Tongan Take-aways : 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.