Lu Cook-off!

17/11/2013

Lu is a traditional Tongan meal typically using taro leaves, coconut milk, onions, and some sort of meat. The taro leaves are used a pocket to hold the rest of the ingredients and then that is wrapped in banana leaves and the put in the underground oven (umu) for about an hour. This is the meal that pretty much the entire country eats on Sundays after church. The Peace Corps decided to get together and have a little competition to see who could make the best lu, with a palangi (western) twist. We all got together with some of the new volunteers to prepare our own lus and umu from scratch.

I decided to try a chicken curry rice lu, that in my opinion was the best. Mandy ended up with the winner, with her eggplant soy lu. The judges were Don and Nori, they graciously let us use their house to have the event.

In reality all the lus were really good and we had a lot of fun trying to cook them ourselves. Even though I didn’t win the trophy I have high hopes for next year!

After the event i took the left overs back to my site to my friend Hepi and his family. He took one bite of Mandy's lu creation and announced that it was ta'eoli (gross), then he tried mine and said it was good but he was full (lie of course). His mom still chastises me about putting rice in lu because apparently that is just wrong. I told her it's lu fakapalangi (white people lu) to which she replied yeah well lu fakatonga (Tongan lu) doesn't use rice.

They're Here, They're Here!

12/11/2013

After a year of Group 77, team Vava’u got the new recruits from Group 78. 6 new PCVs arrived on the boat wide eyed and overwhelmed. The new group is all girls and the are all spread out around the main island. At first we (Harrison, Mandy, and I) had a lot of talks about how we feel about the new group with Harrison and I decideing we were some what abivilent and Mandy practically drooling over the opportunity to finally have girls to hangout with. It turns out Harrison and I are not as ambivalent as we thought, in fact we are quite excited to have some new blood around. It is nice to see some new faces and be able to share some of our knowledge.

The arrival of the new PCVs could not have come at a better time, I am feeling great about my service, school is coming to an end, and I have never felt more integrated in my community. It is so awesome to have new volunteers come at a time when i feel like I am at the top of my time here. I wish them the best of luck and can only hope they have as amazing a time as I have had so far.

Examination Day

September 29 – 30, 2013

The day had finally come. The big test day that all of my volunteer group have, in some way or another, been working toward- the Secondary Enterence Examinations for the class 6 students to determine what high school they will be attending next year. There are 4 exams spread out over 2 days. I personally don’t take too much stock in these exams because I don’t see the end result, if the kids do not make it into the best high school- the government school Tonga High, they go to one of the religious schools, but in the end I do not see a big difference in career choices from those at the different schools…

  The test starts in the morning after we (I mean me and the teacher who came to proctor the exam and the replacement principal) had morning tea. The first day was English and science, I decided to take the English test myself to see how many mistakes were on the test (this is very common, most of the time the tests are so poorly written you can’t even answer the questions) and to see how difficult I thought it would be for my students. It turns out the the test was not too bad at all, I had high hopes for my students. Of course my ¾ teacher, who is crazy!, was telling me the whole time “don’t worry they did this with Ela.” I kept responding that I had done it with them as well to which she assured me “but don’t worry ,they did it with Ela so they should be okay.” After I asked my kids how they thought they did, the same teacher mocked “ oh Sifa there’s no do now section on the test, no do now so you won’t get it! HAHAHA” (she thinks the fact that I do a do now everyday is a ridiculous notion and tells me the kids hate my class because of it).

After their first exam we all had a big feast with the parents, Mike, who was still staying with me at the time also got to join in. I gave my fakamalo (thank you speech) and gorged myself on all the amazing food. Of course after the big meal all the students have to go and take another 3 hour long exam...

The second day was pretty similar to the first. They took their Tongan and maths tests. The second day’s feast was even better and I tried to redo my speech from the day before because I had forgot to thank certain people that I culturally should have mentioned. I know I am pretty decently integrated because after I had spoken for a bit some of the fathers called out for me to be done (this was in a joking matter so I didn’t take offense). All the men came the second day and had a kava circle in one of the classrooms. I went with Mike to drink some kava and The Proctor of the exam was so impressed by how much kava i could drink, (roughly translated)"I have never seen a white person drink kava like that" of course this tempted the men in my village so they responded with "He can really drink watch" they handed me huge shells after that and so as to not disappoint I drank them. It was also a funny experience for me because with Mike there it was probably the most English they have ever heard me speak and They kept looking at me with weird faces- normally you are not supposed to speak English at kava circles.

Now that the test is done school will be a lot more relaxed for everyone.

Class 6 with some parents they all have new clothes on for the test

my class 6 boys and me

me with the class 6

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The feast!

Camp GLOW/GROW Conselor Day Sail

November 9, 2013

Harrison, Mandy, Sean and I have been spending the last several months putting together Camp GLOW and developing Camp GROW. Camp GLOW (Girls Ruling Our World) and GROW (Guys Reshaping Our World) Vava’u is a three night sleep away camp for students in form three (like 8 th grade) who display academic excellence and leadership potential. The camps cover diverse topics including women’s empowerment, women’s health, the rights of women and children, goal setting, public speaking, conflict resolution, sexual harassment and domestic abuse, nutrition, and environmental responsibility. The camps emphasize the importance of being informed, active, independent, and responsible citizens, and include an element of community service. Camp GLOW is an international PC project that a lot of different countries do but we thought it would be good to develop a guys version so that we can reach the young men of Tonga and teach them about women’s rights as well as tertiary opportunities in employment and education. Please let me know if you would like more information about the camp or if you would like to help with a donation. Thanks to a lot of people in America we have already filled our grant and raised over 7,000 dollars. We are looking to raise another 2,000 here in Vava’u through school fundraisers and a big kalapu (kava night) to be held later this month.

This past Saturday we took our counselors out on a day sail. A very nice couple who own a sail boat here, and normally run charters, donated a sail to our camp. We had such a great time with our counselors teaching them funny ice breaker games, goal setting and bonding in general. It was so cool to be able to grant these kids the opportunity to do something that they may never have been able to do otherwise. My best friend from village is one of our counselors and so it was extra rad for me to be able to share the experience with a close friend.

Youth Rugby

November 8, 2013

Now that the class 6 exam is over there are little events for the kids to participate in. One of those events is a rugby tournament. All the class 6 boys from each section meet up and form a rugby team which then competes in town on Fridays for a couple of weeks. Our section is Vahe Loto (the middle section) It consists of our school and 3 others. I was selected to take the boys over (about 3 miles) to the next village in order to have tryouts and eventual practices. Our school decided to cheat (they all do) and we sent a few class 5s as well as one boy from class 4.

After about a week of taking the kids to the next village- most of the time having to walk there in the crazy heat because we couldn’t catch a suto, we chose the team. We had a big cook out where we showed up at 8 in the morning and started cooking just outside under some trees. All the kids helped by peeling the breadfruit and then building the fire. It took all day to cook for 40+ kids. There was the final tryout in between the cooking and after the food was ready we chose the team and feed the kids. Our school did fairly well- all but 2 of our kids either made the A team or the second string.

For the whole next week we had practice where I would take the kids over to the village- sometimes in the morning and it would last all day and sometimes just half a day. Of course I don’t really know rugby and I can’t really command a bunch of Tongan kids so I really didn’t do much except walk around the field pretending to be observant and then making dirty jokes with the 2 real couches during the breaks (there were a lot of breaks and a lot of dirty talk). By the end of the 3 weeks I had invented a girlfriend and had broke up with her and found a new girl...It was a lot of fun to have this to do with some of my boys and I felt like we bonded a bit especially on our walks home when I would have to wait as the kids would climb tress to eat fruit or take turns crapping in the bush. Something I didn’t think was weird until I realized that if we were in America I would never tell all my friends and my teacher to wait as I went to drop a load a few feet away….

The first Friday of the tournament our team did pretty well –won one and lost one. All the kids look so good in their little uniforms and it was really fun to cheer for my kids as well as all the new kids I got to adopt for a few weeks. The second and final round the following Friday was not good for us, after scoring a try 3 times and it being revoked we had to do a tiebreaker field goal kick off (or whatever it’s called in rugby). After going 3 rounds of this ending in ties the other team finally won. Our boys where pretty upset and they lost their next game without too much of a fight. We ended up fourth out of 6 or 7 teams.

The whole thing was fun and very Tongan, but I have to say I am glad it’s over though because I am really tired of walking all that way and I am not sure if I could add much more to the story of my fictional girlfriend.

before the tournament there is a march of all the teams (we are red)

me with our sections rugby players

the players from my school, the girls are part of the net ball tournament

just being champions

Bottles and Calfs

October 29, 2013

I have been staying with this family every Saturday for the past couple of months, their 19 year old son is my best Tongan friend and it is nice to hang out in a family dynamic every now and then. I went to the bush with them and because I couldn’t do much, I went with the youngest boy (I call him Sammy he is in my class 3) and another boy (Paea in class 1) to collect coconuts. On our way out of the bush we went to check on one of the cows that had recently given birth. Now apparently mother cows are not the most nurturing of animals and some of them are actually not naturally aware of how to breast feed. In other words we had to find the new calf and try and force it to feed. This was no easy task, the mother cow had to be held tight with a rope and the calf had to placed under its legs, all the while the cow kept trying to back kick Samu (the father) and almost stepping on its own baby. After about half an hour of trying to get the emaciated calf to feed from its crazy mother we decided to take the calf back and try to feed it ourselves.

We decided the best method was to bottle feed it milk. First thing was to find a bottle. I went with Samu Lahi (big Samu) to the Chinese store but they were out of bottles. Samu new some of the guys hanging out in front of the store so he tried to get one from them. He got a lead from one of the guys so they went to his house and I waited at the little shop to chat up the twin girls who worked there. Samu came back empty handed so we went back to Holonga. We stopped at some houses and asked around. I was sent to a house to ask and got lucky! I found a bottle so we went back to Samu’s house and tried to feed the calf. It was a family affair as we all got around the calf and tried to get it to accept the bottle. Luckily it didn’t take to long before the hungry calf began to feed.

Just another day in the life of Sifa! The amazing Tongan Peace Corps.