Tongan Take-aways : 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.