Tongan Take-aways : 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.