September 16, 2012
I went to church today for the first time! As I mentioned earlier, my host family is of the Ba’Hai faith and since there are only 5 or so in our village we do not attend church like rest of Tonga. Before I go any further I will give a quick tid bit on the faith- it is a really cool and interesting faith that is relatively new. In the Ba’Hai religion they believe that we are all one and the same under god, they believe that all the profits from each religion were sent by god to deliver the gospel to the new age. Ba’Haia are super accepting people and have some really thought provoking ideas please look it up because my explanation does not do it justice. Anyway, usually a Tongan family will go to church for the majority of Sunday but my family just holds a small gathering in their home. Today however we went to church or maybe it was just a larger gathering with the Ba’Hais from all the neighboring villages, I was kind of confused because it was at a house I think and I am not sure there was a service, more just a lot of talking…. Of course everything was in Tongan so I have no idea what actually went on. After changing three times because I didn’t know how formal it was supposed to be or if I would have to wear my tupenu I finally made it to the van. About half way down the road we pull over, everyone got our of the van but me the drive and Tonga (the passenger, yes his name is Tonga), then the van started heading back to the house. Per usual I am utterly confused, but I just decide to sit back and let them direct me. I guess the van broke so we drove back and got a different car and then went to pick up the rest of the people who were waiting where we dropped them off on the side of the road. When we got to the church (or house??) we walked in and there were about 30 people all sitting on the floor and as I looked around I noticed that two of the people were definitely not Tongan. This was my first experience with getting excited and wanting to gravitate to whiteish people. I never did get their back-story but they were a couple and she gave a speech to the congregation in Tongan so I guess they had been there for a while. The service (or meeting) was long and when it ended I was happy to get off the floor and start to feel my legs again (I don’t know how they can sit like that for hours!). Sundays are lazy days so we all pretty much just hung out after eating lunch/dinner upon our return around 2 pm.
It was in the kava shed hanging out with some guys that I got introduced to Tongan checkers. This isn’t the most exciting story but I do have to vent because Tongan checkers is ridiculous. For one, you can backward jump whenever, not just if you have a king. For 2 once you get a king, you can slide across the board however many space you want, making jumps in between if you so chose. Lastly, we were playing on a handmade board with rocks and bottle caps; this made it pretty much impossible to keep track of the kings in the game. I played like 4 games of this madness before I got the hang of all their weird rules and even then I feel like they still were making up new rules. Word of advice, if a Tongan ever entices you to game, make sure they spell out the rules for you before you play.
No comments:
Post a Comment