Tongan Take-aways : 'Ofu Island

August 5, 2013

Last weekend Harrison and I went out to ‘Ofu Island to visit Jeff (the Peace Corps out there). ‘Ofu is an outer Island but relatively close to the main island. This was a trip we have been planning for weeks and was supposed to include all of us Vava’u volunteers but every time we planned to go out someone would get sick, we would get rained out, we would receive a no small boat travel from Peace Corps; finally, after a month of being foiled I told Jeff that no matter what I was coming to visit. Harrison was the only other volunteer with my same resolution and even up until a few hours before we actually left for the island we were waiting for the small boat band to be lifted and the rain to stop. The band got lifted but the rain didn’t stop unfortunately so the boat ride over to the island was very wet.

After getting to the island however, any bad feeling was immediately abandon. ‘Ofu is beautiful- a true tropical paradise, no cars and a grass walkway that extends the length of the island. We spent the first night just going around with Jeff and drinking kava with his people. I always love drinking kava with new people because all my old kava jokes become new again and people think I am hilarious and really good at Tongan. I felt a little bad though because I have picked up the language more easily than Jeff and Tongans, being so blunt, kept mentioning that I was better than Jeff and he was lazy with the language…

We woke up and went for a snorkel, basically right outside his front door. After the snorkel we borrowed kayaks from the very small hostel on the island and took an amazing kayak to three separate islands! One of them, we parked the boats at the back and took a hike through the bush and came out in this really small village. I kept think how funny it would have been had the same situation happened 30 years earlier, people would have been so shocked to see three white dudes just pop out of the bush. We walked around the village for a bit and I heard my name called (something that happens to me a lot now but I was a bit more taken aback being we were on a small outer island I had never been to before), I walked up to the little youth hut and realized it was a kid whose family I had gotten a ride into town with a few weeks earlier. After we spent some time walking around the island and getting the village kids to take our pictures, we took our kayaks around to the island of Mafana and then to Fetoko. Fetoko is a very small island that is owned by a couple from California. They built a super nice restaurant on the island and are currently in the works of building a fancy tree house to accommodate guest.

We were pretty worn out after the big kayak so we just spent the night hanging out at Jeff’s place. In the morning after church we got invited to have lu and a plethora of other dishes, I ate to my fill and then some. When we met up with the guy who was supposed to be taking Harrison and I back to the main island they were just finishing up their Sunday meal. They were having otaika (my favorite Tongan dish, it’s raw fish in coconut milk with peppers and onions) so I had to have more food… As we drove away from the island, bellies full, I was imagining Jeff after two years and thinking what a way to go out as a Peace Corps- actually drifting away from you life for two years watching your island get smaller and smaller as you head off back to the “real world”…