Tongan Take-aways : Penis bananas, Site Announcements and Blowholes

October 19, 2012

Yesterday was a huge day for us, we got our site announcements, we got to tour the island of Tongatapu, and we got to go to a Mormon dance!

Yesterday was the day we have all been waiting for for some time now. We got to find out where we would be spending the next two years of our lives… The day started of with some talk of STDs and very emotional stories of past volunteers who contracted HIV during their service. To lighten the mood we got to practice putting a condom on a magic banana- when you peeled it a penis was on the inside. Once we felt proficient enough at condom use the moment came- site announcements. They had all our names with our sites in a little box at the front of the room and one person at a time went up and drew a name and read it aloud. It was crazy as one by one people found out their sites, when I got up it was a little anti-climatic because I drew my own name… But I got what I wanted! An outer village on the island of Vava’u! My school is relatively small (67 kids) and they are also looking for someone to do some cooking classes as well as library work along with teaching and teacher training. I will also get to run community events to increase healthy life style choices, basically I am pretty stoked. It was rad because after the announcements they knew we wouldn’t be able to pay attention so the planned a big lunch and a tour of the island and the volunteers sites who would be staying on Tongatapu, it was cool seeing the sites of our friend's new lives. Our lunch was prepared by the country director, Ruth, we got to eat a bean salad and chicken lasagna with a chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting (-:

Peter and Doctor Sam. Peter is Holding the banana If you look closely the banana has been peeled and now Peter is hold a penis

This is all of us who will be on Vava'u, I am the furthest north

After our filling lunch, we loaded into our van and hit up some of the cool cultural spots around the island. We got to the Tongan Stonehenge, Captain Cook’s landing site and probably one of the coolest things I have ever seen- the blow holes. The blowholes are these seeming endless geyser type things that are at the edge of the island meeting the beech. Waves crash into these crazy tide pools and the water shoots out maybe 40 ft! I could have stayed there and watched it for hours, the amazingly blue/ turquoise waves crashing down upon living pools and then exploding with force to the sky. We went into town when the tour was finished and we all went to the one pizza place in the country, bringing some beers with us, and had a great dinner. We picked up ice cream on our way back to the office for our ride back to villages, we got there early so we put on an episode of Seinfeld (that we found among the books in the volunteer resource room). It was almost like being back in America for a second but of course our ride came no more then 20 mins later and it was off to our villages.