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Can friends and family visit me during my Peace Corps service?
For a lot of Peace Corps Volunteers, being able to directly share their Peace Corps life with loved ones back home is a big part of the experience—so much so that it is one of the Peace Corps’ three main goals: furthering understanding of other cultures and peoples on the part of Americans.
While in service, some Volunteers share their experience by keeping in touch with loved ones or global connections through phone calls or video chats, maintaining a blog, or even sending letters home. For others, though, it’s more hands on. Can your friends and family visit you in country while you’re serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer? Absolutely, YES.
There are some caveats
Of course, like in any job, you should schedule visitors to come when you can balance their needs with the needs of your primary job and other Volunteer obligations. For Education Volunteers, this may mean having your friends visit while you’re on a school break. Also, visitors are not permitted during pre-service training or the first three months a Volunteer is at their site. That’s because this time is critical for Volunteers’ community integration. On the other end of the timeline, visitors are not permitted during the last three months of service to ensure Volunteers can wrap up projects and close out their time with the community. For more information on staying in touch with loved ones back home, check out this page.
Visitors don’t get the benefit of pre-service training
Remember that you’ll arrive in your community with three months of language and cultural training under your belt. Your visitors from home won’t have this training, so you’ll be their language and cultural translator. This can be a big job, so if your site is relatively remote or doesn’t have amenities like electricity and running water, it might be wise to balance time there with time in places that offer more comforts of home. Your visitors should familiarize themselves with the Peace Corps country pages that describe what living conditions are like. Here’s an example from Guatemala, but there’s one for every Peace Corps post, so do a search on the Peace Corps website to find a summary of living conditions in your country of service.
Your host family will love meeting your American family
The Peace Corps is a person-to-person agency, and many Volunteers bond with their host families or neighbors in their Peace Corps communities.
“The great relationship I have with my host family is what I enjoy most ... To hear my Nepali aama (mother) refer to me as her ‘chhora’ (son) to her friends always makes me happy, knowing that I have forged a family thousands of miles from my home and loved ones back in the States,” said Michael, a Peace Corps Volunteer in Nepal. Read more about Michael G.’s experience.
So, it’s wonderful to merge your worlds, introducing your family and friends from back home to the people you are close with in your host community. There are many ways for your friends and family to support your Peace Corps service and visiting you at site is just one of those ways. And it’s also a wonderful way to give them a taste of your Peace Corps life. Who knows? Maybe visiting you will inspire them to take on their own Peace Corps journey.
