Cool Stuff and The Circle of Life

Serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Kingdom of Tonga, I am rewarded with an

interesting dichotomy. My life, like everyone else’s, is made up of routine. After

spending a month in Tonga and almost as long at my home stay, my life, with a few

exceptions, follows a preordained schedule. I go to language class from 8:30-12, enjoy an

hour lunch break, and then listen to a variety of training or bureaucratic power points

from 1-4:30. The rest of the day is spent hanging out with the other volunteers, dinner at

home, running, studying, and a lot of reading.

 

Yet, at the same time, Tonga offers me some incredible opportunities and new life

experiences that I try to convey in this blog. This week in particular, the coolness of my

position has overwhelmed the routine schedule, so what you see below is the highlights

of my past week, consisting of fun moments, crazy cultural experiences, and my

evolution as a volunteer and future primary school teacher in rural Tonga.

 

Cool Stuff

 

Since I have class from Monday-Friday, and I am not allowed to do anything on Sundays

besides go to church, eat, and sleep, I try to make Saturdays as fun as possible. Two

weeks ago, I drove with my host brother, Sione, and two of his cousins to ‘Anahulu,

which is a few towns away. ‘Anahulu is a huge cave that offers the only indoor,

underground swimming pool in Tonga, and is completely natural.

 

Arriving at the site, I first had to descend about 50 feet to enter the mouth of the cave.

Lights are scattered about to allow for some sight, but everything else in the cave is

natural. I walked through the cave for a few minutes surrounded by enormously beautiful

stalactites and stalagmites. After several minutes, a pool of water arises out of nowhere,

incredibly clear where touched by light but pitch black everywhere else.

 

The water is surprisingly not freezing and the fresh water feels incredible after swimming

in the salt of the ocean. The four of us spent hours swimming in this ridiculous

underwater cave, relaxing, and jumping off from the points that surrounded the water,

ranging from about 10 to 25 feet (it is difficult to gauge in the darkness). It was an

awesome time and I am definitely planning on going back in a few weeks.

 

This past Saturday, myself and some of the other volunteers went to watch the rugby

matches at the stadium close to town. I am using the term stadium loosely, as though

there were some cement bleachers, the stadium was just a large field and most people sat

right on the sidelines. The rugby itself was fun to watch, but it was much more interesting

to watch the reactions of the Tongans. The Tongans love rugby and there fans are as

passionate as any in the US.

 

At the match, which pitted local villages against each other, the men, and especially the

women, were going crazy. Overall, the experience of being a sports fan in Tonga is pretty

similar to that of America, except for one interesting difference. In the US, fans only rush

the field or the court after a big victory or upset. In Tonga, the fans are much less picky.

Tongans rush the field when one team scores, or even when one team comes close to

scoring. They rush the field during a fumble or when a fight breaks out. They even rush

the field when it rains just so they can play in the rain. It is hilarious to watch.

 

Crazy Culture

 

As I mentioned in an earlier post, every Sunday Tongans eat lu which is cooked in an

underground oven and takes hours to make. I have been enjoying the fruits of this labor

without doing anything to help for the past month, so I had no idea how it was all made.

This changed this past week when my language teacher decided that we should make lu

instead of having a typical class.

 

His family drove in from Nuku’alofa and we all brought in food to cook. Myself and the

other men dug out a fire pit, burned a pile of wood, and placed a ton of rocks on top of

the wood. The idea is that as the wood burns away the rocks heat up and the food is then

cooked on the hot rocks. We cut open coconuts, scraped off the insides into a bowl, and

chopped down branches with a machete. Inside, the women cut the meat, prepared the

leaves that the food is cooked in, and created the coconut-based sauce.

 

It was an awesome time, and I’ll spare you all the details, but there is one part of the meal

that is particularly interesting. Though I am sure this would not be at all surprising to

Americans who grew up in a farm or in very rural settings, but seeing the food I will later

eat killed in front of me is something entirely new to me and probably to most of you

who are reading this as well.

 

I have eaten roast pig in Tonga, which is delicious, but I had not seen how the pig was

prepared before this day. It was like experiencing the entire circle of life in two hours.

My instructor gave a man some money and the man brought over a live pig. Without

going into detail, I saw the pig die, be prepared, roasted on a stick over a fire, and than

eaten. It was a crazy cultural experience, which I won’t forget anytime soon.

 

Evolution

This post has become much longer than anticipated, so anyone who chooses to stop

reading at this point is forgiven and I appreciate you reading this far. The rest of this post

will just mention two events that in one month, will see me transform from a trainee in a

home stay into a volunteer living by myself in a rural village.

 

This past week, two actions have shaped this process. The first was that I was given a list

of potential site locations and asked to preference my top four sites and explain why I

 

chose them. For those of you who I have not told how the Peace Corps timeline works,

basically, I will be at my home stay for training until October 31st, but I am given my permanent

two year site location on October 19th, and I will leave for my site on November 10th.
 

 

There are 15 volunteers, and the Peace Corps gave us a list of 18 sites that may or may

not receive a volunteer. There were 2 sights in the most rural island Eua, which oddly is

only a 15 minute plain ride from the main island of Tongatapu, where there are 6 sights

and I am currently living. Vava’u, which is about 300 miles north of Tongatapu, has 10

sites. Vava’u is more rural than Tongatapu, but less so than Eua and has many of the

amenities that the main island possesses. It is also supposed to be the most beautiful

island group, and offers some great diving, snorkeling, and whale watching (These are

not the main reasons why I would like to be in Vava’u, but they definitely do not hurt

either). Though I will be happy with whatever site the Peace Corps picks for me, as they

all look great, my four site preferences are in Vava’u and I am hoping to spend my two

years there.

 

Since this post has gotten far too long and I am uploading this post before I finish my

week of teaching, I will talk about teaching in the next post and I will hopefully come

equipped with funny anecdotes that little kids always seem to present.

Sione about to jump into the water (the black stuff in the backgroud is crystal clar water)

Outside of the cave

 

My langauage instructor Taua

 

Success after opening my first cocnut

 

Scraping out the insides of a coconut