May

May is holiday time in Tonga. While Tonga shares Mother's Day with the rest of the world on the second Sunday of the month, this special day is bracketed in Tonga by Children’s Day the Sunday before and Father’s Day the Sunday after. Each holiday has its own distinct flair and Tongan flavor attached to it, but all three days are inevitably associated with the church, and in the case of this post, the Wesleyan Church.

Every child, an ambiguous age bracket ranging from babies to men and women in their late 20’s and early 30’s who are still unmarried, wears all white to church on Children’s Day. The children are dressed in their cleanest white attire, adorn in clothing that it only worn on a few special days. The service works pretty much the same as any other, except every hymn is read by the children – amid much crying and many photos – and the youth are spotlighted more than normal in the church choir. Last year the village held a large feast in honor of the children, but this year everyone is trying to save their money for the Wesleyan Conference in June, so families simply retreated to their houses for a better than average Sunday meal. On a special note, one of the families I was closest with invited me to join in their family photos after church, which was incredibly moving for me.

Children’s Day is followed by Mother’s Day, perhaps the most important holiday of the month. While no white is worn on this day, the mom’s replace the children as the hymn readers and each mom is presented with flowers from their children and neighbors. Though this did not happen at my church, many villages hold a several hours long service to allow every mom the opportunity to make a thank you speech in front of the entire village with enough crying to put the children’s performance from the week before to shame. The market in town is also never busier than the Saturday before Mother’s Day, as literally the entire population of Vava’u comes in to buy food, flowers, and mother’s day cakes.

After church, I was invited to eat with my town officer, Havea, as I often am. This time however his entire family, children and grandchildren, ate with us. The food was sensational as we ate lamb lu (by far my favorite kind), pork lu (a rare treat), roasted pig, ota ika (raw fish), and much more. I had also eaten with Havea after Children’s day when we had a more simple meal of fish and root crops, and he joked that the children ate much better on mother’s day than they do for their own holiday. On a similar note, I asked my neighbor Fifita, a mother of 3, how her Mother’s Day meal was, and she responded, “Good. The food is always good, as I’m always the one doing the cooking,” and then let loose one of those great Tongan laughs. Incidentally, I have a feeling all the moms reading this post are grimly nodding their heads in agreement with Fifita.

Last and actually least comes Father’s day. For some unknown reason, Father’s Day is kind of a faka’ofa (sad/pathetic) holiday in Tonga. Maybe Tongans are simply tired after celebrating two holidays the weeks before, but Father’s Day simply isn’t a big deal here in Tonga. Church is the exact same as always, and the fathers’ don’t really have any special role in the service. The afternoon meal is not any larger than usual and the market the day before is busier than normal but nowhere close to the craziness that comes before Mother’s Day. Sorry to let all the fathers reading this post down.

Thanks for reading. I hope everyone enjoyed their Memorial Day weekends. Please enjoy more photos taken from my aunt on her visit.

Playing games with Class 5

Dorothy happily posing for Aunt Ruth

Reading with Class 3 and 4

Last weekend, a few of us went out to Ryan and Abby's village for a night to hang out and swim in the only fresh water lake in Vava'u. It was an amazing weekend. Here the male volunteers of Vava'u are posing in the manliest manner we could think of. (From Left: Jeff, Joey, and Ryan). Thanks to Mandy Pederson for this photo and the following one.

In Tu'anuku with Jeff and Mandy

My Aunty from America

I had a very special visitor this past week – my Aunt Ruth. I was incredibly excited for Aunt Ruth to visit, as I wanted to share my experience of serving as a volunteer with someone from my family. I have not had a visitor since Katherine came to Vava’u almost a year ago, so I have spent the last few months planning what I hoped would be a great trip for my aunt with a mix of leisure, adventure, natural beauty, and cultural immersion.

Rather than write a play by play of our week, I have decided to touch upon some of our highlights. On Thursday, Aunt Ruth came to my school and met all my teachers and students. Everyone at school was excited to get a glimpse of my Aunt, as I had warned them that she was coming with candy and other presents. It was hard to tell who was more excited by the prospect of the sweets, the teachers or the kids.

When my aunt finally pulled into school around 10:30 am, the kids swarmed her, carefully eyeing everything that was in her two plastic bags. I first introduced her to my teachers, and then carefully laid out all of the presents on my principal’s desk for her to examine. The kids were hovering around to see what goodies awaited them, but I made them line up and patiently wait their turn as I passed out the candy – a grueling display of patience that for them seemed akin to torture.

After eating their sweets, the students excitedly posed for pictures, continually gesturing to Aunt Ruth to snap a quick shot of them. This went on during class, as the students would continue to watch what our special visitor was doing rather than the lesson at hand. Regardless, it was amazing to be able to show my aunt my school and teach a class in front of her, with the special bonus of finally capturing quality pictures of me teaching (returned volunteers often say that one of their regrets is not having photos of themselves working when they get back to the states).

The rest of the day was spent walking around my villages and meeting with my neighbors and town officer, or my “Tongan Father,” as he likes to call himself. Every person we passed eyed us curiously until I explained that I was with my “aunty from America,” and in response they all greeted her with the traditional Tongan sniff on the side of the face. It was a surreal moment observing these interactions, as it was like watching two completely different worlds of my life coincide for the first time. I kept imagining epic music playing in the background and the words, “Clash of Civilizations,” zooming in fast like in an episode of a cheesy old tv show. More seriously, however, it meant a lot to me for my aunt to see how I live, what I do, and to meet the people who have taken such good care of me these last two years.

There were too many highlights to keep this post short, but I will do my best. We went on an incredible day sail with three other volunteers to the uninhabited island of ‘Euakafa, of which I have gone diving off of but had never before stepped onto the land itself. It was a beautiful South Pacific Day as we sailed through the stunning turquoise blue water. After snorkeling with another volunteer and meeting up with the rest of the group on the beach, my world traveler aunt confided in me that it was one of the best beaches she had ever been to and that she had never seen water that was this color before. I must admit that I felt a sense of pride hearing such a statement about “my” island.

I introduced her to everyone I could think of. She met all of the volunteers – American, Australian, English, and Japanese – and every Tongan that I know. She forever ingratiated herself with some of the volunteers by buying them a meal (for all volunteers, including myself, the true way to our hearts is inevitably via free food). One day Aunt Ruth gave an impressive lecture at the hospital to the doctors and nurses, making me look good by association which is always a plus.

And of course it was the little things that I’ll remember. I have never eaten so well in Tonga in my life (steak, snapper, pesto pasta, and lobster – twice!). We hung out with all the volunteers, as my aunt had the opportunity to meet the people who have been so present and important to me in my time living in Vava’u. I got to share the beauty of Vava’u with her by hiking up Mt. Talau, swimming through the picturesque Swallows Cave, walking the jungle trail on the island of Mala, and kayaking through the turquoise waters of the South Pacific.

It was a perfect weekend with incredible time spent together. Moments are more meaningful when they can be shared, and I tried to share two years of my life with Auth Ruth in a one-week visit. I may not have been able to show her everything, but I believe that I passed on a little of my love of this country to her, and revealed the true beauty of the place – its people – to a family member who had never heard of Tonga before the Peace Corps told me that I would be living here not so long ago. What more could either of us have asked for?

Thanks for reading and enjoy the photos of our time together taken by my aunty from America.

Posing with Sione, Simi, Henry, and Samiu

Teaching phonics to Class 5

The Run to the Board Game (I really need a better name for this) with Class 3 and 4

Aunt Ruth and I on are sail with 'Euakafa in the background

Camp Grow 2014

Almost 5 months to the day since two other volunteers and I ran Camp Grow & Glow in December 2013, time and circumstances have perfectly coincided to create the subject of this post. For the first time since the end of the camps, we ran a formal meeting with our former campers to discuss how the students have used what they learned during Grow & Glow in their schools and communities. Before I get to the meeting, however, I must first backtrack.

Though hard work still remains in the future, we have already begun to prepare for the 2014 edition of the camps. Working with the new group of volunteers whom we hope to train, elicit good ideas from, and groom to take over the camps next year once we are gone, several volunteers and I hope that we have laid the groundwork for the future of the camps. We have spoken with the high school principals to discuss how the camps went last December as well as our plans for the future. We are close to submitting our grant proposal so that we can receive donations for this year’s camp, and we have continued to grow relationships that we believe will prove beneficial both for the camps and the campers.

This past weekend, however, marked a special moment for us, and the start of what we hope will become Club Grow and Glow, where our campers will serve as role models and leader in their schools and villages by teaching what they learned to the male and female youth of Vava’u in a more organized setting.

While I have seen most of my campers in the past several months, my interactions with the boys and girls have always been casual and rather quick – more of a 5 minute “hey, how are you,” conversation than a serious dialogue. On Saturday, we rectified that situation, as Mandy, Joey, and I brought our Grow and Glow campers to a hall in town to see how their lives have changed since December and to determine if the lessons they were taught during the program stuck.

After our counselors lead an hour long session that began with groups discussing important topics, such as leadership, goal setting, academic and professional achievement, and healthy lifestyles and ended with the campers presenting their findings, we had a speaker come in to talk the kids about the importance of long term planning and community involvement. The campers did a terrific job evaluating the important point on these topics, and were extremely impressive presenting the outcomes of their conversations to the rest of the group.

Once the work was done and much to the campers’ delight, food was brought in, allowing everyone to enjoy each other’s company in a more casual way. The campers, with only a hint of a smile on their faces, often tell me that the food is the best part of the camps, and on this point they were again not disappointed during the meetings as we had plates of fish, chicken, pasta, and root crops catered from the same family who supplied our food during the camps brought in. It was delicious, and definitely gave our meeting a more Tongan flavor.

Saturday was a special day for Mandy, Joey, and I. Seeing our kids in one place for the first time in 2014 and observing how much they have grown since the camps and remember its teachings was a profound experience for the three of us. I felt an almost overwhelming sense of pride – not in what we had accomplished but in how impressive the campers are and will continue to be. The cliché says that the children are our future, and looking around at these young women and men standing beside me, I felt a strong sense of optimism for Tonga’s future. I have never been prouder to serve as a Peace Corps volunteer in Tonga, and play a very small and highly enjoyable role in promoting the countries’ future. I can’t wait for Camp Grow & Glow 2014 in September.

Thanks for reading and enjoy the photos from our meeting.

Demonstrating a long term plan for how to become a doctor

Our guest speaker Puke discussing the importance of community involvement

Joey, Mandy, and I happy to see our campers

(Thanks for the photo Mandy)

Diving in the South Pacific

Disregarding all the work I do as a volunteer, one of my most enjoyable extracurricular activities in Tonga has been diving. Diving off of the small islands that surround Vava’u Lahi – where I live – is literally heaven from start to finish. Each of the 5 diving trips (2 dives per trip) has been a unique and special experience.

The diving, and the enjoyment of the trip, starts the moment you finish setting up all of your dive gear and the engine of the boat starts to roar. Leaving the protective harbor on a warm, clear sunny day, you begin to feel the first tinges of excitement – excitement for the dive, for the beauty of your surroundings, for the wind roaring past you and the speed of the boat.

After just a few short minutes you are out of the sheltered enclosure of the harbor and rewarded with your first glimpse of the outer islands. You now have a few choices. Do you maintain your Western heading, or turn North or South? Each direction offers plenty of fantastic dive sites and stunning views, and I have gone diving in all of the areas surrounding Vava’u.

The time in the boat is incredible. Basking in the minutes leading up to the dive, watching the islands fly by, you begin to think about your trek under the water. As you finally arrive at the dive site, usually right off a nearby island, you can’t help but marvel at the light turquoise color of the ocean surrounding you. It is perfect and the ocean does not disappoint when you enter the water and begin your descent, as the water is crystal clear and your visibility extends for many meters – yes I use meters sometimes now, it does grow on you.

Each trip under the water offers something new. My personal favorite part of the dive is observing how the topography of the coral and the underwater landscape always changes, capable of forming into mountains, canyons, plains, and even cities as the aptly named dive site Chinatown attests to. The coral is a myriad of colors, with vibrant reds and yellows somehow simultaneously clashing and complementing spectacular blues, oranges, whites, and more.

The fish are everywhere. All of the fish you know and love from Finding Nemo can be found in this ocean paradise, including the always adorable Clown fish. As you float past them in your weightless state, the fish barely acknowledge your presence, and thus allow you to enjoy their presence closely and unobtrusively. If lucky, as I have fortunately been on several dives, you will gain a glance of a ray or a reef shark. Watching these graceful creatures, it is abundantly clear that they are at home in this Atlantis, and that I am simply visiting.

I have never sky dived or bungee jumped, but no experience that I know of can mirror the sensation of diving. An hour under the water disappears in seemingly minutes, as I grow astounded and enamored by all that I am seeing. It is a truly special experience, one that I try to acknowledge and take a moment to be thankful for every time I glide under the water. It is, in many ways, magical.

Thanks for reading. Unfortunately, I don’t have an underwater camera and the pictures I have seen from our dives do not give the experience justice. Instead, here are a few random samplings.

Happy Mothers Day to all the mothers reading this post!

A Bunch of Volunteers

For a Peace Corps Volunteer, I don’t know too many other people serving in other countries. I don’t know anyone from college who joined the Peace Corps, and I speak seldom to the two girls I attended middle school with who are currently volunteering in Madagascar and Samoa respectively. I am the exception, however, as many of the other volunteers have several friends serving in Peace Corps around the world, and I am always interested to hear from them how their experiences differ or are similar to our lives here in Tonga. Especially because, while I can’t imagine being anywhere other than Tonga, Peace Corps could have sent me to any of these countries, and I always find thinking that my last two years could have been completely different as a little surreal.

One of the feedbacks I often hear secondhand from the other volunteers in Tonga, is that their friends talk about how in their day-to-day lives they interact with so many other volunteers, NGO workers, and employees of government aid programs. In Peace Corps countries in South America, Africa, and Asia, so many different organizations are present that it is nearly impossible for these volunteers to not overlap or converge with another group or person in the course of their service.

This is not quite the same in Tonga, however. Tonga, being a small country in the far away South Pacific, there are not nearly as many NGOs or government aid programs operating here and as such volunteers in Tonga are part of a much smaller international community. This is nice as I came to Tonga to integrate into the local culture and spend my time with Tongans, but one of the unforeseen enjoyments of living in Tonga, specifically the smaller Vava’u, has been the friendships the other American volunteers and I have formed with volunteers from all over the world, mainly Australia and Japan.

Since arriving in Vava’u, I have gotten to know 6 Australian volunteers and 3 Japanese volunteers well. The Australian program is quite different from Peace Corps, as the Australians apply for a specific job, like working as a hospital administrator in Vava’u, and as such they mostly work for one year in a more professional role and often live in larger towns or the capital. The Japanese (JYCA) volunteers serve in Tonga for two years, like Peace Corps volunteers, and of the three volunteers I have been friendly with, one teaches Japanese at the government high school and two have worked in the Tonga Ministry of Health dental program.

Before leaving the US, I never expected to make personal friendships with people other than Peace Corps volunteers or Tongans. The friendships all the volunteers have formed in Vava’u has been without a doubt one of the many unexpected joys I have found living in Tonga. We are able to have fun – to go diving, go out together, host everyone at each of our houses – and work together on projects where our assignments overlap or that we feel a particular passion for. Surprisingly and enjoyably, these friendship have offered both a nice change of pace for me in my life in Vava’u, and meaningful relationships that I believe I will carry with me after I finish my time as a volunteer in Tonga.

As always, thanks for reading and enjoy the photos.

A rainbow over my house, on the left, and my neighbors'

It is common in Tonga for the students to use empty alcohol bottles for water bottles at school

I know that I have posted a ton of tooth brushing photos in this blog, but this photo has a special significance for me. The kid in the front left (wearing a red and white shirt) Samiu, is a Class 2 student who for the last two years has been the only kid who refused to brush his teeth no matter what my teachers and I tried to do to change his mind. Several weeks ago, Samiu, for whatever reason, finally decided to join in the fun. And...he became a good role model in the process as his little Class 1 brother Tevita (in the orange shirt) starting brushing his teeth for the first time at school as well.

Class 1 and 2 listening intently in class

Class 1 and 2 with their teacher and my principal Selu

A Unique Place

Living the slow island life leaves me with a lot of time to think, to grapple with the age old questions that have plagued man for thousands of years. Luckily for all of you, I won’t be talking about any such thing today, but will instead once again dust off my anthropology cap and give my two cents on an issue that I find interesting.

Tonga is unlike most developing countries. Developing countries are usually plagued by similar issues – poor infrastructure, water scarcity, lack of food security, little access to health care, sprawling cities of unequal economic distribution, villages lacking even the most basic utilities, and much more.

Admit it. When you hear the term developing country, you probably think of Africa. It is ok; I know that I often do. Developing countries face comparable issues that billions of dollars of foreign aid attempt to address, and it is easy to often think of them in similar terms. I have by no means traveled to every developing country, but I believe that in my experience both in travel and study, I can attest that Tonga, while also facing many of these challenges, is a unique – at least in my mind – developing country.

Thanks to their tropical location, Tongans rarely have to worry about their access to food and clean drinking water. The rainy season dumps liquid onto the islands, with rain stored in massive sima vai (water tanks) that are attached to pretty much every structure in Tonga in order to collect the water off their roofs. Tonga, while possessing little land, has some of the most fertile land on Earth, allowing for easy growth in its nutrient rich soil. Almost all Tongans grow a significant amount of the food they either eat or sell; justifying what my home stay mother once said to me, “Nobody starves in Tonga.”

There are also no cities in Tonga. Usually, though developing countries will have significant populations living in extremely rural villages, without running water or electricity, these countries also often possess cities with millions of people living in them. With a population of only 100,000, Tonga has no cities – with the possible exception of the capital Nuku’alofa, which is really more of a town or a collection of several villages – and even the villages which are considered “rural” are less than a 30 minute drive from the regional capitals. These rural villages almost all have running water and electricity, and even the villages on outer islands are beginning to gain electricity thanks to solar panels.

Further, while Tongan hospitals are not equipped with all the medical devices one would see in an American hospital, the Tongan people have free universal health care that is paid for by the government. When Tongans get sick, they are able to simply go to the hospital without worrying if they will be unable to pay their medical bills.

Of course Tonga shares many similar traits to developing countries – i.e. roads in need of improvement, a yet to bet to be fully formed economy, etc – however, I believe that Tonga is many ways a unique place due to its small size, fertile land, and seasonal rains. Tonga is a fascinating place to live and every day I live here I learn something new about Tonga, about foreign aid, about international development, and about a life different from what I knew back home.

Thanks for reading. Please enjoy the random samplings of my photos below.

Literacy Week at a nearby school

The High School Sports Day

Tongan kids have a tendency to "pass out" after a race - here the Red Cross is assisting some runners

Meet Mele

Enjoying a nice meal after sports practice

My Final Site Visit

Several weeks ago I had my third and final site visit from Peace Corps. A site visit is when my Program Manager and several other Peace Corps staff come to my school and home, watch me teach, and speak with my teachers to see how I am doing as volunteer both personally and professionally. The previous two visits were extremely constructive, as while I have always felt that I had a strong relationship with my three other teachers, hearing them express their feelings for me was a positively overwhelming experience. In Tonga these moments rarely result without a few tears, and there was not a dry eye in the classroom on either visit.

For my third site visit, and one that I unexpectedly learned once it was over was also the final one, a ministry of education official tagged along to watch me teach. Over the past two years, as the Peace Corps Tonga framework has shifted to focus on volunteers working as teachers in primary and middle schools, the Peace Corps has formed a much closer working relationship with the Ministry of Education, one that has become stronger and stronger in the year and a half I have been here.

As a quick aside, one of the amazing aspects of living in Tonga is that because it is such a small country population wise (100,000 overall and no more 14,000 on my island of Vava’u) and landmass wise (all 176 islands are roughly equivalent to the size of Dallas or Memphis) that I have incredible access to numerous high-ranking officials. Just a few weeks ago I needed to talk to someone concerning the United States Air Force visit – more on that in a few months – and within minutes I was able to see and speak to the highest ranking military figure on my island.

I have met the Minister of Education. The deputy Prime Minister of Tonga attended my Peace Corps swear in ceremony. Last year I drank kava with the Minister of Finance and the Chief of Police. My first visit to Vava’u included meeting the Governor of the island, and all the volunteers up here know every Education ministry official by their first name. I’ve even been within feet of the King, and was condescended with a nod. It is pretty ridiculous when I stop to think about it and I could go on likewise for many more paragraphs.

To end the digression, never the less I was a little nervous when I heard a ministry official was coming to watch me teach. Even in my second year of teaching, I still have so much to learn about education and teaching English in Tonga. I love my students, and I like to think that they are fond of me, but I know that I still have a lot to learn in my role as a teacher.

But time and tide wait for no man, so I did what I have done for so long now, and taught my class while 7 people from the Peace Corps and the Ministry observed. Of course my kids, unused to all this attention, were as nervous as I was - making their behavior far better than it is on average - but working together we were able to cobble up a decent performance that satisfied all my spectators.

Afterwards, when we met with my other teachers, I was again blown away by their kind words about the job I was doing and about their feelings for me as a person. One of the most satisfying aspects of my time here has been the relationships that I have built with the people I live and work with, and I cannot properly convey how much it meant to me to hear that they felt the same way. In my still not strong Tongan, I tried to express how important they all were to me and how I could not have achieved anything without their help and support. I have an experienced an incredible time with them and tried to make sure they knew that.

It was a very touching moment, one that could only end in the most endearing Tongan phrase…’Ofa Atu (Love You).

Thank you for reading – I know I got a bit sappy at the end there – and please enjoy the photos below. Happy Passover and Easter to everybody!

P.S.       Before leaving you to the photos, several days ago we were able to gaze upon the beautiful eclipse in the clear skies of Vava’u, watching first a shadow creep over the moon before eventually spawning a reddish hue. The kids loved it, and they came to school the next day with a million questions. Superstitions are hard to break, however, and all of the students were convinced that it meant something terrible had happened, like that the King had passed away. Luckily, nothing happened as far as I know, but convincing them of that is another matter entirely.

My second site visit. My Peace Corps boss Lavinia on the left, Paea in the middle, Aki on middle right, and Selu far right

Last year's Class 5 and therefore this year's Class 6. I don't know why were jumping....

The non-jumping version

Paea and I listening to our site visit conversation