Tongan Take-aways : January 2013

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Ice Cream Bread

January 6, 2013

We were all supposed to take a camping trip this weekend out to this small island that this palangi couple owns but unfortunately due to rain we had to cancel the trip. Instead of going to the island- since I was in town anyway- I went out with Dominica, Mandy and the Australian volunteers to spend the day around town doing a kind of pub crawl (more of like a café crawl) getting a drink at the 4 cafes in town. After that we went back to the house of the Aus-aid girls and built a slip n’ slide out of tent tarps and had the Tongan delicacy ice cream bread- exactly like it sounds, you take a loaf of bread cut it into your desired amount, make a hole and then scope ice cream into it. It is actually really good! After that we tested the slip n’ slide. We ended our night with dinner at Aquarium café with pizza!

The next morning we got the famous Rusty (a giant bacon hash brown toped with eggs sunny side up) and did some yoga sponsored by Ginger Spice (oh the DVD choices you have here in the Kingdom...). After the yoga we cooled down in kitty pools and watched Friends, after such a fun weekend it makes me worried to actually be starting school and work soon (I think the break has been too long and I am stuck in vacation mode)…

Step 1

Step 2

step 3

the beginnings of a slip n' slide

The topper of the weekend

Uike Lotu

January 3, 2013

I have been feeling that I have not been getting enough church in my life lately, it is just my luck that for the next two weeks the country of Tonga will be celebrating what they call Uike Lotu (Week of Prayer). Everyday there will be church services at 5 am and 5 pm. Now, I am not trying to wake up at 4:30 so I can go sit in a service where I do not understand anything but, I will go at 5 pm to make my presence known, which is what I have been doing everyday this week. Church on Sundays is not so bad, I go for a bit, normally get some food and it's done, but everyday is overkill. I realized the overkill by Thursday when I was sitting in church and they sang for about an hour- perhaps every Tongan Jesus song there is. During uike lotu it is not really a services but a family gets up and makes a speech to the congregation, well when Tongans do this it is customary to cry. On this particular day without uttering a single word the women burst in to tears, but continued to keep talked for at least 45 minutes, why was she crying? Was it necessary (if I could roll my eyes in type form here is where it would be inserted)? After the women spoke her husband got up and talked for over an hour in a slow monotonous voice- I thought I might die, I was even praying that something might happen to end the service- something like heavy rain not anything bad… It was during this service that I realized Tongan church everyday is not for me- good thing I have another whole week of it!

Dominica came to my village to tou’a because the men in my village had been asking and I knew it would give me props if I could get a white girl to come, plus I thought she might enjoy doing it one last time before she leaves…It turned out to be really fun, it was nice to introduce someone to my village and show them my life here. We got invited to a feast the fallowing day, I think the plan was just to invite us so she would serve again in the morning.

The next day we went to kava again and let me tell you, there is nothing like getting a little drunk off kava before 10 am (again insert eye roll)! We get out of kava around 12 when the feast was supposed to start even though the guys would have kept us there all day if they could have… We got to the part of my village where the feast was supposed to be and we realized that we were not going to a feast but we were crashing a joint birthday party/ graduation ceremony. There are these huge tent type things set up and all these tables and an are stacked with Tongan mats that are gifts for the honorees. It was really fun even though it was a bit weird at first and we had to wait about 2 hours with our food just roasting in the sun before we could eat (bring it on Tonga, my stomach has become iron). There were tou’olungas and other dances, speeches, cake, speeches, gift presentations and speeches and speeches. All in all it was a pretty cool event to find ourselves in even though the people being celebrated where only family of people in my village and not actually from my village, which is why my Tongan thank you speech I was worried about giving didn’t ever happen.

Dominica serving

The people being honored at the ceremony. The birthday was for the little girl in the picture, your first birthday is a big event in Tonga

our food just chillin' (or more like warming) in the sun before we got to eat

some of our entertainment

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

It's a Tongan New Year

January 2, 2013

Passing new year in Tonga was pretty underwhelming to be honest, not that it wasn’t fun in an interesting way, but after having spent last year's with great friends at a rave and the year before that under the coliseum in Rome, going to church for 4 hours and then eating didn’t really top the epic new year’s eves list.

On New Year’s Eve we had a feast at my PTA chair’s house that I was sort of supposed to help cook for, but my principal came to wake me up in the morning and told me to go fai kava so I did that instead… The feast was really good- the best roast pig I have had- and there was ice cream! We went to have more kava after the feast but it didn’t last long since everyone started leaving to sleep before church, so I went back to the house where we had the feast to see if they needed help cleaning up. I have to admit, my return wasn’t all to make up for the fact I got out of cooking, I kinda wanted to see if there were leftovers (I know I am a bad person /: ). Not only did I get leftovers, but I also got more ice cream and cake! But hey, I also helped clean too… I went back to kava and then got picked up to go to a Ba’hai meeting run by these amazing palangies who have been in Tonga for 35 years! They were the first ones to grow vegetables on the whole island! They were awesome and will be a great resource in the future I am sure. I got driven back to my village just in time to go to church from 10 to 1 am! That’s right, if you guess I would be celebrating the new year in a three hour church service where we nonstop prayed then sang for the last two hours making me believe after every song we were done… you were right! You see, the way Tongans celebrate the new year is by going to a church service to make their last and first prayers of the year, I actually got lucky because I went to the church of Tonga, the Wesleyans went on until 4 am! Anyway the service finally ended, it was the hardest I have had to stay awake for anything in my memory. After the service (or more like group prayer session) We walked across the village and had a huge teatime with breads and cakes and some sort of milk tea.

New year’s day was cool in that we are the first ones in the world who get to experience it! In Tonga you spend the first day of the year going around to all your friends and family and wishing them a happy new year and talking with them. I had to go to the houses of the more important people in my village, like the town officer and my principal, and give them a new year’s greeting. Beside the greeting of people I didn’t do much else really but drink kava, go to church and hang out and at at my PTA chair’s house. I did however, get to end the night in the most exciting way possible (if you live in a village in Tonga)- a Mormon dance, which by the way, are way more awkward when you are the only white person. All in all it wasn’t a bad start to what is bond to be one of the more interesting years of my life.