While the navy was here I mostly helped out at MAFF where I work, the navy conducted food sanitation and nutrition classes there, and an animal/veterinarian workshop. Everyday we had women’s groups come in from different villages. Unfortunately, two of the five days there were funerals so attendance was low those days. But I could tell the classes were making a difference and helping, the women learned new ways of sanitizing and cleaning and more about nutrition (they were told to eat half a plate of vegetables at every meal and a lot less meat and root crops). But at least we had some women come to the classes, I think between 30 and 40, and they’ll pass on the information to more people in their village.
The food sanitation/nutrition team also left behind materials for us so we can hopefully continue these classes when we do cooking classes. When the veterinarians were here we got Lucky and Simba (our neighbor’s dog) fixed so they can’t have puppies. The veterinarians were also surprised that no one gives any of the animals water to drink here, there were pigs penned up the entire time the vets were here and each day they’d give the pigs some of their bottled water. They also traveled around to a lot of farms on both islands here seeing the bigger animals – cows, pigs, horses, goats. The team at MAFF brought us lots of great food and drinks from their MRE’s (meals ready to eat in bags), and from the ship they brought chips, cookies, salsa, and cereal, it was really nice of them! If any of you are reading this, thanks so much again!
The food sanitation/nutrition team also left behind materials for us so we can hopefully continue these classes when we do cooking classes. When the veterinarians were here we got Lucky and Simba (our neighbor’s dog) fixed so they can’t have puppies. The veterinarians were also surprised that no one gives any of the animals water to drink here, there were pigs penned up the entire time the vets were here and each day they’d give the pigs some of their bottled water. They also traveled around to a lot of farms on both islands here seeing the bigger animals – cows, pigs, horses, goats. The team at MAFF brought us lots of great food and drinks from their MRE’s (meals ready to eat in bags), and from the ship they brought chips, cookies, salsa, and cereal, it was really nice of them! If any of you are reading this, thanks so much again!
Brett’s school is now almost finished as well, it looks amazing!! It’s basically a new building for classes 4 – 6, the other building for the younger classes is the same but with new paint. On the building the navy fixed they put on a new roof, new walls, new windows, electricity, a new rain water tank, and new paint on all the buildings – white with red trim. There were over 30 people working there everyday, and on Friday the school had a feast for the engineers and navy that worked on the building and gave them some gifts. The soldiers then went around and gave the kids dog tags and played with them.
On Friday night this week there was a farewell dinner at the high school, with just a few select guests invited. The guest of honor was the Prime Minister of Tonga, and there were a hand full of parliament members, secretary of foreign affairs and secretary of education all up from the capital city of Nuku’alofa. Brett and I got a last minute official invitation, along with the other peace corps volunteers Phil and Alicia. It was a nicely printed letter, and the dress was “lounge dress”, we wore our traditional tongan-wear. There were only about 60 guests total! The hall was all decked out in balloons and lots of tapa mats, the navy band was playing, we all got flower leis as we entered, and there was an open bar! They seated us and Phil at the table with the secretary of foreign affairs and some other navy from Australia and the US. I sat next to the captain of one of the Australian ships. They had a program with speeches from the Prime Minister and the Commodore of the US navy, then we had a buffet dinner with really great food – real garlic bread, lobster, seasoned fish, salads, roasted pig, octopus and more. During dinner they had school kids dancing for entertainment. It was really cool to be invited to such an important event, with so few people in attendance and no media – just a personal farewell dinner party put on by the Prime Minister that felt more casual.
(us with the Prime Minister)
After dinner everyone got up and socialized, someone from our table that works with the Prime Minister asked us to come and meet him! Right away when he introduced Brett and I the Prime Minister said “I remember you, we’ve met before!”, he remembered us from our swearing in ceremony in December! Then he asked if we wanted our picture taken, so of course we got our picture taken with him. It was really incredible that the Prime Minister of Tonga knows who we are!! Then we spent some time talking with other Tongans from the government, and taking photos with a lot of the navy that we’ve gotten to know and Tongan government officials. It was pretty fun! We also had a conversation with Captain Cully, the Commodore of the Pacific Partnership mission, the person in charge of it all. He gave speeches at all the big events and was always the guest of honor seated up front. He said he was grateful for all of our help, and liked that we were so involved and friendly with them all. We told him of course we wanted to help out as much as we could and we were just so excited to have so many other Americans and foreigners here working with us. So many of them were interested in what Peace Corps is and asked lots of questions. This is the last country on their tour they’ll have Peace Corps volunteers. 
After the open bar ran out at the farewell dinner we all moved over to Mariner’s Café for awhile, then a few of us stopped at a new dance club by the wharf. My counterpart at the computer center also just set up a dance club in an old abandoned building right on the ocean by the wharf. We’ll see how long it lasts, it’s good to have something like this for the youth in town. So it ended up being a fantastic night!
After the open bar ran out at the farewell dinner we all moved over to Mariner’s Café for awhile, then a few of us stopped at a new dance club by the wharf. My counterpart at the computer center also just set up a dance club in an old abandoned building right on the ocean by the wharf. We’ll see how long it lasts, it’s good to have something like this for the youth in town. So it ended up being a fantastic night!On Saturday, there was a closing ceremony at Brett’s School for the Pacific Partnership mission here in Ha’apai. They had speeches again and prayers, gift-giving from both the US navy and the Tongans, a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new school building, and then there was a huge feast. By huge, I mean the entire islands of Lifuka and Foa were probably there along with most of the navy ship. We guessed over 500 people. They had two huge tents set up with long tables overflowing with food – the normal piles of wrapped food plates on top of each other and whole roasted pigs every few feet, whole huge lobsters, octopus, chicken, fish, and more. We were seated, then noticed tons of Tongans standing all around the edges and filling up all the cars parked all around the event. This is the first time in Ha’apai I felt like if I wanted to find someone here at the feast I might not be able to in the crowd! They had lots of dancing again from the school kids during the feast, and the navy band and the Weslyn school band played music. This was by far the biggest feast I’ve seen in Tonga, bigger than the church conferences. We went to Mariner’s last night, the last time it will be this busy. It will feel really empty now after the ship leaves today.
In animal news, our neighbor’s dog, Kimone, just had her puppies last night! I think there are about 6 of them, it’s hard to tell – they’re all huddled up under our back stairs. And the piglet our neighbors gave us, Ifo (delicious), was stolen along with another piglet. We’re guessing Ifo ended up on the feast tables today, hundreds of piglets were killed and roasted for this feast.
Some other big news, we leave for Brisbane, Australia next week on Thursday! We go to Nuku’alofa for a few days, leaving on Tuesday then on to Australia. We’re going for medical, Brett needs to get his leg looked at, it shouldn’t be anything serious but they don’t have an MRI here in Tonga so they have to send him out of country. And I’m going along as well paying my own way. So we’ll have a little bit of a vacation there for around two weeks – we’ll see how long we’re there after the test results. I’m really excited to get back there – I studied abroad for a semester just north of Brisbane on the Sunshine Coast. Hopefully we’ll have time to get up there and down to the Gold Coast. It feels weird leaving again so soon after our New Zealand trip last month. It felt pretty sad coming back here after our New Zealand trip with my family, and now it feels a little sad leaving Ha’apai since so many things are just getting started - my Internet café, I’m missing the first women’s group meeting with MAFF and just started working with my counterpart there, I won’t be able to start computer classes until we get back, and Brett’s school was just re-done and his library. But I am really looking forward to the restaurants and hot showers again! And we’ll just pick up where we left off here, hopefully they’ll be able to keep the Internet café open while I’m gone.
There are more new photos in the link to the left. Our next post might be from Australia!
*Here are a few related links, the first is our local news coverage from Matangi news, the next is a blog from Pacific Partnership following their continuing travels on to the Solomon Islands, Kiribati, and the Marshall Islands, and the last link is to the navy's site about the Pacific Partnership.
They came on Monday, it was storming and rainy out and they just unloaded equipment. Then yesterday we had the big opening ceremony at the high school, with the commadore of the US Navy as the special guest along with one other navy official, and a few Tongans on stage in chairs covered in tapa cloths. It was reallly well decorated with lots of mats and tapa cloths covering the stage and floor, and chairs set up on the sides, the middle was covered in mats for the school kids to sit on. They had some opening speeches, the commadore spoke about their pacific aid mission, and two schools did ta'alunga dances with Sara and Alicia, peace corps volunteers. At the end they had the navy band playing and all the kids were dancing around with them.
