How to attend a Tongan Church Service

Well that depends on whether you are a Tongan, what church you are attending, or me. If you are a Tongan who belongs to the Free Wesleyan Church then you are already an old veteran, having attended numerous services and choir practices during the week and several on Sunday, including the most highly attended one, the hour long service at 10 a.m.

As a Wesleyan man you will wear a button down shirt, your tupenu (skirt), and your ta’ovala (woven mat worn around the waist and held up by a rope that is tied and knotted around the mat). If you are an older man or an important member of the church you may wear a blazer, even though the weather is suffocatingly hot. For the Wesleyan women, now this is the day to look your best. It is time to put on your nicest pule taha (Polynesian matching shirt and skirt, normally replete with tropical designs) your kiekia (female version of a ta’ovala), wear the make up you never put on any time else, and brush your hair. If you are between the ages of 8 and 30 you will also be lucky enough to wear a ridiculous pair of high heels, usually a minimum of several inches high, that for some reason are only worn during church.

During the service itself you happily sing along to all the hymns that you have known since childhood, listen carefully to the prayers, and wait for the malanga (sermon) to be presented by whoever was chosen to speak from the village this week. There may even be a collection, but that is by no means a weekly occurrence.

As a female member of the Church of Latter Day Saints, your outfit is identical to what the Wesleyan woman wear. You may not have to attend as many services as your Wesleyan brethren, but you more than make up for that with a three-hour service on Sunday from 9 am to 12 pm. For the Mormon men there is a dress code. You have to wear a white button down shirt with a tie and often a blazer, and nice black pants – possibly the only time you as a Tongan man ever wear pants.

The service itself has a clear pattern. The first hour is a normal service that includes taking Communion using bread and water, instead of the traditional wafer and red wine. The second hour you know that you will be split up into distinct groups – men, women, and youth – in order to attend a religious class taught by one of the members of the congregation. Finally, the third hour will be spent attending a mixed service and class, before your time of church is over.

If you are a member of one of the many other sects of Christianity in Tonga – Seventh Day Adventist, Catholic, Pentecostal, the Free Church of Tonga, etc – or a part of the small Baha’i minority, your services lie somewhere in between the Wesleyan and Mormon spectrums. Unfortunately, I am not as familiar with the services of the other churches and I have already spoken about the Baha’i Faith.

For me? Well, it is both the same and different. Like the other Tongans in my community, I wear a clean button down shirt, my tupenu, and the ta’ovala that I still tie poorly around my waist even after a year and a half of living here. I also stand during the hymns – silently however as I do not know the words – and seem to listen to the sermon. The difference however is that since I cannot understand what is happening (it is difficult to listen to a speech in another language and many of the words used in church are not used elsewhere) I let my mind wander, day dreaming blissfully, thinking about the future or the past, making to do lists, and deciding what movies I need to watch when I get back to the US. The trick is that while doing this to listen enough so that I know when to stand up or pay attention if they mention me specifically, which happens from time to time.

If I can’t understand what is happening, you may be asking why do I attend. The reason is two fold. The first is that church is the center of the community. The social lives of the villagers are almost exclusively revolved around the church. My community appreciates my attendance and in the rare times I do not attend Church (maybe 4 times since I have lived here) they always ask me where I was. Though I am not religious or Christian, it is a simple gesture on my part that allows me to be part of the community and a full member of the village.

The second part is that I love the Sunday staple of eating a traditional meal of lu and root crops every Sunday after the service. Tongans are extremely generous and are always sharing their meals with their neighbors. I often see two families trading their lu chicken for a lu beef to add some variety to their meal. Besides really enjoying the taste of lu, I love having the opportunity of eating with another family and temporarily becoming part of it. I tend to eat most of my meals alone in my house, so I relish the opportunity to eat with members of my community and forge a bond that comes from sharing a meal with another person. The meal allows us to have a deeper conversation in Tongan than we normally would in the quick hello conversations that dominate daily life.

Though I often eat with the same few families, I have eaten with most of the families at least once in my village and each time it has either cemented or built upon my relationship with that family. I learn something new every week and I am always touched whenever I am invited into someone’s home. It is truly one of my favorite experiences of living in Tonga, and one that I look forward to each week.

Thank you for reading. Below are the photos of Ha’apai after the destruction of Cyclone Ian, taken by PCVs Mandy Pederson and Abby Kloberdanz.

Someone's house - notice the bed frame

The strong winds warped this metal sheet

off of the main road

The Heat

Remember the scene in the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy throws a bucket of water on the Wicked Witch of the West and she begins screaming, “I’m melting! I’m melting!” until she does literally melt? Well, that is how I often feel living in Tonga this time of year. It is always warm here, but the summer months of January, February, and March are especially scorching.

Without such luxuries as air conditioning – though I certainly think of AC now as more of a necessity – you don’t have move to even work up a sweat. The moment I get home from school, the first thing I do is always to remove my sweat dampened shirt and skirt from my body to make myself just a little bit cooler. While it is illegal for men to be shirtless in Tonga, it is acceptable to not wear a shirt in your home and I take full advantage of this legal loophole.

I won’t sugarcoat it. It is pretty disgusting. The temperature is usually in the high 80’s to low 90’s with the muggiest humidity you can imagine. To escape the heat, many Tongans sleep during the hottest parts of the day and at night sleep outside to take advantage of the breeze. Unfortunately for me, I am a particularly poor napper and to sleep outside where I live in the bush is to invite all of the mosquitoes to a buffet of American flesh.

So…what do I do then? For most of the week I suffer, drink buckets of water, run incredibly slowly as late as I possibly can before dark in an attempt to get in some kind of a workout, and sleep with an electronic fan mere inches away from my face. My more impressive strategy, however, and perhaps the more interesting one to read about, is having something to do on the weekends. As I have mentioned in previous posts, in Vava’u life shuts down from 12 p.m. Saturday to Monday morning because of church and Sunday being the day of the rest. In this heat, it is easy to go a little stir crazy just sitting around over these two days, so myself and the other volunteers have tried to be a little more adventurous the past few weeks, organizing events under the guise of a slew of volunteer birthdays.

One of the events, a few weeks ago, was a beach bbq and a campout on one of the most beautiful spots in Tonga, Secret Beach. Secret Beach, while not exactly living up to its name, is relatively off the beaten path as it is difficult for tourists to find and involves a steep hike to get too, dissuading Tongans from other villages from visiting. Thus a large group of Peace Corps and Australian volunteers, along with some Tongan friends, spent a day and a night escaping the tropical heat by swimming in the water and enjoying the cool ocean breeze.

We barbecued chicken over an open flame, using the leaves around us as plates and dipping sauce, i.e ketchup, receptacles. We had far too few tents and way too many people, meaning some people including myself for a bit, slept outside under the stars. Falling asleep under a blanket of starlight with the rhythmic crashing of the waves keeping us company, the weather merely warm, and the mosquitoes somewhat less unruly, we could escape the heat for 24 hours. At time like these, I wonder how I could ever complain, even about the heat.

As always, thank you for reading and enjoy the photos.

Camping at Secret Beach 

Another volunteer, Ryan, and I

We had shirts made for our group, Tonga Group 77

The back of the shirt is a turtle designed in the Tongan style by one of the volunteers. The words read, "Kau ngaue 'ofa," which is the Peace Corps Tonga slogan and literally translates to the work of love, but also is the word for volunteer.

He or She

I have not written one of my anthropologically leaning posts in quite some time, and I feel like I am just about due to pretend that I am still a college student writing papers on the most archaic of subjects. For those of you who do not seem interested in such a post, understandably so I might add, you may skip this reading at you leisure and I will hopefully see you again next week.

I understand that linguists and other specialists often study language to gleam some insight into other cultures. Having studied Latin in middle and high school, and slogging through one year of Italian my freshman year of college, this type of analysis never seemed to interest me. However, after living in Tonga and learning the Tongan language, I have been particularly struck by the fact that there is no pronoun differentiating “he” and “she” in Tongan.

In Tongan, ne is the pronoun for both he and she. The only way to figure out which pronoun is correct is though the context. This is not quite as easy as it sounds however. Take the simple Tongan sentence of ‘Oku ne alu ki kolo (The boy/girl is going to town). Simply written as is, there is no way to know if the speaker or writer is referring to a boy or a girl.

I have spent an inordinate amount of my free time (don’t worry I still have plenty of other free time to do whatever I wish) thinking about why this is the case and if other languages possess a similar phenomenon. By pairing this thought with my first academic love – history – it seems to me to be evidence of a traditionally patriarchal society where men and women had distinct roles. Men went to war. Women cooked. Men were fisherman and farmed in the bush. Women wove mats and took care of the children. In a traditional structure with such strict gender norms, it wasn’t possible to confuse the pronouns and thus there was no need to have two separate pronouns for what the Tongan people would easily have understood with one.

While Tonga is historically a patriarchal society and remains somewhat so to this day, and I have no evidence to assert this claim, I do believe that this patriarchy is partly responsible for the lack of two separate pronouns. Though lack of separate pronouns may not have been an issue back in the day, it can be quite confusing in the modern world. Tonga is by no means a paragon of equal rights, as many of the stereotypes and gender roles I mentioned in the previous paragraph still abound, but women’s rights have slowly risen throughout the Kingdom. In today’s Tonga women can work in all industries and reach senior positions in both government ministries and in business. Most Tongan teachers, including myself, will tell you that girls outperform boys at both the primary and secondary level by a wide margin. For Tonga in the 21^st Century, one pronoun often just does not seem like enough.

I hope this was not too boring for everyone. Nothing particularly interesting has happened to me recently, and this was a topic I was saving for a rainy day. I don’t have any real suggestion to clarify this ambiguity, and I am certainly unqualified to request the Tongan language to add a pronoun, but this topic has definitely piqued my interest more than I should care to admit. If anyone has a better thought than I do, I’d be happy to hear it.

Thanks for reading and enjoy the photos of my latest fishing excursion.

A beautiful red fish another volunteer caught

A fish that I actually caught - Yes, I was shocked too!

Simply pan seared with only butter for flavoring.

 It was absolutely delicious and could not obviously have been fresher.

A Proud Moment

It is very rare that you are able to see yourself through the eyes of the people around you. Too often, even for the most self-aware among us, we must simply guess what people think of us. This can be a good thing – there is a reason people say ignorance is bliss and wouldn’t it be terrifying to actually know what people thought of you all the time? – but sometimes this leaves you unaware of the how even the smallest gesture can have an outsize impact.

I have been lucky enough to have enjoyed several of these moments during my time here, two of which first spring to mind before I get into the crux of this post. The first revolved my American expatriate friends, who early in our relationship were at the same café as the other volunteers, and I made sure to introduce everyone of the volunteers to the couple. I did not think much of the event. I was simply trying to be polite, and I always strive to make introductions when people don’t know each other. It was not until weeks later that I found out how touched the couple was and how much they appreciated my introduction. I had absolutely no idea that this tiny gesture could make such a difference.

Similarly, almost a year ago today, I was teaching a night class to the kids in my village, when I asked a Class 5 student who speaks exceptional English that she learned from attending school in town to help an older Form 1 boy with his English homework. When another child told me that it was strange that a younger girl would help an older boy, I said that it was ok because she was so good at English. It was a small bout of praise, similar to the comments I always try to encourage my students with at school, and I quickly forgot about the encounter.

Eight months later, I was invited by her family for after church lunch, and I was sitting on the couch next her mother, when she told me how happy I made her and her daughter because of this praise from so long ago. Her pride in her daughter’s abilities and my acknowledgement of that talent was so tangible I felt that I could reach out and grab it. I was amazed that they both still remembered what I had said, and then mentioned it to me so long after the fact. Once again, I was stunned.

Now, to the point of this post, I often have no idea what the Tongans I live with think of me. To the children, I know I am often a toy or a friend, or at worse the mean teacher who makes them study English. With the adults it is less clear due to the language barrier and the Tongan cultural unwillingness to show most of their emotions. I have been incredibly accepted by each of my three villages, but once in a while I am curious to know how they view me as an individual person, rather than yet another Peace Corps Volunteer.

I was rewarded such a moment at a church fundraiser last November. I have long since learned that when you are going to feasts, it is important to bring plastic bags so that you can take the piles on uneaten food back to the house for left over’s. At first I was loathe to do this out of some combination of shyness and not wanting to make some kind of cultural snafu, but those feelings have long since evaporated as I have learned to grab food as any Tongan would.

At this fundraiser, I was sitting in a pew at the Wesleyan Church as some of the women were walking around with collection boxes. When the minister’s wife walked past me, she asked me if I had brought any bags with me for the feast, and I tapped the pocket in my tupenu (Tongan skirt) and told her I had brought three. She smiled and praised my foresight, while the people around us who had heard the exchange chuckled.

The real moment, however, happened two hours later at the actual feast. During feasts, people continually stand up and say fakamalos, which are basically thank you speeches, and are very important. Almost every time the person saying the speech will tear up and have to pause from being so emotionally overwhelmed. This is one of the few times in Tongan culture it is ok to show your emotion. One of the men, during his fakamalo, recounted my bag-church conversation, and then praised me for being so “poto,” (smart) and how Tongan I have become. All around the Tongans at the feast were laughing and calling me poto, clearly impressed that I had brought three plastic bags with me.

As ridiculous as this may sound, I swear that I have never been more praised in my life than at this moment, and my village has never been more proud to have me as “their” Pisi Koa than during this feast. It was a surreal moment, being praised for bringing plastic bags, but it was very Tongan and I felt incredibly happy to be able to feel such a moment. Oddly enough, I believe this will be one of my fondest memories of my time in Tonga when I think back to this experience years from now. At that moment in time, for a few minutes, I saw how everyone saw me.

Thank you for reading and enjoy the photos.

Playing at the beach with Camp GROW/GLOW

Our youngest counselor, Wil, explaining his ideal healthy meal

Rock, Paper, Scissors Tournament during a break with Camp GROW/GLOW

The 'Eua ferry

After School Activities

After abusing my position as chief, a.k.a the sole, writer of this blog and writing epic long posts in my last two entries after a long absence, I have decided to return the basics and give you all a bit of a break with a much shorter post this week. So sit back, relax, and know that it will all be over relatively soon.

I last left you in ‘Eua where I was about to board a three hour ferry to the main island of Tongatapu with my home stay brother Sione. I, after acquiescing to Peace Corps’ request, returned from my trip a day early so that I could be on the main island with the majority of the volunteers to face the first cyclone of my Tonga tenure, Cyclone Ian. For a quick piece meteorological information, cyclones, hurricanes, and typhoons are the exact same thing, they just spin in different directions and have different names depending on what part of the world you’re in.

On the main island all of the volunteers clustered together in the guesthouse, as we were not allowed to leave and waited for the storm to hit. For most of the night there was some rain, a bit of wind, but nothing that I haven’t seen from normal tropical storms here, or my experiences with hurricanes back in Florida. The morning after the storm, I was happy to hear that the main island received very little damage, and that though my home island of Vava’u felt the storm more strongly, the only damage was a few trees and power lines down, nothing major.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the island group that lies in between Tongatapu and Vava’u, Ha’apai. The damage there was extensive, as the eye of the storm passed directly over the small group of islands. In some villages, up to 90% of the structures were destroyed. Schools, houses, and churches were flattened. Water tanks blew up. Tongans and tourists took shelter in Mormon Churches (the safest structures and by far the most technically sound buildings in Tonga) across the island, luckily saving many lives. Sadly, one woman was killed in her house by the cyclone.

A week later, after my training, I and the other volunteers took the 24-hour ferry ride back to Vava’u, which stops in Ha’apai on the way. Having an hour to walk around the regional capital, I felt like I was in one of those towns in the mid-west after it was devastated by a tornado. Power lines were everywhere. Trees with seemingly impenetrable roots were lying on their sides. Houses were flattened, and people were living in Red Cross supplied tents. It is a terrible situation, and there are links to donate to the cause if you Google Ha’apai Tonga and the Red Cross.

To end on a lighter note, the week of training was uneventful other than the fact that I met the rest of the new volunteers on the other islands. Though I won’t see many of them again, it was nice to put names to faces and get to know the new crop of volunteers.

Now – to get the name of this post – a funny event occurred last week. Monday through Wednesday all of the teachers, the volunteers, and the Ministry of Education officials met for the annual teacher planning meetings. I don’t have much to report from this week, except for one comical, and more than slightly awkward moment.

On Tuesday, the teachers were separated by their sexes, and a male ministry official spoke the male teachers, while a female official spoke to the women. Normally during these long meetings I tend to zone out a bit. My Tongan is somewhat decent conversationally, but I am pretty lost when I am listening to an hour-long speech, so I normally let my mind wander. This time was no different, except that I kept hearing the Tongan word for “sex,” being repeated over and over again. At first I thought I was mishearing the word, but the more I listened to the conversation the more I realized sex was definitely being discussed.

I was confused. Our primary school students are too young to learn about sexual education, so I didn’t understand what was going on. After the meeting, I asked one of my teachers what the talk was all about, and he explained to me that too many teachers, most of them married, had affairs with each other last year and the Ministry had said that had to be stopped. Apparently it was a rather large number, though I was relieved to hear that at least these affairs were not occurring at the schools.

It was an interesting moment, made more so by chuckling of the teacher telling me this story, but I guess I continue to prove the old adage that I learn something new every day, regardless of whether it is worth learning. Well…at least I can say there’s never a dull moment in Tonga.

Thanks for reading. I suppose my promise of a short post didn’t really come out true. Sorry! – I’ll try harder next time. Enjoy the photos and have a great weekend.

P.S.  Tonga made the news and the Winter Olympics...though the name change thing is a bit weird.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/07/sports/olympics/lugers-name-matches-the-one-on-his-waistband.html

enjoying the cliff views in 'Eua

makeshift ping pong at school

There and Back Again

After spending 15 and a half months in Tonga, with a 10 day sojourn to Asia as my sole time spent out of the country, I was finally coming home to the US. As I stepped onto the first of several flights, numerous thoughts flashed through my head – was I ready, had I changed, will other people have changed, what will it feel like?

I soon happily discovered, within minutes of landing in the San Francisco airport, that culture shock is overrated. I was back. I was home. When I returned to Florida and saw all of my family and friends, it was as if I had never left. If anything, Tonga felt like a world away, as if I had dreamt the last 15 months and that the Peace Corps had happened to someone else. Have I really been gone for so long? It sure didn’t feel that way.

My time in the US was amazing. I spent two weeks in Florida spending time with my family, hanging out with friends, eating all the food I had dreamt about for the last year, especially Chinese food, going to the movies, and studied and took the GMAT. It was an incredible time, and I was continually blown away by the support I was given by everyone back home and the impressiveness of the questions I was asked. It was truly a meaningful homecoming.

I spent the last ten days in New York City, meeting up with all my best friends from college, having an incredible New Years Eve, and seeing family that wasn’t in Florida. One of my biggest fears before leaving for Tonga and joining the Peace Corps was losing touch with the people that I cared most about, but it has been extremely rewarding to see that in a world where you can video chat with someone from thousands of miles away, that even if you haven’t spoken in over a year you can still pick up just where you had left off.

Volunteers are often warned that returning to America during your service can have two effects; it can reenergize you or it can make you more homesick and wish for your time to end. I am absolutely in the former camp. Coming home was the perfect experience, and though I was sad to leave everyone behind, I was excited to return to Tonga and the home that I have made for myself here. I still feel that I have unfinished business to attend to over these next 9 months.

When I returned to Tonga, I had a few days to kill before our mandatory PC training, so my host brother Sione and I hopped on what is claimed to be the world’s shortest flight – only ten minutes! – to make the 60 km trip to the nearby island of ‘Eua to see Sione’s sister and my host sister Kalo. Kalo is the only doctor on the entire island and we stayed in her house across the street from the hospital. My first act upon arriving, after already having given my host mom Faiana presents of pictures and picture frames, and Sione the slippers he had requested, was to bring out the gift that Kalo had asked for from America – two bottles of tequila.

The first few days we wandered around, watched a lot of movies on Kalo’s computer, and attended two church feasts. On the last day, Friday, Kalo took the day off from work and we journeyed around the entire island. Before I get in to where we went, I first have to mention some interesting facts about ‘Eua. Though it is only 60 km from the main island of Tongatapu, ‘Eua is by far the most unique of all Tonga’s island groups. While the rest of Tonga was formed 10 million years ago, ‘Eua was formed over 40 million years ago and is therefore completely different. Its topography is almost mountainous, it is much cooler than the rest of Tonga, and it is the only island that remains mostly natural forested. Walking around ‘Eua it’s hard to believe you are still in Tonga, as you drive under pine trees and listen to the chirping of the birds flying by. Only a few thousand people live on this absolutely gorgeous island.

Our first stop was to the far southern tip of the island to Maui’s archway. The archway is a giant cave the opens up into the ocean, creating a land bridge and a stunning view. Legend has it that the Polynesian god Maui formed the archway by thrusting his spear into the side of the island. As you can see in the photo below, it is pretty spectacular. Unfortunately we did not see any of the wild horses known to roam the area, but our next stop was to this forest clad, prehistoric-looking sinkhole. No one knows how deep the sinkhole goes into the island, but I like to think if you followed it far enough that it would take you to a world where dinosaurs roam (Note: My theory has yet to be scientifically proven).

Next, we traveled to a large Ovava tree that is over 800 years old, and has massive roots extending in every direction like a labyrinth of snakes from its enormous trunk. Like the giant Redwoods and Sequoias of California, the Ovava tree inspires awe that any living thing can be that big and that old at the same time. Our last stop, before heading out on a 3-hour ferry ride to the main island, was to the northern edge of the island for a spectacular lookout view. As Tonga is the first nation west of the International Date Line, the lookout claims to be the first sport to see the sunrise every morning. Each year, numerous tourists come to the spot on January 1^st, to be the very first person to welcome the New Year into the world, and the location was said to be quite crowded when we all awoke to the new millennium over a decade ago.

As this post is already too long, I will save my time in Tongatapu and my first week in Vava’u for next weeks post. All I can say is that it was an amazing host family reunion – I see Sione periodically but I hadn’t seen Kalo in over a year – and my continuing relationship with my host family has been one of the most rewarding aspects of my service. We had a great time hanging out and exploring, and I’m still trying to convince them to come up to Vava’u for a visit. Thank you all for reading and please enjoy the beauty of ‘Eua in the photos below.

Maui's Archway

At the southern edge of the island with Sione and Kalo

The never ending sinkhole

In front of the Ovava tree with Sione and cousin/tour guide Pesi

The northern edge of 'Eua, where the sun first meets land every morning

Camp GROW & GLOW – It Finally Happened

Wow! Where do I even begin? The past 6 weeks have been so eventful that I barely know how to start. As I type these sentences I feel like I need to take a step back, collect my thoughts, inhale deeply, and just write. However, there is no time for that – I have neglected this blog for far too long – and I simply have to pick a place to begin. I have thus made the executive decision to go back to mid – December to talk about the 4 days of Camp GROW and GLOW in this post, and I will update my blog in a few days with a brief description of my time in the US, my trip to the island of ‘Eua with my host family, and my week long Peace Corps training on the main island.

First, before I even begin, I want to thank everyone who made GROW and GLOW possible. To all of my family and friends who contributed to the project, I remain incredibly touched by your generosity. I and the other volunteers strove to live up to those contributions, and in my humble opinion I like to believe that the camps, made possible by your generosity, did make a difference. I hope I will be able to show everyone that in the following paragraphs. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

The morning of December 9^th started off with nervous anxiety – would the kids come? Were we capable of leading a 4-day camp filled with 13-year-old kids? Did we have the right speaker’s lined up? Trying to retain a calm exterior, I was undeniably excited yet anxious. Walking around I tried to make sure everything was ready for our campers’ arrival, willing them in my head to just get hear already, fearing they wouldn’t, and inevitably somewhat fearing they would. Slowly but surely, however, the kids began to arrive. The camp had begun.

Now the hard part began. The other volunteer, Joey, and I had spent months developing GROW, along with Mandy, who focused on the girls camp GLOW, but now we had to step back, ensure the arrival of our speakers, and work more as facilitators as our 4 Tongan counselors, all under the age of 21, took control. The camp ran smoothly from the very beginning. The first few hours were spent playing getting to know you games (the campers came from a myriad of high schools and didn’t all know each other) and discussions of the expectations they would have as campers. We told them that the onus was on them to make these four days special, that the more they participated and contributed the greater the experience would be.

The rest of the first day was spent with our two guest speakers, nurses discussing sexual education and healthy life styles, such as nutrition and exercise. Though the topics we’re a bit weighty for a first day, the kids were dynamic, continually asking questions and enjoying a friendly game of healthy food bingo. After a filling dinner, one of our counselor lead a session about goal setting and decision making, which made the kids, for possibly the first time in their young lives, begin to think what they wanted out of their high school experience and beyond. One of our goals was to challenge their thinking and see how it evolved over the course of the four days. For bedtime, we watched GI Joe on the projector.

I promise to spare you the tediousness of going through a play by play of all four days, but I just wanted to provide an example of one day in the life of the Camps.

There were of course numerous highlights to mention:

1.     On the second day, Tuesday, the boys of GROW and the girls of GLOW came together for the first time to listen to a speaker from the environmental NGO in Vava’u and then head out for an beach day and bbq at a Tongan-owned resort.  In case any of you were wondering if teenagers in Tonga differed from their American counterparts, this will quickly answer your question. When they boys learned we were going over to see the girls, they all rushed to put on their best clothes, swabbed on deodorant, and bathed themselves in cologne. I learned later, that the girls similarly took showers, brushed their hair, and dressed up a bit. Of course, when they actually were around each other, there was little interaction between the two sexes.

2.    We had an incredible array of compelling speakers who offered great presentations for our kids. We had a court judge and the head of the University satellite school in Vava’u discuss women’s rights and domestic violence. The Deputy Principal of the Catholic High School lead a session on post-secondary school educational opportunities. A wide variety of government ministries and companies brought the campers into their places of business for several hours to stress the wide range of career opportunities available to them in Tonga. And last but not least, our counselors each lead individual sessions on anger management, drugs and alcohol, decision-making, critical thinking, and goal setting, which they performed exceptionally well.

3.    Perhaps, most importantly of all, relationships were made and friendships established. The boys of GROW and the girls of GLOW left with lasting memories, a few lessons in their head, a desire to bring back what they learned to their communities and schools, and forged shared bonds with a new group of people.

If I come off as to much of a homer for this project, that is because I am. Not everything worked out as we would have liked – we were hoping for a larger number of campers, one of the nurses did not show up for her presentation, and we have to tweak our career day event – but on the whole the other volunteers and I, the counselors, and the campers were incredibly happy with how the week went. We took a girls camp, GLOW, that we knew nothing about before coming to Peace Corps and continued it’s growing legacy in Vava’u, and developed GROW, a boys camp to run parallel with the girls camp for the first time in Tonga.

As is often the case in Peace Corps, I have grown a lot through the process of developing this program and in many ways feel that I got more out of it than even the campers and counselors did. It was truly a special week for me.  Many of you may be asking me what is next and that is a great question. Our next steps are to continue to meet with our male and female campers to discuss how to continue to use the lessons they learned over the 4 days of the camp and how to bring these values to their villages and classmates. We also have to begin planning for GROW and GLOW 2014 next September, which will be one of my final acts as a Peace Corps Volunteer.

Thank you all for reading. Before I leave you to the photos, I want to say one last thing. If I seemed to take a disproportionate amount of credit for the camp in the previous paragraphs, I want to dispel that right hear. Yes, myself and other volunteers spent months of hard work developing this project and making it feasible, but the true credit lies with two groups of people: The people back home who made this all possible by donating to GROW and GLOW, and the incredible Tongans who housed the camps, fed us, spoke to our campers, served as counselors, the parents who trusted us with their children, and the students who arrived as campers. The true success of the camps and their future is reflected in our thanks to the first group and the indomitable spirit of the second. Thank you all.

Playing a quick energizing game

One of our counselors, Mafi, leading a session on Anger Management

The GROW boys with the classic Tongan pose

our first meal

Healthy Food Bingo

Drawing an example of a healthy meal

Two counselors (Hepi in red and Mafi in black) going over decision making scenarios with the campers