The End of the Road

I apologize for my radio silence the past couple of weeks. I was planning to write two prior posts to this one regarding Camp Grow and Glow and the Class 6 exam, but unfortunately after two years of heat and humidity my computer seems to have finally broken. I am writing this post from the main island of Tongatapu. This will be my final entry in this blog.

It is difficult to summarize two years in a few short paragraphs, let alone to try to explain the myriad of emotions I feel about leaving Vava’u – my home for the past two years – to return to America. I will, however, attempt to do so.

When I applied to Peace Corps I wanted and fully expected to go to Africa. To me Peace Corps and Africa were practically synonymous. When I was invited instead to Tonga in the South Pacific I was actually disappointed, which was not helped by well-meaning friends telling me that I must be so happy not to have been placed in Africa, or my Peace Corps recruiter emailing me that I had won the “lottery.”

On my arrival to Tonga, I tried to move past my disappointment and continue with an open mind, but I don’t think that I truly did. Initially, I struggled to come to terms with my preconceived notions of what my life as a volunteer should be and what it actually was. I distinctly remember telling another volunteer that I was worried that Tonga would never feel like “home.”

Yet, somewhere in that spell, I fell in love with Tonga and specifically, Vava’u. I came to cherish the generosity of the people, the beauty of the country, and the friendliness of the islands. I have been remarkably fortunate to have lived in three villages that have supported and opened their arms to me from day one. I have made significant friendships with numerous Tongans that I will long hold dear, and formed life-long friendships with other volunteers. I have worked with three amazing teachers, and there will always be a special place in my heart for the children of GPS Houma.

The last week has been extremely emotional with numerous goodbyes and many generous parting gifts given to me. I was greatly touched by how many people took the time to say goodbye to me and spoke so fondly of our last two years together. Each goodbye was special in its own unique way. My Baha’i friends invited me to dinner in their home, gave me a beautiful necklace, and wrote a poem for me. My teachers and their families took me out on their boat to explore the islands, swim, and have a picnic on the beach.

On Wednesday – my final day in Vava’u and the second and last day of the Class 6 exam –the three villages held a farewell feast in my honor. With all of my students and their parents in attendance and a massive amount of food heaped on top of the tables, I stood up in front of the crowd while my students presented me with gifts and hugs. I couldn’t help but tear up as I was given woven baskets, place mats, coasters, fans, bags, and many necklaces. After all of the presents, I made a thank you speech and was overcome with emotion as I attempted to explain how much the last two years has meant to me and express my love for our community. Once I finished, various people stood up and thanked me for my service.

That afternoon, I went to every single house in each of the three villages to say goodbye to each person. This took me four hours, but I felt a strong need to say a personal goodbye to each person and provide closure for our relationship.

Through all of this, I was highly emotional and continuously tearing up, but it hadn’t hit me that I was leaving. I just didn’t really believe it. The following morning, before my flight at 1 pm, I went to the school to say goodbye to my kids and this was when it hit me. Hugging every kid, I completely broke down and unashamedly and fiercely wept. All of my kids and teachers were crying as well as we were all overcome with the emotion of the moment. I will never forget that moment, and the love I feel for that school and those kids.

It is with bittersweet feelings that I leave this South Pacific Paradise. After two years, I am ready to move on to the next chapter of my life, begin my career, and strive to reach new heights. I have missed my friends and family, and am eager to return to them. But, at the same time, a piece of me will forever remain in Vava’u, with the Tongans in Ha’akio, Houma, and Mangia. I have created a new life for myself here as Soni, the pcv, and it is with a heavy heart that I leave that behind. I hope to one day return to Tonga, but I may never again see so many of the people who made my life here so special. I came to Tonga to make a small difference in the lives of the people and in the end it is the people of Tonga – my friends, community, neighbors, and co-workers – who have changed me forever.

Thank you all for your continued readership of this blog and for your support. At first I found this blog to be a burden, but in time, as with Tonga, I began to enjoy it and view the blog as a kind of living diary, a way to share my experiences with those who read it. Thank you for giving that to me and for everything else.

‘Ofa atu

The Final Countdown

In all likelihood, this past week was my final one as an English teacher. I have to admit that I am not entirely unhappy about that prospect. While, I have great relationships with my three teachers and I love all of my kids – well, most of them at least – I would be lying if I said that I really liked teaching. I enjoyed working with immigrants and refugees in the US, and as I was assisting as an English teacher, I assumed that I also enjoyed teaching. However, after two years of teaching here, though I have gained an enormous amount of respect for the teaching profession and now truly understand how difficult the job really is, I have discovered that neither my passions nor my future profession lie in teaching.

My final three weeks may be the busiest of my time here in Tonga. While this is in some ways a blessing as I am not constantly thinking about my date of departure and all that leaving Tonga really entails, I also have to remind myself to step back once in a while and soak in the incredibleness of this place and all that it has meant to me. My schedule looks something like this: From the 22^nd to the 26^th, during school break in between Terms 3 and 4, I will be completely focused on the running of Camp Grow and Glow. The following week we are back at school for last minute test prep to prepare the kids for the Class 6 Secondary School Entrance Exam, and administer a South Pacific Study Exam that is being used by New Zealand to observe the varying education levels of primary school students across several countries in the South Pacific. And finally, the week I leave we have the actual Class 6 exam, a possible farewell feast in my honor, and the packing up of my house and the distributing of all that I am leaving behind for the people in my village, before leaving on a plane the next morning for the main island.

But for this last week, I was still teaching. In fact, we handed out report cards to the parents on Friday, so I had to assess the kids, give them letter grades, and think of what comments to write for their parents. While doing so, I looked around at all the children and realized how much I will miss them. I have already jokingly, and maybe not so jokingly, told them that they cannot like the new volunteer better than me, and that they need to promise to cry on the day I leave. Many of them have pinky promised – yes, that is a thing here too – me to do so, but I genuinely wonder if due to their young ages they will remember me in the years to come. I hope so. Tongans love Facebook and I would certainly enjoying seeing an ex-student friend me 5 years from now, assuming of course that they remember that my real name is not Soni.

For the most part this past week was simply about finishing up. I had to collect data for Peace Corps to quantify how many of my students have improved by at least 10% in their speaking, writing, and reading of the English language. Though I am by no means a particularly impressive teacher, I am happy to say that almost all of my students greatly surpassed these benchmarks and I could not be more proud of them. They often drove me crazy in the classroom, and I’m sure at times they had no idea what I was trying to get them to do or learn, but in the end this experiment was a success for both them and me. I may not love teaching, but I could not be more impressed with my students and have been so fortunate to work at GPS Houma.

Thank you for reading. Only a few more posts to go before I shut down this blog for good and am back in the US. Please enjoy the photos below.

Some of the kids playing beside my house

Mele, 'Ana, and Mele weaving

Teli and Toua coming back from sweeping (Tongans don't rake they sweep) the leaves at school. And Lisa, my class 4 student, in between

Mandy serving Kava to two men from my village, my neighbor Mana on the left and 'Ofa on the right

Our Kalapu (when we raised money for the camps by serving kava)

Whales in the Wild

I have been fortunate enough to have experienced some incredible adventures over the past two years living in Tonga. Few of these experiences, however, if any, can rival the time I swam with the humpback whales last year. Last Saturday, after weeks of anticipation and heightened expectations, I again swam with the whales. I, of course, wondered; could I truly replicate one of the best days of my life? I soon found out that I could do even better, as my latest adventure was even more remarkable than the first, and I now suppose swimming with the whales has become a twice in a lifetime experience.

On the morning of September 6^th, three volunteers and I  (Mandy, Joey, and Jeff) were joined by four tourists to embark on a swim with the whales. We met our Whales in the Wild boat at the main wharf at 7:30, eager for what we all expected to be an incredible day, and quickly made our way out of the protected harbor of Vava’u, thanks to the boat’s massive engine.

With speed I had yet to experience on a boat in Tonga, we zoomed past all of the islands, until we reached even the farthest uninhabited ones. Early on, I was relaxed, thinking that it would be some time before we saw our first whales. Last year, it took us four hours to find 2 whales – a mother and her calf that we would eventually swim with – and they were the only the whales we saw the entire day. Though I of course had no complaints at all and was so happy with our swim, even if it was only a few minutes long, I have heard in the time since that last year was a relatively poor season, with very few whales having arrived in Vava’u. This year, on the other hand, has apparently been an incredible season, one of the best in recent memory. No one knows why, as some people suggest the weather, the temperature of the water, or even it being an el Niño year. Regardless of the reason, I could not imagine how amazing a good year could be if last year’s “bad” season was so unbelievable for me.

So, within an hour of leaving the harbor, we found three whales, a mother and her calf being escorted by a male. As only four people can swim in the water with the whales at one time, the tourists graciously allowed us to swim first, and we quickly prepared our masks and fins in anticipation of entering the water. We followed the whales, at times as close as 15 yards away, but they were moving too fast for us to get in the water and swim. Still, the sight of these large, majestic animals gliding through the surface to catch a breath before again submerging was truly awe inspiring. To add to the ridiculousness of the scene, a pod of perhaps thirty bottlenose dolphins, which are known to socialize with humpbacks, then started swimming around the boat. So, with my right eye I could see dolphins only 5 feet away, and with my left see whales only a little further off in the distance.

As quickly as they appeared, the dolphins left us and we continued to follow the whales. After some time, our Tongan guide told us that we would be leaving these three whales as they were moving too quickly to swim with and find others. I was initially surprised by this, as I had already seen more whales than I did all of last year, but I trusted the guide and off we went.

Within 30 minutes he seemed prescient, as we came upon two males fighting over the attention of a female. In what can only be described as a gentle battle between two behemoths, we could see some slight stirring beneath the water and the relaxed flapping of fins on top of the surface. Unfortunately, after some time we again had to leave the whales, for they were similarly moving to quickly to offer a quality opportunity for a swim.

We reversed course and sped out south of all the islands, traveling farther way than I ever had before. Amazingly we could see whales in all directions. A sprout of water being blown in the air a few hundred yards to the right. To the left, the large blue backs of two whales gliding atop the waves. In front, a flick of a too big to believe flipper flashing through the air, indicating the dive of a massive humpback. Astoundingly, right behind us we saw two males breaching, jumping several times out of the water to land with a deafening splash. I couldn’t even fathom the power of such a creature that could launch such a large mass so high out of the water. Their raw power combined with their innate gentleness is truly remarkable.

Yet for all the whales that we saw, few according to our guide were good candidates for a swim. At one point our boat flew off to follow the path of 8 males moving somewhat less quickly in the water, in what seemingly appeared to be a game of follow the leader. Our guide, Sione, told us to get ready and that we would be in the water in any second, as we would get a chance to watch the whales pass us by within the ocean. Ready, I watched in awe as the males moved through the water so close to us, eager to join them. Every time we were about to hop into the water though, the whales would turn in a different direction. After some time, Sione decided that we again needed to find a different set of whales.

Now, I was getting nervous. The morning had been great as we had seen as many as 20 whales, but we had yet to get in the water for a swim. It was 1 pm and we had already been out on the water for over 5 hours, so I have to admit that we were all a little anxious. Sione, undeterred, started moving us past all of the islands, taking us all the way from the South to the North of the main island of Vava’u. Unknown to us, the company’s other boat had spotted some whales to swim with, and had radioed the information to Sione. While I was sitting and imagining what would happen if we didn’t get to swim, we were rushing to a very important date.

We arrived at the whales right as the other boat was finishing up. The conditions were perfect. A calf was swimming with it’s mother, while a huge male, recognizable by his large white belly as opposed to the all dark blue of the mother and calf, had graciously acquiesced to our desire to remain in one place. The whales seemed calm and somewhat acquainted with having people in the water around them. Without losing a second, the four of us jumped into ocean and instantly were within several feet of all three whales.

I can hardly describe my feelings. After thinking about this all year, I was suddenly staring directly at two enormous humpback whales and a third that was so huge it was hard to believe that it was only two months old. They are so gentle and graceful, playful yet still somehow a little intimidating due to their jaw dropping size and bulk. The whales were completely indifferent to our presence for all the care they showed. We were simply insignificant, quiet observers viewing them from the shadows.

The whales were so calm and slow moving that we were able to swim with them several times for as long as maybe 20 or 30 minutes. It was absolutely incredible. The male and mother can hold their breath for much longer than the calf, so they would remain 30 feet below us, while the calf would come to the surface every few minutes or so for a breath of air, emerging so near that I could see it in perfect clarity in the transparent waters of the South Pacific. In perfectly cute form, every time the calf submerged it would nestle itself under the neck of its mother, as if hanging on for the ride.

It was an otherworldly day. After patiently and not-so-patiently waiting to swim with the whales, in the end we were not disappointed. Being in the water with them for so long was an experience I will never forget. Thank you all for reading. I know this was a long post, but I felt the experience needed the justice that only this length could provide.

Please enjoy the photos taken by Jeff with his underwater camera.

The baby

The mother moving to the surface for a breath

Mother and Calf

Chugging Along

This past week marked my two-year anniversary in Tonga. It really is hard to fathom. I would be lying if I said that every day had been easy, but overall I have had an incredibly transformative experience that has deeply enriched my life and helped me grow both personally and professionally. As the cliché goes, the days may have seemed slow at times but the months flew by. While I still plan to save any nostalgia for my final post, I have a little over a month remaining as a Peace Corps Volunteer and I still have so much left to do.

Over the past few weeks and the next several to come, all of my time that has not been spent at school preparing our Class 6 kids for the Secondary School Entrance Exam, has been spent planning for Camp GROW and GLOW. Having created and developed the camps last year, the other directors and I possess a quiet confidence, calmed by the fact that we have done this before. However, we are still working on overdrive to make this year’s camp even better than last year’s with more campers participating in the program and an extra day.

Two weeks ago marked the first of what will be many Camp Saturdays. The other volunteers and I took all 12 of our counselors – 6 boys and 6 girls – to the beach at Talihau for a day of team bonding and camp discussion. I was particularly excited for this day, as several of our new counselors had been campers the year before, and I was eager to see how they would be able to handle the added responsibility and observe how much they have matured over the past year.

We swam and played all the energizer games we use at the camp, like the human knot, Kwa, and animal zoo. We ate a delicious meal of fried fish, grilled chicken, root crop, and pasta salad prepared by one of the counselor’s parents. Most importantly, we talked about our goals for the camp, specifically how Joey and I hope to take a less active role in the running of the camp this year, passing on more responsibility and therefore leadership opportunities to our counselors. All of the counselors asked terrific questions and seemed ready to play a major role in the camp.

Then there was even more to do last week. As part of raising money through the Peace Corps link, we also have to raise at least 25% of our funds locally in Tonga. So last Friday, working in conjunction with the High School Principal Committee, we held a Kalapu in town. Along with food, Kava is at the very center of all things Tonga, and a kalapu is when you invite men (only men can drink kava in Tonga) to come to a specific place to drink kava and donate some money. We had announced the kalapu on the radio and invited the local kava clubs and the men from our respective Peace Corps villages. As an incentive to come, we made sure all of the men knew that the female Peace Corps volunteers would serve as tou’a (the woman who serves the kava).

Joey, several of the male counselors, and I arrived at the hall at 6 to mix the kava and prepare the building. Having finished mixing the powdered kava with the water around 7, I began to feel the subtle nervousness that reminded me so much of when we used to throw parties in college. All I could think of was would anybody actually show up? At 7:30, things seemed gloomy, as only two men from my village had arrived. There were still no changes thirty minutes later, but at least the girls were now at the hall and were ready to serve the kava. Then by 8:20, appearing almost as if by magic, the hall was full with 100 men, as several villages humorously arrived in their school buses, carrying literally a bus-load of men ready to drink kava. All of my anxiousness quickly evaporated, and I spent the rest of the night making sure everything ran smoothly and drinking kava to socialize with our guests. I was really touched that for all the word we had gotten out about the Kalapu and for all of the people who had seen me in town and promised to come, the people who showed up in large numbers were friends of ours from our local villages and officials from the Ministry of Education. In the perfect display of the camaraderie and brotherhood that epitomizes Tongan communities and that I will miss so much, all three of my villages came out to support me.

As this post is getting a bit long, I will just mention that the next day, still somewhat exhausted from the kalapu the night before that didn’t end until 2:30 in the morning, we held a meeting with the parents of our newly invited campers, so that the parents could learn more about the camp and ask questions. We had a pretty decent turn out, especially for our prospective female campers, and the parents and kids seem really excited to come to the camp.

Thank you for reading and please enjoy more photos from the agriculture show.

The Women from one of my villages, Mangia, in their stall

Another village of mine, Houma, proudly displaying the fruits of their labor on their farms

Fish caught by men and women living on the outer islands

The Queen Mother

The Royal Family

Agriculture Show 2014

Another week, another major event in Vava’u. It has been a surprisingly busy “winter,” in our normally quiet little island, and the King must be a bit worn out from all of his frequent trips to Vava’u over the past few months. The most recent blowout to occur in Vava’u was the Agriculture Show, which as some of you may remember, is Tonga’s version of a county fair.

First, I must start as all fairs should – with the animals. The Chinese government runs a piggery in Vava’u in conjunction with the Tongan Ministry of Agriculture, and their pigs are absolutely massive as they are fed with real pig feed rather than the random assortment of coconut husks and trash most pigs eat here. One of the pigs on display was the largest piece of pork I have ever seen in my life. It was practically a pony it was so large, and the little kids were absolutely terrified of it, much to their parents laughter and delight.

Not to be outdone, the cows, both bull and heifer, were magnificent. The cows were not only succulently fat, but also lined with slabs of muscle. They were truly impressive beasts. As for the other animals, I saw ducks in Tonga for the first time (I have no idea if they are eaten as I’ve never seen duck served in a Tongan home or restaurant), and the chickens and sheep looked pretty standard.

For the layout of the show, almost every village had two stalls. One stall displayed their woven materials and Tongan made crafts, specifically mats, tapas, and hand woven placemats, coaster, and containers. The other tent was filled with the produce grown from the village, a few vegetables but the vast majority being the different kinds of root crops – yams, cassava, manioc, etc – found in Tonga. Every village took an enormous amount of pride in their stalls and they looked fantastic.

Some of the other highlights included my town officer, who runs a pearl (half pearls) farm off of a nearby-uninhabited island, which he crafted into jewelry and had on display. I also loved going to the booths of the outer islands as they displayed an incredible assortment of fish, clams, crabs, and other sea creatures. One of the cooler and smellier displays had sun-dried octopus hanging from outside the stall.

Along with some other volunteers, I wandered around the fair for a few hours until the King, the Queen, and the Queen mother arrived to officially open the show and begin the program. Speeches were made, prayers were read, high schools students danced, bands played, and prizes were given out for a variety of county fair like awards. It was a festive atmosphere and a great way to spend my Saturday.

Having observed the fair now for two straight years, it is really remarkable how the show, while still being distinctly Tongan, so closely mirrors the types of fairs we have in America. For all of our differences, there really are always so many similarities.

Thank you for reading and please enjoy the photos from the agriculture show.

A local women's group's vegetable stall

One of my villages displaying their root crops

Sun-dried (and smelly) sea creatures

The Pig

The outer islands showcasing an impressive array of marine life

Goodbye and Hello

Like Peace Corps Volunteers, Wesleyan Minister’s serve for a period of two years. This does not mean that they only work as ministers for two years then return to life as layperson, but rather that they remain in a village church for those years before moving on to another one. Our church’s minister, having arrived in July 2012, had fulfilled his two-year requirement several weeks ago and a new minister was coming to take his place.

One thing you can always count on in Tonga is a goodbye feast, especially for someone as important as the Wesleyan Minister. In one of the few Sundays I can recount where there was only 1 church service,  instead of the usual two or even three. This was to give the men and women of the village more time to cook the food and prepare the tables for the goodbye feast.

The service was like any other, and once the Lord’s Prayer was recited, we all left the church and walked to the hall into an overwhelming amount of food heaped on twenty or so tables. I was given a promising spot next to several of the more pious adult men and in absolutely prime real estate, right in front of one of the two roast pigs. We feasted while people took turns giving speeches and thanking the minister. There were many tears (a speech isn’t a speech in Tonga unless it coincides with plentiful amounts of crying, dramatically long pauses, and the theatrical blowing of one’s nose into a handkerchief) and the minister’s wife graciously thanked me for my service and reminded people that I was leaving soon as well.

It was a feast to end all feasts…that is except for the next two weeks when we had another round of copious amounts of eating to celebrate the arrival of the new minister. Once again there was lots of eating, crying, and speech making – though I believe this time these were “celebratory” tears rather than “sad” ones. I was just as fortunate in my seating arrangement in this feast, as I was honored to be invited to the main table with the minister, his family, and the village elders. Of course, proximity to the pig was again certainly an advantage, and no cause for complaints.

After not attending a feast in months, I very much enjoyed having three in as many weeks as I am trying to eat my full of roast pigs before returning to the states. As always, thanks for reading, and please enjoy the photos from my last camping trip.

Two our Tongan friends, Po'uli (left) and Ali (right), helping to build to fire

The view

Puaka Tunu (Roast Pig)

Feasting

COS

Two weeks ago Peace Corps Tonga Group 77, my group, came together for the last time on the main island of Tongatapu. We were 13 strong, but with us in spirit were two other volunteers who unfortunately had to finish their service a little early. While I will see many of the volunteers again in Tonga and in the years ahead, it was the final time we would all be together as volunteers in Tonga. It was understandably a bittersweet moment for us all. We were happy and proud of our shared completion of an experience that has meant so much to us, but sad that now the end has finally arrived.

The purpose of our conference was for Close of Service, a three-day training period where we discussed the forms we had to complete and medical exams we had to undergo before we could return to the United States. There were also sessions discussing our readjustment back to America, the myth or reality of reverse culture shock, and how to approach the job market. I won’t bore you all with the details, but it is suffice to say that many of our questions were answered over these days.

I won’t go into full nostalgic mode over the last two years now as I will save that for my final post, but receiving our completion of Peace Corps certificates, making the first of what will be many goodbyes, and receiving my return date to America had made the end feel very real (FYI I am leaving Vava’u on October 7 and returning to the US October 11^th).

It was a great final hurrah as a group. We ate many meals together, and stayed up late into the night once the sessions were over reminiscing over the profound, the silly, and the simply funny anecdotes that have occurred throughout our two years together. This post will be relatively short, as this blog entry is in many ways more about the photos below, then the words above. As hard as it is to believe, COS marks for me the beginning of the end of my time in Tonga, as in two short months I will no longer be a volunteer.

Thank you for reading and please enjoy the photos.

Group photo of Volunteers with their certificates and PC Tonga staff

We did it!

Admiring the sunset (Can you tell which one is me?)

Group 77 on arrival at training

Team Vava'u

Receiving my Completion of Service certificate

P.S. In the sunset photo, I am third from the left.