The Road Less Traveled : January 2014

After spending 15 and a half months in Tonga, with a 10 day sojourn to Asia as my sole time spent out of the country, I was finally coming home to the US. As I stepped onto the first of several flights, numerous thoughts flashed through my head – was I ready, had I changed, will other people have changed, what will it feel like?

I soon happily discovered, within minutes of landing in the San Francisco airport, that culture shock is overrated. I was back. I was home. When I returned to Florida and saw all of my family and friends, it was as if I had never left. If anything, Tonga felt like a world away, as if I had dreamt the last 15 months and that the Peace Corps had happened to someone else. Have I really been gone for so long? It sure didn’t feel that way.

My time in the US was amazing. I spent two weeks in Florida spending time with my family, hanging out with friends, eating all the food I had dreamt about for the last year, especially Chinese food, going to the movies, and studied and took the GMAT. It was an incredible time, and I was continually blown away by the support I was given by everyone back home and the impressiveness of the questions I was asked. It was truly a meaningful homecoming.

I spent the last ten days in New York City, meeting up with all my best friends from college, having an incredible New Years Eve, and seeing family that wasn’t in Florida. One of my biggest fears before leaving for Tonga and joining the Peace Corps was losing touch with the people that I cared most about, but it has been extremely rewarding to see that in a world where you can video chat with someone from thousands of miles away, that even if you haven’t spoken in over a year you can still pick up just where you had left off.

Volunteers are often warned that returning to America during your service can have two effects; it can reenergize you or it can make you more homesick and wish for your time to end. I am absolutely in the former camp. Coming home was the perfect experience, and though I was sad to leave everyone behind, I was excited to return to Tonga and the home that I have made for myself here. I still feel that I have unfinished business to attend to over these next 9 months.

When I returned to Tonga, I had a few days to kill before our mandatory PC training, so my host brother Sione and I hopped on what is claimed to be the world’s shortest flight – only ten minutes! – to make the 60 km trip to the nearby island of ‘Eua to see Sione’s sister and my host sister Kalo. Kalo is the only doctor on the entire island and we stayed in her house across the street from the hospital. My first act upon arriving, after already having given my host mom Faiana presents of pictures and picture frames, and Sione the slippers he had requested, was to bring out the gift that Kalo had asked for from America – two bottles of tequila.

The first few days we wandered around, watched a lot of movies on Kalo’s computer, and attended two church feasts. On the last day, Friday, Kalo took the day off from work and we journeyed around the entire island. Before I get in to where we went, I first have to mention some interesting facts about ‘Eua. Though it is only 60 km from the main island of Tongatapu, ‘Eua is by far the most unique of all Tonga’s island groups. While the rest of Tonga was formed 10 million years ago, ‘Eua was formed over 40 million years ago and is therefore completely different. Its topography is almost mountainous, it is much cooler than the rest of Tonga, and it is the only island that remains mostly natural forested. Walking around ‘Eua it’s hard to believe you are still in Tonga, as you drive under pine trees and listen to the chirping of the birds flying by. Only a few thousand people live on this absolutely gorgeous island.

Our first stop was to the far southern tip of the island to Maui’s archway. The archway is a giant cave the opens up into the ocean, creating a land bridge and a stunning view. Legend has it that the Polynesian god Maui formed the archway by thrusting his spear into the side of the island. As you can see in the photo below, it is pretty spectacular. Unfortunately we did not see any of the wild horses known to roam the area, but our next stop was to this forest clad, prehistoric-looking sinkhole. No one knows how deep the sinkhole goes into the island, but I like to think if you followed it far enough that it would take you to a world where dinosaurs roam (Note: My theory has yet to be scientifically proven).

Next, we traveled to a large Ovava tree that is over 800 years old, and has massive roots extending in every direction like a labyrinth of snakes from its enormous trunk. Like the giant Redwoods and Sequoias of California, the Ovava tree inspires awe that any living thing can be that big and that old at the same time. Our last stop, before heading out on a 3-hour ferry ride to the main island, was to the northern edge of the island for a spectacular lookout view. As Tonga is the first nation west of the International Date Line, the lookout claims to be the first sport to see the sunrise every morning. Each year, numerous tourists come to the spot on January 1^st, to be the very first person to welcome the New Year into the world, and the location was said to be quite crowded when we all awoke to the new millennium over a decade ago.

As this post is already too long, I will save my time in Tongatapu and my first week in Vava’u for next weeks post. All I can say is that it was an amazing host family reunion – I see Sione periodically but I hadn’t seen Kalo in over a year – and my continuing relationship with my host family has been one of the most rewarding aspects of my service. We had a great time hanging out and exploring, and I’m still trying to convince them to come up to Vava’u for a visit. Thank you all for reading and please enjoy the beauty of ‘Eua in the photos below.

Maui's Archway

At the southern edge of the island with Sione and Kalo

The never ending sinkhole

In front of the Ovava tree with Sione and cousin/tour guide Pesi

The northern edge of 'Eua, where the sun first meets land every morning

Wow! Where do I even begin? The past 6 weeks have been so eventful that I barely know how to start. As I type these sentences I feel like I need to take a step back, collect my thoughts, inhale deeply, and just write. However, there is no time for that – I have neglected this blog for far too long – and I simply have to pick a place to begin. I have thus made the executive decision to go back to mid – December to talk about the 4 days of Camp GROW and GLOW in this post, and I will update my blog in a few days with a brief description of my time in the US, my trip to the island of ‘Eua with my host family, and my week long Peace Corps training on the main island.

First, before I even begin, I want to thank everyone who made GROW and GLOW possible. To all of my family and friends who contributed to the project, I remain incredibly touched by your generosity. I and the other volunteers strove to live up to those contributions, and in my humble opinion I like to believe that the camps, made possible by your generosity, did make a difference. I hope I will be able to show everyone that in the following paragraphs. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

The morning of December 9^th started off with nervous anxiety – would the kids come? Were we capable of leading a 4-day camp filled with 13-year-old kids? Did we have the right speaker’s lined up? Trying to retain a calm exterior, I was undeniably excited yet anxious. Walking around I tried to make sure everything was ready for our campers’ arrival, willing them in my head to just get hear already, fearing they wouldn’t, and inevitably somewhat fearing they would. Slowly but surely, however, the kids began to arrive. The camp had begun.

Now the hard part began. The other volunteer, Joey, and I had spent months developing GROW, along with Mandy, who focused on the girls camp GLOW, but now we had to step back, ensure the arrival of our speakers, and work more as facilitators as our 4 Tongan counselors, all under the age of 21, took control. The camp ran smoothly from the very beginning. The first few hours were spent playing getting to know you games (the campers came from a myriad of high schools and didn’t all know each other) and discussions of the expectations they would have as campers. We told them that the onus was on them to make these four days special, that the more they participated and contributed the greater the experience would be.

The rest of the first day was spent with our two guest speakers, nurses discussing sexual education and healthy life styles, such as nutrition and exercise. Though the topics we’re a bit weighty for a first day, the kids were dynamic, continually asking questions and enjoying a friendly game of healthy food bingo. After a filling dinner, one of our counselor lead a session about goal setting and decision making, which made the kids, for possibly the first time in their young lives, begin to think what they wanted out of their high school experience and beyond. One of our goals was to challenge their thinking and see how it evolved over the course of the four days. For bedtime, we watched GI Joe on the projector.

I promise to spare you the tediousness of going through a play by play of all four days, but I just wanted to provide an example of one day in the life of the Camps.

There were of course numerous highlights to mention:

1. On the second day, Tuesday, the boys of GROW and the girls of GLOW came together for the first time to listen to a speaker from the environmental NGO in Vava’u and then head out for an beach day and bbq at a Tongan-owned resort. In case any of you were wondering if teenagers in Tonga differed from their American counterparts, this will quickly answer your question. When they boys learned we were going over to see the girls, they all rushed to put on their best clothes, swabbed on deodorant, and bathed themselves in cologne. I learned later, that the girls similarly took showers, brushed their hair, and dressed up a bit. Of course, when they actually were around each other, there was little interaction between the two sexes.

2. We had an incredible array of compelling speakers who offered great presentations for our kids. We had a court judge and the head of the University satellite school in Vava’u discuss women’s rights and domestic violence. The Deputy Principal of the Catholic High School lead a session on post-secondary school educational opportunities. A wide variety of government ministries and companies brought the campers into their places of business for several hours to stress the wide range of career opportunities available to them in Tonga. And last but not least, our counselors each lead individual sessions on anger management, drugs and alcohol, decision-making, critical thinking, and goal setting, which they performed exceptionally well.

3. Perhaps, most importantly of all, relationships were made and friendships established. The boys of GROW and the girls of GLOW left with lasting memories, a few lessons in their head, a desire to bring back what they learned to their communities and schools, and forged shared bonds with a new group of people.

If I come off as to much of a homer for this project, that is because I am. Not everything worked out as we would have liked – we were hoping for a larger number of campers, one of the nurses did not show up for her presentation, and we have to tweak our career day event – but on the whole the other volunteers and I, the counselors, and the campers were incredibly happy with how the week went. We took a girls camp, GLOW, that we knew nothing about before coming to Peace Corps and continued it’s growing legacy in Vava’u, and developed GROW, a boys camp to run parallel with the girls camp for the first time in Tonga.

As is often the case in Peace Corps, I have grown a lot through the process of developing this program and in many ways feel that I got more out of it than even the campers and counselors did. It was truly a special week for me. Many of you may be asking me what is next and that is a great question. Our next steps are to continue to meet with our male and female campers to discuss how to continue to use the lessons they learned over the 4 days of the camp and how to bring these values to their villages and classmates. We also have to begin planning for GROW and GLOW 2014 next September, which will be one of my final acts as a Peace Corps Volunteer.

Thank you all for reading. Before I leave you to the photos, I want to say one last thing. If I seemed to take a disproportionate amount of credit for the camp in the previous paragraphs, I want to dispel that right hear. Yes, myself and other volunteers spent months of hard work developing this project and making it feasible, but the true credit lies with two groups of people: The people back home who made this all possible by donating to GROW and GLOW, and the incredible Tongans who housed the camps, fed us, spoke to our campers, served as counselors, the parents who trusted us with their children, and the students who arrived as campers. The true success of the camps and their future is reflected in our thanks to the first group and the indomitable spirit of the second. Thank you all.