Healthy Life Styles

When properly motivated, Tongans can do some absolutely amazing things. Several weeks ago, the Ministry of Education, in conjunction with the Ministry of Health, announced on the radio – often their method of communicating with the schools – that the schools should place a greater emphasis on promoting healthy life styles to the students. This would come about in two ways, a school garden and aerobics classes.

The garden is the teachers’ domain. The very day of the announcement, my principle Selu barked out orders to the students to begin tilling the soil. 30 minutes of furious activity later, the kids had finished their duty. Over the next two days, we, and I’m using the word “we” very loosely as I sat around and watched my students, planted carrots, tomatoes, peppers, onions, cabbage, and lettuce on the school compound. As they were working, my counterpart Paea pointed to a Class 1 6 year old student who was chopping down some branches and joked that he was far better than I was with a machete. I wholeheartedly agreed and sat around in awe watching my kids create this incredible garden in minutes, where I would have been completely befuddled and needed days to do accomplish even half the amount of work. A month later, aided by copious amounts of rain, the garden is looking good and we are all excited to eat the healthy vegetables after the test.

Watching the rapid farming however was sort of a bittersweet experience for me. On one had it was truly remarkable how seamlessly the students and teachers worked together and how much even the youngest Tongan child knows about farming. It is truly a different world over here. The entire work was done in two days, and with relative ease. The bitter part about the garden is why did it take so long to start in the first place? Many schools have gardens, this not a new or revolutionary concept in Tonga. The students and teachers enjoy the papaya and bananas that grow from the trees on the school compound that were planted years ago. Seeds are similarly easy to find and are not prohibitively expensive. One of the difficult aspects of serving in Tonga, and I am sure this is true of many developing countries, is that it is easy to see how much could easily be done, but simply isn’t for a variety of poor reasons. That being said, I am happy we now have a beautiful garden to reinforce to the students the importance of eating healthily, I only wish it hadn’t taken an edict from the ministry for such to get done.

The second part of the healthy life style agenda is simply exercise. On this point, I take personal responsibility. When I first came to my school, I was loath to teach physical education. The main reason for this is that my school has no water tanks as they are all broken. I am trying to alleviate this situation through grants, but I am still waiting to hear back on that note. The only access to water my students have is ground water, which runs infrequently, is dirty, and is high in mineral content. This is not great water for my students to be drinking, but they often do anyways because it is their only choice. The second reason is that like all kids my students already get a ton of exercise from recess when they are constantly running around. This doesn’t even count the 1 km or longer walk it takes them to  get to school. These two reasons held me back from running physical education classes for my first few months at school.

That all changed, however, with the radio announcement and my principal’s request for me to spend 2 hours a week with the students working out. My worries were somewhat relieved by my students bringing water from home on the days we work out, so I have started doing exercises with them. On Mondays we play a variety of sports like ruby, soccer, and kickball. I teach them a few drills – I have learned that they are tragically unable to run the three-man weave – and then I let them run around and scrimmage. It is not very organized, but it makes the kids move and they seem to enjoy it.

The real fun happens on Thursdays. Aerobics, or zumba, is huge in Tonga. For those of you who are not familiar with zumba, the basic idea is that people either watch an instructor or a video and follow their dance/exercise moves while listening to popular up-tempo music. Many villages in Tonga hold zumba classes, and I have to say that one of the funniest things in Tonga is watching the older men and women, who are usually quite large, dancing through their Zumba routine while listening to the latest US pop songs. The best song and dance routine absolutely goes to gangnam style, which every one in Tonga, aged baby to walking stick, unabashedly loves.

Now that you know what zumba is, I lead zumba sessions every Thursday. One of my teachers brings in speakers, we blast music, and I lead an impromptu and entirely unplanned dance session. I must admit that I have absolutely no clue what I am doing. I am not a good dancer and I undoubtedly look ridiculous to the 45 Tongan children who are forced to watch me and mimic my uncoordinated “moves.” I do not yet have pictures of myself leading zumba, as I have been too scared to actually see how I look when I do it. I do not have particularly high hopes for myself, however, judging by the laughter ringing from the other teachers who completely immune to all my requests to jump in, simply sit behind me, laugh, and watch.

Zumba is without a doubt as ridiculous as it sounds. Since it goes on for an hour, I have resorted to such eclectic and old school dance moves as holding my nose and moving up and down to pretend I am swimming to the spirit fingers from the cheerleading movie Bring IT On that I admit I have seen to anything else I can remember from the dance sequence in Pulp Fiction. It is ugly, I cannot deny that, but it is equally hilarious watching the kids copy my routine and it does work up a sweat. Luckily, one of my class 5 students is particularly good at zumba so I will often have her stand next to me and remind me what move I should do next. I am still in learning mode as I have only taught the class a few times, but its moments like this when I am very glad that no one back home can see me.

Thank you all for reading. There may be hope some day that I overcome my fears and actually get someone to take photos of me teaching the ridiculous zumba class. Until that day, please enjoy the photos below.

The kids waiting in line for their soccer drills and enjoying the trampoline

Mesui, one of my Class 5 students, playing soccer

Samiu, our trouble making Class 1 student, decided he'd rather pose than play soccer

We had a funeral in the village this week. Funerals are a huge deal and practically bankrupt the family of the deceased. The men are preparing the hundreds of pieces of meat that will be given to everyone who attended the funeral. Think of it as the Tongan version of sitting shiva.