I use it every week. I have many friends who regretted not bringing theirs. It is much harder to get one here than it was to bring it when I came.
10. How has language learning been for you in Lesotho?
I did not study Sesotho before coming to Lesotho, and I had never successfully learned a language before coming. That being said, the resources provided by the Peace Corps, the Language and Cross-Cultural Facilitators, and your community members provide the best learning environment possible. There is no need to start before arriving, but when you do get to your country, you need to actually try. Language is the most important part of integration. Lean into it and take all the opportunities offered to you. Speak to your host family in their native language, even if they speak English. You will be so thankful that you did.
Final Thoughts
Rachel’s experience as a volunteer in Lesotho highlights both the challenges and rewards of Peace Corps service. From teaching English and life skills in a small rural school to working alongside community members on school improvement projects, her story shows the impact that can come from building relationships, listening carefully, and staying open to new experiences. Her reflections on language learning, cultural exchange, and community support also demonstrate how service often changes the volunteer as much as it benefits the community. For anyone considering Peace Corps service, Rachel’s journey offers an honest look at life in Lesotho and a reminder that some of the most meaningful growth happens when you step outside your comfort zone and fully embrace the place you call home.
Are you thinking about joining the Peace Corps? If you’re curious about service and ready for something new, apply today. Like Rachel, you can live abroad, work with communities, and grow in ways you didn’t expect. Apply to the Peace Corps and take the next step.
The content of this post does not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Government, the Peace Corps, or Lesotho Government.
