Rain Rain Go Away

I have often mentioned that the weather in Tonga is unpredictable.  In case you forgot, it is. In Tonga, we have every natural disaster. Cyclones, check. Earthquakes (some of which have shaken my room), check. Tsunamis, a distinct possibility but thankfully no check yet. The South Pacific is practically ground zero for natural disasters.

The weather that has affected my life so much the past few weeks has not, however, been a natural disaster, but rather rain. A lot of rain. Never ending rain. For the last month with a few exceptions, notably my incredible weekend to an outer island, it has rained every day, and often quite hard.

The rain has little effects on my life both positive and negative. When it rains it is much cooler (it is currently the hot and rainy season in Tonga and it is very, very hot). There are some nights when I’ve even been able to sleep without a fan blowing inches away from my face, which for me at this point, is a definite win.

There are little annoyances, as well. It makes drying my laundry almost impossible, though one day it was so windy my clothes actually dried even with the rain. It also makes running quite difficult, and except for a few fun runs in the rain, I have been mostly house bound this past month.

The main effect of the rain, however, is the impact rain has on school. My classroom has no light and the school has a tin roof. This means that when it rains my class becomes incredibly dark and loud. In order for my students to hear I have to shout over the rain, which is not very conducive to learning when you are trying to teach a foreign language. To combat the rain, Tongan schools embark on what they call a “Long Run,” which means they skip lunch, and end school around 1:30. One of the reasons I teach in the mornings is so I can always teach all of my classes in the event of a Long Run or a half-day.

The rain has been so bad that they have even canceled school four times in the past two weeks. I have never had a snow day, as I sadly missed the one snow day at Wash U when I was studying abroad, but I may be the only kid in America who has had Hurricane days, thanks to Florida, and now rain days, thanks to Tonga.

These days, when the rain is so bad and the wind is howling, there is not much you can do but stay at home. Unfortunately this spell of rain demanded captivity has coincided with the death of my charger –I am expecting a new one any day now – so I have turned to my last remaining resource, reading. While I love to read and have read a lot regardless of the weather since I arrived in Tonga, I read something like 5 books in one week, which is too much even for me. Luckily, as I am writing this post, the weather seems to be turning and since Tuesday it has been beautiful, with only the occasional sun shower. I have been freed.

In non-rain related news, I have two school related anecdotes that I think are worth mentioning. The first is that a student told me that a dog ate his homework…and I believed him….and it was true. I thought the dog eating the homework story was an urban legend, something no student has ever been able to relay to his teacher with a strait face. Well in Tonga, myths are meant to be broken I suppose.

The second story revolves around a test. This week I gave my class 6 and 5 a reading and writing test. This test, designed by a former pcv in Tonga, is one of the ways Peace Corps evaluates my teaching. I give the same test in the beginning and end of the year, and then relate on a form how many kids improved by 10%.

After administering the test, I joked with my counterpart Paea that if I really wanted to integrate into Tongan culture, I needed to publicize the test scores, rank the students, invite the entire school and all the parents to my classroom, and hold a ceremony where I call up the kids in order from the highest to lowest achieving. He loved this idea and thought it was hilarious, because this is what Tongans actually do.

The scores of the every child on the Class 6 exam which decides what High School they will attend, and is a HUGE deal, is publicly announced to all of Tonga on the radio. The students in each school are ranked by how well they do in school that year in front of the parents and the entire school at the school’s closing ceremony.

This is basically the equivalent of posting every senior in High School’s SAT score so everyone can see everyone’s scores, then holding a ceremony in front of all the parents, students, and teachers, ranking the students by their scores. Tongans, however, have an amazing ability to laugh at themselves and others without any malice, and do not feel self-conscious during these events; though I think part of this is that having people see you self-conscious is possibly worse than a low-test score. I was very surprised when I first learned about this system, which works well for Tonga, but I’m sure would be disaster for us back home.

That is all for today. Thank you for reading and have a great weekend!

The Inside of Swallows Cave

With the other pcvs at the Lookout in Holonga