What I’m Missing

This will be my last post for the next several weeks as I am traveling to San Francisco for a short vacation and beginning to plan for the next stage of my life for after I finish my Peace Corps service in October/November. While I am incredibly excited for the trip, I am also unfortunately missing two large events that will be taking place on my home island of Vava’u.

Many of you may have noticed that after incessantly blogging about feasts last year I haven’t written a single post about a feast this year. You may have assumed that this was because I have figured out that you all were a bit tired of the subject by now, but that would be assuming that I am a far better blogger than I actually am. Instead, the reason is that everyone in my three villages has been tightening their proverbial belts, both literally and figuratively, for the annual Wesleyan Conference taking place at the end of June in Vava’u for the first time since 2002.

This is a big deal. I repeat. This is a BIG DEAL. The Conference is usually held on the main island of Tongatapu as it easier for people to travel too, has far more amenities, and is simply much larger than all the other islands combined. With the Conference this year, the 14,000 population of Vava’u is expected to swell to as many as 18,000 people. Tongans from all over the world – America, New Zealand, Australia, Europe, and the other Tongan islands – will be coming to Vava’u to attend the festivities.

The Conference is centered upon the two major events that dictate Tongan life, church and food. For the week, every village is responsible for supplying the feast food, with each family providing food for one or two tables. This is an expensive enterprise, and will result in a lot of money being spent and a lot of pigs being killed. Because of this Tongans in Vava’u are not spending much money now, and I have sadly not attended a feast this year, other than when I visited my Tongan sister on the island of ‘Eua back in January. I know, I am as heart broken for myself as I am sure you all are for me. Thank you for that.

The second event is the King’s birthday on July 4^th, which he has decided to also celebrate this year in Vava’u. For the past 5 weeks, every primary school, including mine, has met on a field in town in Friday to practice for the King’s birthday. The students and teachers have to wear all red – red shoes, long red socks, red shirts, red shorts, and red shower caps (yes you read that right) – and all of this red has to be the same solid color without any writing on it. On these Fridays, some thousand primary school students stand in the blistering sun for as many as 5 hours to practice aerobics, forming the Tongan flag (one school wears white to complete the picture), learn how to properly enter and leave the field, and learn the correct way to say and act, “Happy Birthday Your Majesty.” It is interesting to watch and the kids will put on an amazing display for the king on his birthday, but all of the practicing has been a bit tedious and expensive for the schools to have to transport their kids to town each week.

The High Schools have also been practicing traditional Tongan songs and dances, which they will perform for the king. Beyond this, the entire week of the King’s birthday will host fairs, parades, and contests, such as the fakaleiti (men who dress as ladies in Tonga) Miss Galaxy competition. The entire week will be an absolute spectacle.

I cannot wait to see everyone in the US for a short vacation, but I’ll also be excited to hear about all the events that I will miss back in Vava’u upon my return. For now, thanks for reading, enjoy the photos from our practices, and see you in a few weeks!

Practicing for the Kings Birthday (the school on the right is actually wearing Iowa Hawkeyes t-shirts thanks to the volunteer living in that village)

Aerobics being lead by two volunteers and several Tongan teachers

Pesi wearing her gorgeous pule taha (the matching dress and skirt) and kiekie ( the woven skirt type thing around her waist)

A beautiful sunrise over my village

Mr. Fink comes to Tonga

After going a full year between my first and second visitors, I only had to wait the interminable length of two weeks for my third. This particular visitor was one of my best friends from home, Michael Fink, who I have known since we were 12 in Boca and lived with for 3 of my 4 years in college.

While my last two visitors, Katherine and Aunt Ruth, got a taste of my Peace Corps life and Tongan culture, we mostly stuck to the tourist beat. Fink and I of course did the tourists things as well, but he had told before he booked his flights that he wanted to stay in my village and live the Tongan way – a request that I was happy to oblige.

For the first two days we stuck to a consistent schedule, school in the mornings and the beach in the afternoons. Fink made an instant impression on all of my school kids, as they were particularly awed by the size of his biceps and repeatedly asked me why mine were not as big. He watched me teach, played rugby with the older boys, observed the kids climbing up palm trees to give him his first taste of a Tongan coconut, helped me grade the kids practice exams, and even jumped into the fray by taking my place to teach a few games. I know after Fink leaves my kids will continually ask me, Where’s Maikolo (the Tongan name I that dubbed him)?

Those first two afternoons were no less enjoyable, as we headed out to the beautiful beaches of Keitahi and the even more stunning Secret Beach. One of the other volunteers, Joey, joined us on the second day, and it was an absolute joy to again watch my two worlds collide as one of my best friends met my close Peace Corps friend. Luckily, they liked each other.

After the beach, a Tongan man from Joey’s village invited us to come back to his house for dinner and then to kava. After a quick bite, we drove to the nearby village of Tu’anekivale because they had a toua (a women serving the kava) on that particularly night. So from 9 pm to 1 am Fink and I sat on opposite sides of the toua, two spots that inspire by far the lewdest jokes, and we drank kava bowl after kava bowl, as Fink learned some Tongan words and just how dirty the Tongan jokes can be in a kava circle. Always a good sport, the men were impressed by Fink, especially after the toua gave him a kiss on the cheek.

The rest of trip was equally amazing. Fink was able to meet all of my Tongan and Peace Corps friends, making a much better impression upon them than I normally do. We went out one night to the only two bars, and watched game 1 of the NBA Finals, which ended disappointingly in a Miami Heat loss, but were able to see our team come back strong and take game 2 the following Monday. On Saturday, we left the friendly confines of land with another volunteer, Ryan, to snorkel off of the islands surrounding Vava’u and even were able to climb through a few island caves that I didn’t know existed. We could not have had a better day weather wise, and the visibility in the water was perfectly clear. Fink even braved Mariner’s Cave, where he had to trust me enough to swim under water into a black hole with no end in site, but was rewarded by glimpsing the coolest cave I have even seen. To top it all off we had dinner at the Spanish tapas restaurant Paella on the island of Tapana  - easily one of the most fun, delicious, and random things to do in Tonga.

The week went by way too fast, as we caught up on the past 6 months and picked up just where we left off before I had left for Tonga.  It really meant a lot to me for Fink to come all the way to Tonga, and he is truly a special friend and person for doing so. I was so glad that I was able to share a little of my life with him from these past two years.

Thanks for reading and please enjoy the photos.

Fink with my teacher Paea's 3 year old son, Nico, a.k.a Spiderman.

Fink teaching numbers to Class 3 and 4

Fink giving the thumbs up sign on our snorkel. Special thanks to Sarah for letting us use her awesome underwater camera.

Fink and I snorkeling off of the island of Kapa.

Fink and I (from right to left) in Mariner's Cave. The cave makes for some pretty odd but beautiful lighting. 

Fink leaving Mariner's

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