Tonga - Part 2

 After all of the back and forth about when the ferry would arrive in Ha’apai and take off for Vava’u, it ended up coming on Wednesday night, the original prediction.  We boarded around 10pm and got comfortable in between rows of chairs for the 8 hour ferry ride north to the island group of Vava’u, where Sean and a few other peace corps volunteers live.  Chaos greeted us in the morning as we de-boarded in Neiafu, the main city on Vava’u, but Sean navigated through it and found the truck belonging to the school where he works, and we climbed in the long bed of it along with some sort of band and all of their instruments and other equipment, which took too long according to I think all of us since the bathrooms on the boat were gross and we all had to pee.  We got a ride up the hill and dropped off the band (and helped unload all of their items), then continued on to Sean’s school and his adorable house:

It has two rooms, each about 10 square feet, and a little shelter out back where there’s a shower and toilet (picture above).  We had to keep the curtains in the bedroom closed because otherwise you could look out and see directly to the toilet, which is about 3 feet from the window and doesn’t have a door to complete its enclosure.  We drank rain water from the tank next door, which collects from what runs off of the roof, and were actually mostly happy with the cold showers since it was so hot during the day.  The locals apparently disagreed with our assessment of the weather, as we frequently saw them huddling in sweatshirts and jackets while we were sweating in shorts and t-shirts – they were fully convinced it was winter.  For us it took wondering out loud whether Sean’s tree in the front of his house was dead since it had no leaves on it, but he informed us he had worried the same thing last year and asked his neighbors, who reminded him that July is the heart of winter and therefore it made sense that his tree had lost its leaves in the chilly 85 degree weather.

The first weekend on Vava’u we were invited to a party on another island, on which an American couple lives and are building a house and restaurant.  We had the option of taking a 20 min ride on a little boat for $20 or sailing with “Captain Radical” on his catamaran for a leisurely 5 hour trip over beautiful blue water through so many lush green islands for free… guess which one we chose:

The 2.5 acre destination island has a pretty amazing set up, with hammocks scattered here and there, a fale where they sleep on one side, the skeleton of a tree house with a spiral staircase on another, a kitchen structure at another, and a restaurant roof on another (everything is still in progress).  The American couple that leases the island (bottom picture below) are building the restaurant and house parts to have planted concrete roofs so that from afar you can’t tell that there is anything but nature on the island.  The party included a pot luck dinner, a DJ and lots of dancing, sleeping in tents, then making a big breakfast for everyone who stayed long enough the next day and drinking the contents of whatever coconuts we could find opened by the guys playing with machetes, all with intermittent games such as corn hole, darts, water games, and a battle hip tournament (a last-man-standing game played by standing in a big circle and hitting a rubber ball-type thing hanging from a tree with only your hips, eliminating people as they get hit with the ball unintentionally), of which I somehow became the international champion.

The remaining 3 or so weeks of our stay in Tonga were less eventful as we really got down to the nature of our trip and reeeeelaxed… but there were still some highlights.  We played trivia at Tonga Bob’s, a local pub, each Thursday and were determined to win.  Sometimes we would have too many people show up for our team, since there were a bunch of Americans, a few Australians, and eventually some British people we were friends with, and then a couple of us would have to join another team.  We never came very close to our goal of ultimate victory (we suspect cheating was involved by at least one other table), except for Sean, who on last Thursday we were there joined a team of other expats and his team won.  I’m sure we still haven’t heard the end of that.  Another weekly occurrence at Tonga Bob’s is a Fakaleti show, which we attended once.  Fakaletis are Tongan men who dress as girls, so it was similar to many shows in San Francisco.  It is fun to take male friends there and watch the pretty men make eyes at them.  Apparently in Tongan families if there are too many boys and not enough girls to do the traditional female work, the youngest son will be dressed and treated like a girl, including being taught to perform cooking and cleaning and other tasks generally done by women.  Sometimes these boys change after they move out of their parents’ house and end up like traditional men with wives and fulfilling the male roles, but sometimes they continue to dress like women and maintain feminine qualities, both of which are perfectly acceptable.  We also went sailing again, this time with an old guy who later earned the nickname “Hammer Roy,” after we heard a story of him smashing a loud boat generator with a hammer.  We decided not to sail with Roy anymore, but it was a good day out in the sun on the water.  Other than that, we hung out at Sean’s, checked out a few of the local beaches and camped at one for a couple nights, hung out at the peace corps office, hiked up Mt. Talau (great views), and various other activities around Neiafu. 

At the end of the trip Tres and I returned to Nuku Alofa for our flight back to New Zealand.  We went a day early in case flight schedules were changed as they tend to do in Tonga (there are so few planes that Sean asked us which one we took, we said a little blue one, and he said “oh, the one you have to duck down in to get to your seats?” – yep, that was the one.  Luckily it wasn’t the one built during WW2 that is still in regular use today).  We encountered a typical end-of-trip conundrum in which you want to use as much of your currency you already have to not have to exchange it back, but you don’t want to have too little and have to pay to take more out (exchange and ATM fees are ridiculous).  We had about 90 Tongan dollars between the two of us, which we decided would cover the night at the guesthouse, rides to and from the airport, and meals for the last day.  We stopped at the store on the way to the guesthouse to get a few small items for dinner and breakfast and figured we could eat lunch in town the next day (Tongan BBQ meals are only $5).  When we went to pay for the night at the guesthouse, we realized we hadn’t factored into our budget the 15% sales tax they add on to your bill, so we ended up with only about $3.50 and 1/3 of a loaf of bread left for lunch/dinner the next day.  That meant our options were buying a cheap can of sauce and eating the noodles in the community food bin at the guesthouse (a typical thing at hostels and places like this), or buying eggs (60 cents each) and having eggs and toast.  However, as we were walking around in town, we came across a little Tongan flag exactly as Tres’ grandmother had requested, so we had to get it.  We were left with $2.50, ruling out the sauce for pasta.  I realized I wanted a souvenir as well and hadn’t bought any so far, so I decided on the cheapest one I could think of, a Tongan coin.  This reduced our potential egg purchases to 3.  We were about to go for it, but at the last second we saw samosas on the counter at the fale kaloa (little store) for $1 each so we got 2 of them instead.  We shared a half of one of them while we were playing scrabble waiting for the bus to take us back to the guesthouse, and rationed the remaining one and a half throughout the rest of the day.  Of course when we got back to New Zealand Tres realized he had another dollar in the pocket of a pair of pants – we could have had the pasta sauce!  That caused quite a laugh as we remembered how “faka ofa” we had been, if you know what I mean...

Tonga - Part 1

People were skeptical about my decision to spend an entire month (actually slightly longer – 5 weeks) in Tonga, thinking we would get bored and not have enough to do to occupy that long in such a small country.  They clearly did not know about my uncanny abilities to sleep in and to be happy doing nothing for long periods of time.  Unfortunately I didn’t get to do nothing on a beautiful beach the entire time, but for the first week this was our paradise:

The forecast Sean (friend and peace corps volunteer in Vava’u) gave us was “beautiful with a chance of rain,” which was entirely accurate.  It rained a few days in the first week, then was mostly clear, sunny, and hot for the next 3 weeks, then we got a bit more rain.  Matafanua resort on the island group called Ha’apai was beautiful, set on the north peninsula of an island creating two different beaches.  This was great because when it was super hot, I could sit on the side with the breeze and still be comfortable, but when it was a bit too windy and chilly over there, the other side of the island was blocked from the wind by trees and a hill, making it significantly warmer than the other side.  The boys did a scuba course while the girls relaxed on the beach for two days, then we went out with them on the boat on the third day and saw whales!  They are so huge and graceful it was amazing to experience (unfortunately they are not so photogenic).  We also did a bit of snorkeling off the side of the boat but mostly just enjoyed being out on the beautiful ocean on a lovely day.

The food was good, there was a great little day bed to hang out at, and a few nights we had campfires on the beach.  We also started picking up on some of the Tongan language.  Although I have no idea how to spell any of the words we learned, I’m going to write them as if it’s similar to Spanish, in which you pronounce each letter like it sounds.  The first and easiest word is malo, which I take it means hi and/or thank you, and is used in pretty much every conversation along with io, which means yes and is the appropriate response to malo used as thank you.  I learned ofa, which means love, and faka, which means like or in the way of, and is used in conjunction with other words to create greater meanings, such as “faka Tonga,” which means Tongan.  For some reason “faka ofa” means pitiful, and “faka ofa ofa” means beautiful (as in setting or an object, not people).  Some little Tongan boys taught me “faka la a” which means sunbathe.

It wasn’t a resort like you would find in the states with en suite bathrooms, room service, and bathrobes in the closet.  You had to walk down the path to the camp-style bathrooms and ask the kitchen for drinking water, but it was still very nice and a perfectly relaxing spot.

To get to the island on which Sean lives we decided to take the ferry, which is significantly cheaper than flying.  Apparently the ferry goes about once per week and usually around Wednesday evening, but you have to keep a look out and your ears open to make sure you don’t miss it and also that you don’t get there 2 days early, because the schedule is more like an estimate, and it really could come any time within about 3 days of the expected time.  We heard it was coming Wed and we checked out of the resort Tues, so we stayed with Sean’s host family from when he first arrived in Tonga.  They were very nice and welcoming and I even got my own bedroom while the boys slept in the living room, one on a couch and one on a mattress on the floor (I will point out though that even this seemed more luxurious than what the host family females did, which was sleep on the floor in the kitchen – apparently a very Tongan thing to do).  Sean’s host dad decided to make us a Lu, a traditional Tongan dish (we later found out that he has to make this every time Sean comes to visit because he loves it so much).  A Lu is a little packet of goodness made up of meat, onions, and coconut juice wrapped in taro leaves and cooked in an umu – an oven dug in the ground and covered with rocks.  The boys got to help harvest the coconut juice by husking, cracking, draining, and scraping coconuts:

Then we had a nice picnic down by the water:

We heard rumors that the boat wasn’t going to leave Nuku Alofa (the main island) until the next day and so might not arrive to pick us up until Thursday instead of Wednesday.  We heard about 4 different times throughout the day that the ferry would arrive, but no definite answers, so we just bided our time and let the day go by.  Sean suggested we go to a kava circle with his host dad, who is the town officer of the little village where he lives and therefore is very respected by everyone who attends the kava circles (which I gather happen nearly every night with more or less the same people since the villages are so tiny).  Kava is a drink made from a powder that comes from a plant and is mixed with water.  It apparently has an effect on the drinker that makes them sleepy and sometimes makes their tongue or mouth go slightly numb, but this only happens after many times of drinking lots of kava as it builds up in your body and creates a cumulative effect.  Generally only men go to kava circles, but a female is allowed to attend if she is the do’a, who serves the kava.  Traditionally when women are being courted, the man who might marry her sits to her left and they chat all night and get to know one another.  Otherwise, sometimes the do’a gets paid or offered other items (food, not sure what else).  In my case they didn’t have enough notice to bring money for me, but I was given 4 bananas, all of which I ended up giving away before the end of the night because kava leaves a weird taste in your mouth and the men like to eat or drink little snacks in between rounds of the muddy watery stuff.  The younger attendees sit to the left and right of the do’a, and the older and/or more respected men sit towards the top of the circle, and kava is passed around in little coconut half shell cups in both directions.  However much kava is poured for you, you must drink the whole cup in one go.  Part of the do’a’s job generally is to know more or less how full to fill up the coconut cups for each person.  Luckily this responsibility was not mine, as even though I was the one filling the cups, Sean to my left and another young guy to my right were holding the cups and would take them away when they thought they were full to the right amount.  Throughout the night, the men and boys joke around, and this night was a treat because they had two palangi’s (literally people who come from the sun, but it generally means white people) to joke with/about.  Occasionally Sean would explain the jokes being told, but sometimes he would just laugh along with the Tongans and Tres and I would be left in the dark as to what was so amusing.  One of the ongoing jokes was how much to fill Tres’ cup, since the guy to my right was passing his cup around to him and didn’t want to give him too much, but Sean to my left kept telling me to fill Tres’ cup more and more full.  A little later in the night guys started bringing out guitars to play music and sing.  Sometimes everyone in the circle would join in for a song, with different harmonized parts and everything, which was really cool to hear.  It was great to see Sean in this environment, completely comfortable joking around in Tongan with all the local guys.  Working on part 2....