Village Shows

May 10, 2013

There was a concert in my village tonight, now I don’t mean with a stage and huge speakers and pyrotechnics but more think of it more like Shakespeare in the Park. Instead of the stadium however, imagine grass, and instead of the classically trained thespians, there were Tongan men dressed in drag- which oddly enough may be more Shakespearian…. The show (some outer island’s church fundraiser) drew out the whole village, all excited to see Tinitini. Tinitini is the Tongan equivalent to a movie star- he is well known all around (although I guess the island is so small I am pretty well known too) and he has video recordings of his past shows at the knockoff DVD shop in town. I couldn’t really understand any of his jokes but with the way the crowed was cackling I could imagine he is a pretty funny guy- of course some of the jokes weren’t in Tongan so much as just Tongan humor, like hitting fellow actors really hard with a big stick. Between the hitting people and the drag I realized that Tongans have a very refined since of humor….Of course that is the best thing about Tonga really, they really laugh at anything, and meaningfully laugh- it is pretty awesome. If I were to ever go into standup comedy I know that I would always want to plant Tongans in my audience for their infectious belly laughs.

G.P.S, Holonga and its Teachers

May 1 2013,

My little “bush school” is comprised of 3 teachers one of which happens to be the principal. There is a Teacher for a combined class 1 and 2 (Lose who is also the principal), a teacher for class 3 and 4 (Mele), and a teacher for class 5 and 6 (Ella). All females. The class 3-4 and class 5-6 teachers are actually from my village, which for Tonga is very rare because most often the teachers get moved around so much that they hardly ever teach in their same villages. My school is one long, one story structure with 4 classrooms and one resource room/ library that until recently when I was able to get some books donated (if you know of any way or have some books to donate, I have the perfect place!) did not have any books in it. We are privileged enough to have a photocopier machine that is essentially the life blood of the teacher here and I fear the day that the copier runs out of toner. My school has about 70 students, each as wildly energetic and physical as the last. Tongan kids- both the boys and the girls- have a strange need to constantly be hanging on each other or hitting each other. Even though they are the continual cause of frustration they are pretty freaking adorable and make me smile as much as they make me want to send them to do some hard labor for awhile. One of the best parts of my school, is that one of the classrooms is used as the kindergarten (kiniti) a few times a week, and I would challenge any other nation’s kids to be as cute as a 3 year old Tongan kid, not only is their general physical appearance one that could be plastered all over Gerber ads, but hearing them speak Tongan is one of my new favorite things in the world.

As of last week we are down to two teachers at my school. This is a transcript of the text I received to notify me of the new change:

"Hi sifa au mele can you please tell Lose im in hospital coz im giving birth

Apparently Mele couldn't come to school because she her baby and- now she is on maternity leave for 3 months. What happens in this situation you may wonder? A substitute maybe? No, in a small outer village school in Tonga what simply happens is the other teachers absorb the class until leave is over, so as of now When I am teaching English, Ella is teaching the other class, I teach longer and help teach math/ babysit when necessary. All this really means is, the kids are harder to handle because they are less supervised (hit less) than normal. The kicker is that Ella is also pregnant and will go on her leave about the time Mele gets back…

this is Naki a.k.a. Amanaki- he doesn't actually go to school because he is too young but there isn't day care here so he just hangs out all day while Ella (his mom but really his aunt teaches)- Naki is one of my favorite kids

Toni (in the green) is in my class 4 and he has the best dimples and the most expressive face

these little guys are in class 1 and 2 so I don't actually teach them

oh how they love being phtographed

the little guy is Misi he is in the kiniti he is pretty awesome, the other one is Selamaia and he is my favorite kid in class 2

The Kiss of Death

April 27, 2013

It seems like every time I attend a Tongan funeral I get more and more of the “experience.” After this time however I feel like I have been able to witness all a funeral has to offer. I know I have already explained the funeral process here but just a quick recap. A funeral starts with evening prayers at the hospital waiting for the body to be released at the time all the extended family has been able to come to Tongan from all corners of the globe (usually this takes about 4 days). Once all the family has arrived, there is the actual funeral service in the village which lasts all day and has many phases. The first phase was the one I experienced for the first time this time around. The first phase is a prayer service at the house of the deceased. Each church shows up respectfully and sings and prays while the mourners morn in the corner whaling and crying in between services. After a service is done you go and kiss the body. Now I have never seen a dead person before let alone kiss one but I guess there is a first time for everything. I was sitting down in the small house on the Tongan mats that had been laid out. I went with the first church to do their service (the biggest group because he was a member of that church) the Weslayans. The mourners (possibly the man’s wife and daughters) had their heads buried in their body engrossing tau’avalas. The room with the deceased man was small and connected to the main room where we were sitting but from my angle I could not see the body, just the ornate white draping all around the room. As the service ended I had a feeling we might have to go and give our blessings to the body. There was simply no way out, if I left out the door all of the waiting people would see me and I would be standing there in the pouring rain feeling guilty for not showing respect to the dead. So I made sure I would not be first and I got in line. Slowly I made my way to the front where there it was laying lifeless on the table covered in white cloths and looking pale but peaceful- my first sight of death. I saw that the people at the front where not simply saying a prayer and waving their hand over the man but they were bening down to kiss him. How awesome. My first time seeing a dead man and I also have to kiss him. When my moment came I gathered together all my courage and bent down to sniff the man’s lifeless cheek and give him an awkward hug thing. I followed the line to the mourners and gave them kisss sniffs as well and then exited the house feeling as if I had grown up a little. After the different church services everyone gets a bag of food and eats awaiting the big church service (I sort of skipped this interim church stop to help the men prepare the raw meat bags and bring fill two pick-up trucks with bags to bring to the burial ground) and then the final walk with the body to the burial plot. The funeral officially ends with the burial of the body and the passing out of the bags of raw meat.

After the official funeral, the following 3 evenings there are also prayer and singing services at the house at the end of which more bags of raw meat are given out. Tongan funerals over all are very interesting, if not for the cultural interactions and views of death for the simple fact that they tend to bankrupt families on account of having to give hundreds of people parting favors of meat.

some of the men in my village the night before the funeral preparing some of the food- it is a whole night process

just one of the giant piles of chicken that will be cooked or separated into little baggies for the people to take home after the service

Site Goings On

April 24, 2013

The Saturday we got back from training also happened to be the Australian Aid volunteers’ going away party at one of the local establishments in town. I felt obligated to go even though I kind of just wanted to get back, unpack and watch a movie. Instead, I had to drop off my stuff and head straight into town. The party ended up being a lot of fun though and I got an early ride back to my village from my favorite cab driver so I was still able to make church the next morning. Their party made me think how different our experiences are even though we cross paths somewhat frequently. My going away "party" is going to be quite different.

the volunteers giving their fakamalo from left to right: Georgie, Elana, Tria

the little kid on my head is one of Georgie's coworker's sons- he liked to climb

At church, unbeknownst to me until minutes before, we performed the action songs that I have spent the better half of 2 months trying to learn. In case you are still wondering what an action song is, imagine an extremely religious, half spoken, half sung, song that hand gestures are put to. Now imagine 50 village kids dressed in all white and in lines from youngest to oldest performing these songs- straight up hilarity.

an action shot of the action song- can you spot me?

my village youth and I after our brilliant performance

Because of training I didn’t get to go to the market this week and buy food, so in an attempt to feed myself I have been asking the kids to bring me assorted ingredients. Pele is a green leaf plant that gross like wild fire here and is used similarly to how you would use spinach. Breadfruit is exactly what it sounds like and is so abundant here that you can literally just go outside and pick it off the trees- which is exactly what I did (of course by me I mean the class 4 kid I made precariously climb a tree to get me one of the only remaining fruits left in my surrounding area). The beauty of living in a village in Tonga is even without money you can always eat (even if what you are eating is pretty flavorless- thank god for onions and hot sauce!). Take yesterday for instance, we had this random Mormon volunteer day at my school where all the Mormons in my village (plus some from other places) came to mow my school's field and generally clean up, after this event the Mormon bishop invited me over to his house and fed me!

this is the crew it took to mow the field in a day- if you cant tell there are 5 lawnmowers, 2 weed wackers and countless machetes

In-service Training

April 13, 2013

In-service Training was super great! It is always fun to get together all 15 of us and hear about everyone’s service. It seems like everyone is doing really great and having such a good time at site. It is also great to be able to get to see all of our staff, Peace Corps Tonga has such a great staff and because we are hounderds of miles away on Vava'u we only get to see them during trainings. Beside the fun of getting together, trainings are always a good time because they are on the main island (Tongatapu), which means there is a lot of good food that we can’t get at site (pretty much Chinese food and a café that serves iced coffees and cappuccinos). Basically training was six days of me gorging myself and drinking way too much caffeine. I also had a stomachache the whole time and we were all thinking that I might have a warm because of the massive quantities of food I was taking down (had the doc check me out and no worries she thinks I am fine, just over indulging).

The training was held at this beautiful and brand new catholic theological center run by a nun named Sister Katy who spoke Tongan, English and Italian on account of having to go there for nun stuff for a few years. I learned a lot during our 8 – 5 days and I am super excited to try new things in my classroom that will hopefully make me feel like my teaching is more focused and effective. We are also making a lot of head way on our project to help stream line the Tongan English curriculum and make it more user friendly for the teachers. We used the knowledge of our experience teachers in the group to get really relevant and useful information on teaching and classroom structure. Using trained professionals is not Peace Corps' strong point so I was really happy they learned from all of our previous evaluations and allowed those who know what they are doing to run the sessions.

Basically the days went like this: Chiara, Mandy and I do an early morning walk to get real coffee then we all load up the big Peace Corps van (which makes us all feel like we are a huge family going on vacation) and drive to the training site. First off, language class (which was great) followed by morning tea break- I can’t stress enough how rad tea times are; without a doubt one of the highlights of Peace Corps ( I wonder if other PC countries have tea times and if they are as good as ours?). After tea there was more training then a break for lunch cooked by the staff at the institute and it was always delicious. Back to training, second tea, more training then back to Sela’s guest house where most of us quickly dropped off stuff and changed and then hit up the café. Most of us would meet up for dinner at one of the few establishments that could accommodate a group of people and wasn’t a fried chicken place. Finally we would head back to Sela’s and discus general goings on until bed time.

By the time the second Saturday rolled around it was hard to say goodbye to everyone, especially the two on Eua, who all us Vava’u crew feel most close to, but it was also good to finally be going back to site after such a long break although the adjustment back to site isn’t a fun thing to look forward to. After spending so much time being stimulated and around people it is hard to come back to site where you are alone and not as much is going on. I am sure after a few days I will get back into the swing of things again. It is just hard to believe that we only have two more trainings left in our service, which means we will only see everyone as a group two more times before we leave Tonga.

so you know we actually do work

sometimes...

Steph, Michael, Katy and me

Chiara, me and Katy at our big night out

Peace Corps Tonga Group 77 gentlemen: back left to right: Michael, harrison, Jeff bottom left to right: Mark, Ryan and me

Mandy, me and Katy

Katy Invades Vava’u

April 11, 2013

My volunteer friend Katy, who now works on the island of Eua (which is very far away), planned to come up to Vava’u and visit before our In-service Training. We were both excited and planned the 4 days she was going to be here to be a blast! We booked a day sail and snorkel and I planned on taking her around my village and around Vava’u plus I planned amazing meals and snacks, to be prepared by yours truly... She was all booked to get in at 9 in the am on Wednesday so I arrange to meet her at the airport and come back to an awesome breakfast of breakfast burritos, hash browns and toast and coconut cream brownies- I had spent the previous night precooking. The morning of her arrival I got a call from her saying that the airline over booked her ticket and told her she could not come on the plane even though it was a connecter flight from her small island. They told her to come back for the afternoon flight. I was pissed and upset that are plans would have to be changed (and that my breakfast would go to waste) but I decided to change the breakfast burritos to regular burritos and await her arrival in the late afternoon by helping the class 6 kids build an umu in the back of the school. Side note here- it is hilarious that in the States kids can barely hold a knife without getting yelled at, here the kids are building underground ovens with machetes, chopping onions and grating coconuts. Anyway, I got another call from Katy telling me the airline told her the flight was over booked again and she wasn’t going to make it- I just kept thinking this would never happen in America, only to remember I am not in America and this is definitely something that would happen with the corrupt temporary 1-plane-airline set up by the Tongan government after the actual domestic airline left the country. After a lot of yelling at the airline and some minor lying (I told them I was a coordinator for PC and I needed my volunteer up in Vava'u) they agreed that she would definitely would get on the flight in the morning so Katy and I decided that she should still come and we would just try and rush to make the sail in the morning.

this is the umu prepared by the 8 class 6 kids- they still have class during school breaks so this was done during class

1 day down and no more food later I picked up Katy at the airport and we had to go straight to town to get to our day sail. We were joined by Mandy and Jeff (Vava’u volunteers) and had an amazing day on the water, snorkeling, eating and doing some light drinking-some of which was fresh coffee, like actual not instant. After the day sail we got some fries at Café Aquarium then we went to quiz night at the local pub and even though we lost by a lot at quiz we had a great time.

Katy and me

Me, Katy and Mandy

the sunset from the boat

The next day we met up with the rest of the Vava’u volunteers to spend the day that the beach in my village. We got back from the beach and made more tortillas from scratch (left over from my failed burritos) and made chicken tacos. It was a super awesome night and we all had a lot of fun so even though Katy’s trip started off rocky it ended up turning out pretty dang good.

Easter Festivites in My Village

March 31, 2013

For those as religious as the Tonga people, the Easter festivities actually start the Friday before on a day know to those who follow the Lord as Good Friday. I got to celebrate this shamefully overlooked holiday by going to church and going to a feast. The feast was wonderful, as feast go, it was in town at the house of a women who used to be from my village but moved to town to work as a nurse at the hospital. Unfortunately for me, this feast was not all fun and eating, no my friends the time had come for me to get over my fear and give a fakamalo speech. Traditionally in Tonga, during a feast different people from all different statuses get up throughout the meal and give very long and slightly repetitive speeches thanking different people and the lord. Being in my community 5 months now and not being able to hide behind the veil of being lost in translation I knew that this would be the feast at which I would give my speech. So I ate fast and tried to translate everything I would need to give a short but thoughtful little speech. My time came a went and I feel like I did a decent job. I remembered everyone I wanted to thank and I didn’t screw up or fumble my words so I rewarded myself by eating more. The rest of the day was pretty good too. I stayed in town to get dinner with Sean and volunteers before he set off for his big vacation back to America for a month. We hiked Mt. Talau and went swimming by the new land bridge, which had the cool current that pulled you under the bridge.

On Saturday I returned to my village thinking I was going to have a relatively low-key long weekend. Come to find out that the big Wesleyan church in my village does an event called apitanga (camping) where the youth (youth in Tonga is anyone unmarried so essentially kids from about the age of 13 to mid 20s) sleep at the church from Friday to Monday. I spent Saturday night at action song practice and then slept in the back of the church with the other guys. The down side (beside the mosquitoes eating me) was that when you sleep at the church there is no way to avoid the 4:30 am wake up call by the church bells. I was unable to escape, eyes red with tiredness and feeling groggy I sat through 5 am mass only to go home shower make a cup of coffee and return for 10 am mass. It is frustrating that one of my goals is to see the sun rise and I haven’t been able to cross it off, not because I am not up early enough to see it but because I am trapped in a church every time! After 10 am mass we drank kava and then unbeknownst to me there was a feast (surprise feast are really the best kinds of feast)! So I got to re-feast, this time with the Wesleyans, and I gave another fakamalo- and in this one I threw in a couple of jokes.

After the feast we drank kava before going to third church and action song practice. Following action song practice we (the youth) went out to drink some kava. Apparently Easter Sunday is the one day a year that the youth can drink kava- see normally you are not supposed to drink kava unless you are finished with school. I think the reason for this is because that following Monday is also a holiday so no school. It was such a funny experience because all the men were very kava drunk and when the little kids came out they past them a shell of kava and it reminded me of dads giving their kids first sips of beer. The little kids were all so proud and tried to chugged down the shells and were encouraging each other as the drank. I ended up staying up until 3:30 drinking with some of the guys who are more around my age, which was a nice change. I let one of them give me a tattoo with marker but he was a little kava drunk and instead of some kupesi around my lower knee he gave me a full leg tattoo.

Finally we made it to bed only to be woken up an hour later by the church bells, but this time I slipped out and went home to go back to sleep. I had so much fun this weekend and it was a really big confidence booster because it was with just people in my village no one else. It is really good to know I can have such a great time without having to have another white person around, as weird as that may sound...

surprise feast in the church! Women and kids just kept coming in with food while we were drinking kava- so sweet!

The guy in the middle is the one who gave me the leg tattoo

the kava band being drunk- the one in the sunglasses is my town officer

the kids anxiously awaiting their next shell