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.