Tongan Cars

Cars are a special type of breed in Tonga. In America, it is rare to see cars that are especially old or in particularly bad shape. You might see a car in need of a paint job, or with a window replaced with duct tape and cardboard, but for the most part the cars look pretty decent. That is not the case in Tonga.

Here the cars are an interesting hodgepodge of Japanese and European vehicles, inevitably in various stages of disrepair. I rarely see a car that has both 4 unbroken windows and 4 doors that open from the inside and out. Many of the cars don’t need a new paint job as much as would benefit from any semblance of paint at all. Numerous cars are missing a bumper or a rearview mirror. Air conditioning is a mere dream.

I have ridden in cars that wouldn’t start without a few of us having to jump out in the back to push and I am familiar with cars that start only after their engines guzzled a few liters of water. I can vividly recall watching one car jumpstart another from the side of the road, and seemingly every house has the shell of a car, wheels and any reusable part removed, collecting rust in the front yard.

And yet…riding in these cars is one of my favorite experiences in Tonga. Due to my weekly excursions hitchhiking into town, I have sampled a large number of cars. Rarely has everything worked, and never has it mattered. We always ended up where we needed to go, usually gaining a story or two in the process.

Some of my fondest memories are sitting in the back of a flat bed truck, cooled by the breeze as the truck moved up and down the hills of Vava’u. Sometimes in these situations I am alone or with a few people, the space plenty ample for us all. Other times, like last week, I returned in back of the truck with 20 students, all of us crammed in like sardines. It was certainly less cool, but no less of an experience.

Of course there are nice cars. Occasionally a new car or van will arrive in Vava’u on the ferry from the main island, New Zealand, or Japan, all decked out and shiny. But that is not what matters. Instead, what I enjoy is that I can identify every car in my three villages – and many other cars on the island for that matter – simply because all cars have one mark on the inside or out, usually something broken, an interesting choice of color, or some odd design, that distinguishes their car from all the others. When I see a certain car I know who drives it and everyone of their family members who may be riding with him or her.

Some of my favorite cars in my three villages? Great question. We have one low-riding car that has the Tongan flag painted over it and the words of the national rugby team written on the doors. Another van is lime green and barely gets over 30 kilometers an hour. A third van has had its entire inside gutted and replaced with benches along the sides to serve as a type of school bus for the high school kids from one of my villages. The last truck is missing a door on the driver’s side, giving it the appearance of a dilapidated postal truck.

In my mind these cars have character, representing Tonga in some strange but always different way. I love the experience of riding in these cars, and wouldn’t trade it for anything…except maybe for some AC.

Thanks for reading and enjoy the photos.

Helping the kids brush their teeth

Teaching Class 5 last year

Receiving my certificate for completing IST training, April 2013

Group Photo - Volunteers and PC Staff - post IST, April 2013

Teaching sequencing and story telling

Circumcision?

This is a weird topic. I know this. You know this. We all know this. So why are we talking about this? Truthfully…I don’t really know. All I know is that I didn’t have much to say this week, so instead I turned to a subject that is a bit unusual (for lack of a better term). Oh well…lets get started.

The particular tropic of circumcision entered my consciousness some time last October when I was talking with my counterpart, Paea. While I am always interested in learning new facts about Tongan culture, I had never put much thought into the Tongan practice of circumcision. I knew most Tongan boys were circumcised and that was all I felt that I really needed to know.

Regardless of my feelings, somehow this topic came up between Paea and I. Seemingly out of nowhere Paea told me that Tongan boys don’t get circumcised as babies, but when they are between the ages of 10 and12.  I was pretty shocked by this information, not understanding why parents would do this, and asked Paea why the parents would subject their kids to such a painful procedure at that age rather than as a baby? He simply shrugged and said that it is just how Tongans do it. I asked if there was a cultural reason for it, and he replied that he didn’t think so.

I was surprised by this news. I was curious enough to want learn why, but I also didn’t want to ask people I knew around the village why Tongan boys waited. I felt that I couldn’t just go up to someone in my village and say, “Hey, so….why do Tongans get circumcised at age 11?” That would be even more awkward than writing this post. I couldn’t do it.

Thus I put the subject on the back burner until it unexpectedly came up when I returned from America in January and visited my Tongan home stay sister Kalo in ‘Eua. Kalo is the only doctor on the entire island and on my first day in ‘Eua, Kalo, my home stay brother Sione, some of their cousins, and I walked to the wharf to hang out. As we passed a group of boys swimming in the wharf – a common sight – Kalo, again out of no where, told me to never swim with young boys during the summer school break because they were all swimming to help relieve the pain from their recent circumcisions.

I hadn’t expected her to say that. I asked what she was talking about, and she told me that as the only doctor she spends most of her time when school is off performing the surgeries. She further told me that you could always tell who was recently operated on by seeing how the boys walk funny for a few days afterwards. As she was being so forthcoming, I asked Kalo why Tongan boys waited until they were older to have the surgery, and her only answer was that it simply wasn’t part of the post-natal treatment, so the parents just decide to wait.

I don’t have any particular insight to add to what I have just written. I think the practice of waiting seems a bit odd, and to prove that I try to show Tonga in all of its glory to my readers, I wrote this post. I hope you….liked it?

Thanks for reading. The photos below were taken when Peace Corps staff came to my school to watch me teach.

Paea and I with last years Class 6 and 5 students

Teaching Class 6

Helping Lili answer a question

My Class 6 from last year

The teachers of GPS Houma

Attack of the Moms

It is now my favorite time of the Tongan school year – Sports Day. For those of you who don’t remember from last year, Sports Day is when the schools, first regionally then by island group, meet to compete in a series of track and field events. Sports days are a staple of both the GPS’s (primary schools) and high schools’ yearly calendar.

Our Sports Day was held last week, but preparation for the big day began several weeks ago. For a myriad of reasons, my principle has allowed me to pretty much run our school’s fitness programs, which means that I am in charge of making sure our school doesn’t embarrass ourselves during the competitions. I have to admit that I enjoy the role. I love the idea of coaching, and I genuinely like teaching the kids how to start, properly pass a baton in a relay race, or how to breathe properly after the race is over. And…I also have to admit that I am as competitive as the students and I want to see them win.

Most of my work centered on the older kids, Classes 4 to 6, who would be competing in most of the events. We worked on stretching before and after each practice, so that they understood the importance of not just going straight from sitting all day to running full blast. We ran the 100, focusing on pure speed and a fast start. In Tongan races, the count down is announced in English….On your mark….Get Set…..Bang! and we worked on recognizing when to launch yourself into the race.

The 200 meters and the 400 meters race were more of an endurance test, a sharp lesson for kids who are fast but rarely run for more than a minute straight. Particularly challenging was the 800 meter race for the Class 6 kids, who during practice understood the concept of not running the first 400 too quickly, which inevitably lead the first 400 being run at a snails pace and the second to be run as if it were the 100, with the kids flying down the lines.

The funniest and cutest times were when we raced the younger kids, Class 1 to 3, and though we weren’t even sure if they would have an event to race on Sports Day, the kids were eager to practice with the older students. With incredible earnestness, the little kids would run as fast as their small legs could carry them. The races were epic, eliciting laughter from the older students, a few face plants into the grass, and even the teachers would poke their heads out of their classroom at these moments to watch the youngest kids flash by.

For two weeks we practiced. We spent a lot of time on the relay races, making sure the kids knew not to just wait for the person to pass them the baton, but to actual start moving before so as to build up a head of steam before they even started to really run. Were we ready? I think so. In truth I already knew who would win and who would lose, as I had trained the kids in our entire region last year and the students are of course the same every year except the oldest ones. Regardless, the kids and I both had a fun time preparing.

On the Sports Day, of course a brutally hot day, my students, their parents, and I hopped onto the school bus to take the short drive to the largest school in our region where our school and three other schools would compete. On arrival, the parents, with their mats and containers of food for lunch, quickly commandeered a tented area near the field to be our home for the next 6 hours.

For me it was time to work. During the day I was in charge of making sure the kids were ready for their races, and helped coach them during the actual events. The trial heats were in the morning with the finals in the afternoon after lunch. I won’t go into too much detail of the races, as we did not to do very well, but our class 6 boys did win most their events in their age group and will compete in the all island sports day.

The most ridiculous events occurred during lunch. Some of you may remember that last year during our Sport Day – where I was the only non-Tongan out of as many as 500 Tongan students, family members, and teachers – I was “attacked” by a bunch of moms, who lifted me up, attempted to unbutton my shirt, and I only was able to run away when they dropped me and felt bad just long enough for me to make my escape. This year I came prepared, and beyond a few occasions where I had to run away from a too-bold mother, I had survived well.

Of course that doesn’t mean that the moms were not their normal crazy sports day selves. They raced alongside the kids. Lifted them up. Tackled each other. At one point they got so rambunctious, the teachers in charge made them race each other in the 100 meters but rather than race they all ended up tackling each other again. It was pretty hilarious watching these large mothers wrestling each other in front of so many laughing spectators.

During lunch, I ate way too much food that was generously provided by several families from my village. We sat on the floor and ate the chicken, root crop, pig, sausage, and even a crab with our fingers in the Tongan style. After we finished eating, my principal asked me to take part in our schools concert to raise money. I reminder her about the attack last year and said I would stay behind, but gave her some money as my contribution.

A few minutes later and our school was called. It was time for the concert and we had to dance. Two of the mothers grabbed me and tried to get me to go with them. I again told them what happened, joked that they did not help me last year, and sad that I already given money. This did little to dissuade them and after several minutes of pressuring me I made them promise to (even going as far as to make them pinky swear) to protect me if the women from the other villages came after me. They said they would.

We were up and running. I danced with the students and for a few minutes I was safe, until the more rambunctious mothers from the other villages tried to get me again. At fist, the women from my village kept their promises and would surround and shield me from the other women, but eventually they got bored and “betrayed” me. Luckily, I now have the loyalty of my students after working with them for such a long time, and whenever a woman came by 20 of them would stand between us a moving shield. This lasted for a few minutes, until one of the women decided to really come after me, and started tossing the kids left and right (and I mean literally throwing them into the air), until I booked it as fast as I could -thankfully I was a bit faster than her - to the laughter of everyone watching.

That was my last scare. Afterwards, I told the new female volunteer who works in one of my region’s schools, how lucky she was that as a girl that she didn’t have to worry about the “attack of the moms.” She just laughed. Regardless it was a fun day and now I can’t wait for the all Sports Day in a few weeks.

Thanks for reading – I know this was a long one. Enjoy the photos.

The mom's "race"

Waiting for the bus with Taiuli, Hignano, Hepi, and Nasoni

The march

The Class 3 students

The Class 6 boys - my students are the 2 in the middle and the 2 on the far right

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