Lucky dog

A quick update, Brett and I decided to have our dog Lucky shipped over last month from Tonga! It was a long and complicated process, but she made it here and is adjusting to American life - leashes, dog food, toys, being indoors at night, colder weather, lots of attention from people, etc. and she's loving it. Thanks to all our friends still in Tonga that helped us with getting Lucky here! She is still skittish around new people here after being in Tonga, but is getting used to it here. And we bought a house since being back, so we will soon have a yard and more space for our pets. It is still a process adjusting to life back in America, but we are both working and still enjoying all the good food, friends and family, activities here, and hot showers. I still have dreams often of being back on the beach in Tonga or swimming in the reefs. And I have been working more on the Tonga travel guidebook, with two contributing writers that were also peace corps volunteers with us. The web address for the book and publishing company is http://www.otherplacespublishing.com/tonga.

Ofa Atu!

Writing a Travel Guidebook

Hello everyone, I wasn't going to keep updating this blog, but I've got some news relating to Tonga. I will be writing a travel guidebook on Tonga! There is a new publishing company that is putting out travel guidebooks written by Peace Corps volunteers since they have lived in the countries they will write about and have extensive knowledge on culture, things to see/do, places to stay, restaurants, etc. So I'm very excited about this project and to be able to share my knowledge of Tonga. It will help that I also worked with the tourism bureau there, and I'll be getting help with research from people still in Tonga, although I have a lot of information already.

The book will tentatively be done by October of this year. I'll post more information and a link to the publisher's website soon, so watch for that or let me know if you have any comments/questions.

Cyclone rene update

Just a quick update, we've talked with friends from our island group of Ha'apai and it seems they were very lucky and there is minimal damage to trees and buildings and no injuries or deaths as of yet. Amazingly they already have power back, we were able to skype with some friends tonight, and they're just waiting for water to be turned back on. Some of the bigger trees were knocked over, and a few tin roofs blown away. Altogether I think our peace corps friends waited out the storm in a small house for three nights or so. So we're thankful that everyone is safe and there was minimal damage. Now we know what it's like to be on this side of the world waiting out the storm to see what happens. We're still adjusting to life here, missing Tonga but thankful to be here with family and friends and figuring out job possibilities (Brett has started substitute teaching and I'm doing some freelance advertising work from home). So that's all, check our other PC Tonga friends' blogs for updates.

Cyclone Rene

Cyclone Rene, category 4, is headed to Tonga right now, and will pass right over our island group of Ha'apai and our town of Pangai. We have been out of Tonga for exactly one month now, so we are really watching this storm and thinking of all our friends there now - they are in a safe consolidation point. We had a couple of cyclones while we were there, but none this strong and with such a direct hit. There will most likely be a lot of damage from the strong winds, a lot of the buildings and houses are flimsy. The last big cyclone to hit the island was in '82, and most of the buildings were destroyed, livestock perished, and bush land destroyed. If this kind of storm was headed anywhere else - thailand, or the US coast etc., people would evacuate inland. But unfortunately on this small island nation that's not possible, people bunker down in the strong cement buildings and wait it out. And Tonga is such a small nation, this isn't even making much news around the world, and when it does it is focused on American Samoa or Samoa- even though there was hardly any damage there. The storm has picked up and become stronger as it heads directly to Tonga. If you look at the storm path below, it's amazing, it looks like the storm path curved to go right over the Tongan islands and right at the worst stage of the storm. The second image below is a satellite image of the storm right now over Tonga, the worst part is about to hit our island (the red dot on the image). We'll post more as we hear about the effects after the storm, but please keep Tonga in your thoughts and prayers as this storm passes over them.

A stranger in a strange land

It's a strange feeling to come home after living overseas for almost a year and a half. We watched out the plane window as our little green palm-dotted islands disapeared, and coming into our first landing back in America we watched row after row of cement, buildings, and houses come into view in LA, with hardly anything green. After living abroad you come back with a different perspective, it definately changes you. Have you ever thought about how weird some things are in our own country, or what some foreigners must think? For example, coming from a tiny Pacific island to a main-land and flying for 4 hours over nothing but land was a different feeling. Hot showers are amazing. The first shower after Tonga the feeling of the water was like air it felt so much lighter than the water we had. And food, you never realize how many different flavors there are, and it's like tasting it for the first time after going so long without certain foods. But I have to say, the pineapple is disapointing here, we're spoiled now after the fresh, sweet pineapple we had in Tonga. And water, we don't have to wake up every morning and haul our drinking water in from a water tank outside, and we don't have to boil water and wait for it to cool. In LA we had a layover for a night, and in the hotel Brett walked down the hall and came back with bottled water, forgetting that we could drink the tap water again. The most amazing feeling right after leaving Tonga was just having clean feet and clean fingernails. The whole time over there your feet are just black. We'd clean our feet often, but no matter what they just turn black with dirt and sand and whatever. Wearing flip-flops the whole time your feet just get dirty. And we'd clean the floors in our house often, but they'd just get dirty so fast from living on the beach and having dogs. And I don't know what happens at night, but you go to sleep clean and wake up with dirt under your fingernails. I don't know. So it's nice to see that our feet are actually pink again (but we do still have calouses on our ankles from sitting on the floor mats so often). And after sleeping under a mosquito net for so long, we felt exposed at first sleeping without one here. But it's nice going to sleep now in sheets that aren't damp from humidity. And driving again is weird - to be on the right side of the road and not the left. And on our island we really were rarely in cars and when we were it was very slow going over the roads we had, and short distances so I noticed now I get a little car sick here.
So those were some of the basic differences we noticed right away coming back. But we also had some reverse culture-shock. Some people say the culture-shock is worse coming back to your own country after living abroad. I think it's better though when you expect it, we didn't expect to come back and things to just be normal again, we knew there'd be an adjustment. One of the first things we noticed was how connected people are now to the Internet, everyone has fancy phones they're constantly typing on, it's a little annoying. It was nice to be somewhat detached from that overseas. People here are becoming more detached from real conversations and interactions when they're just using facebook or things online to communicate. And it's very easy here to go days without having real interactions with people- you can sit at home online or shop around malls or places and not really talk to anyone, and the neighborhoods are more isolated - you can't walk down the street and be in town. In Tonga if you left your house you were greeted by every person you saw in town just blocks away, and even if you didn't leave the house the neighbors would come over to chat. You just had no option of isolating yourself. And commercialization, what can I say. In Tonga, you wore whatever clothes you had, no matter if they didn't match or were stained. You couldn't even buy clothes on our island, unless they had them at the market on Saturdays and then they were used old clothes that probably wouldn't fit. People didn't buy decorative vases, pictures, pillows, etc. for their houses. They just had the basics that were needed, sometimes not even that. Most of the time you sat on the floor and that was perfectly fine. We didn't have many options for shopping on our island because it was so hard to get stuff to our island. We already know what the stores are like here, but still knew it would be a little bit of a shock. At first we avoided going shopping. Then we went to the mall with Brett's family, I started converting prices to Tongan and things are so expensive here! We went to the Mac store, and I was overwhelmed by all the things they had, knowing that on our island computers are so old and constantly breaking down. Later Brett and I went to Target, and that was the biggest culture-shock I had coming back - just seeing row after row of all these products and things that we couldn't get on our island, but here they had a whole row of selection. For example body wash, which we couldn't get in Ha'apai, but here there was a whole row and it all looked the same - moisturizing, deep moisturizing, hydrating, sensitive skin, exfoliating, etc. I had to stop and breathe, and just grab one after looking at them all for 5 minutes or so. Walking around I glanced over at the food section, saw a huge row of different spices, and had to look away again. Brett said he had the same overwhelming feeling when we were shopping at a department store. I kept handing him dress shirts I was finding, and it was all so much and he said he was just thinking he didn't want any of them - he just wanted to wear scrubby t-shirts, shorts and flip-flops like in Tonga where fashion didn't matter. Here we have to dress up again.

So that's a little description of how we've been dealing with coming home to America. Thanks again to all our friends and family, it's been great seeing people again and sharing stories about life in Tonga. And we are missing the hot weather now, as we sit in about 4 degrees fahrenheit weather here, and we miss all our friends back there. We also turned our cell phones back on (our old cell phones look ancient compared to the new technology now), and we bought a cheap vehical to get around in. I have had a few job interviews scheduled already, so we'll see how things go.

A little update we just heard from Tonga - they suspended travel for volunteers on the only ferry because it's under investigation for safety issues. It actually left port and headed to the outer islands when it wasn't supposed to just recently. So it might be hard to get supplies now in Ha'apai if the ferry has to stop. And they might be moving volunteers off the outer islands in Ha'apai, since the ferry is the only mode of transportation to get to those islands. Good luck to everyone that's still there, hopefully they will get a new ferry soon.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

We are leaving the Kingdom of Tonga and our little island of Ha'apai. Brett will be medically seperated for his leg, and I will get interrupted service status. We knew this might be coming and had thought about it for awhile, but still are very sad to be leaving early.

We will miss all our great friends here in Ha'apai, our neighbors, and our work counterparts. We will miss our beach, and the sound of crashing waves every night as we fall asleep. We will miss the sunsets on our beach, we've seen a sunset almost every night for the last 16 months. We will miss the amazing coral reefs, fish, and whales (not the sharks). We will miss seeing volcanoes out our back door. We will miss trying to converse in Tongan (although we'll try skyping with our neighbors back in Tonga in Tongan). We will miss the fresh fish, tropical fruit, and lobster (not the lack of vegetables). We will probably miss the incredibly hot weather once we're back in the freezing cold Midwest winter. We will miss the easy-going island pace to life. These things and many more we will miss. We went to help the locals in another country with our skills and English language, but learned so much in return. Not every country needs to be "westernized", and I hope Ha'apai doesn't change too much in the coming years.

We have been able to do some amazing things during Peace Corps here, including swimming with humpback whales, teaching adults how to use computers who have never touched a computer before, teaching kids English and how to play soccer, creating a website for tourism on our island and teaching locals how to use it, helping the US Navy with a humanitarian mission with our local connections and being adapted into the culture, establishing an Internet cafe, and more. It's funny that on this little remote island we almost feel more connected to the community than we did back home in a big city. The important people in town know us and sometimes come to us for help - the judge, the assistant governor, town officers, the police, local business owners, etc. We never walk down a street without someone yelling out a greeting. And we now know how to survive every natural disaster possible that could hit our island. We have had many ups and downs here, but looking back we wouldn't change a thing.

We are very excited to see our family and friends back home. Thank you for all the love and support while we've been here in Tonga. We are actually surprising everyone back home, so this will be posted later once we are already home. Then we will post some more about our last week in Ha'apai, going away parties and such. We are looking forward to whatever comes next for us - either looking for new jobs again or spending some time traveling. We will keep up the blog for a little while longer going through our culture shock back home and first few months or so. Then if we start a new blog we'll post a link. Below is our "wall of love" of cards and things we've gotten in the mail while in Tonga. Thanks again everyone for following our blog, and also let us know if you have any job leads for either of us.
And good luck to the rest of our group of volunteers with the coming year, and new volunteers just starting their service on our island, here are a few blogs you can watch for updates from our area: http://tongabunga.blogspot.com, http://johnoutsidethelines.blogspot.com, http://juleigh.wordpress.com, http://aliciapeacecorps.blogspot.com, or just check out www.peacecorpsjournals.com to see blogs listed by country.

Ha'apai Tourism

My big project recently has been the website I created for the Tourism Bureau here in Ha'apai. They have never had their own website before, there is no place to go online that lists all the accommodations and activities in one place. So this is a big step. There is a main website for tourism in Tonga, but it mostly focuses on the main island of Tongatapu, and the tourist destination of the Vava'u islands north of us. I would have created the website in Dreamweaver with a better design, but my main goal has been to make sure it's sustainable and that my counterpart can edit and update current information. So we used google blogger and set up a navigation bar at the top, and I've taught him how to use it. It's been amazing so far, he's been updating and publishing information on his own now about activities, history, culture, and more (we still need to work on editing some of the English though). It's a good feeling to be in a place where you can make this kind of an impact with the Internet and technology. And the tourism office was very surprised that you can make websites for free now. Tourism here is a difficult thing sometimes, but a huge boost on the economy. I think it's the biggest in Tonga after remittances from overseas. On such a small island here with so few operators and guest houses there are small town politics. And Tonga is known as the Friendly Islands, but they aren't good with customer service and hospitality. The people are amazing if you come as their guest, but it's a different story if you're a tourist. Ha'apai really does have a lot to offer tourists though - pristine coral reefs with lots of fish, swimming with whales, important historical sites, long sandy beaches, etc. You just can't expect five-star hotels, air conditioning, or gourmet meals.

So check out our Ha'apai tourism website!
http://haapaiholiday.com/

Brett and I head to Nuku'alofa on the main island tomorrow for some mid-service training with Peace Corps. We haven't left Ha'apai now since the beginning of August. We have done a lot of smaller trips though around our islands here, just this last weekend a bunch of us camped out on the liku "wild" side of our island by some cool rock formations.

Bring your own TP

When you visit a Tongan hospital, there's a list of things you'd better bring including toilet paper, mosquito coils and matches, food and water, hand sanitizer, and sometimes your own bed sheets. We made a visit to the hospital overnight on Saturday for me, I'm not sure why I was so sick, it was mostly my stomache so probably something I ate. After talking to our Peace Corps nurse a few times she suggested the hospital to make sure I was staying hydrated. So in our whole time here in Tonga we made our second visit to the hospital (the first was during training for Brett in Vava'u).

This was our first visit to the hospital here in Ha'apai, we'd heard some stories that made us pretty nervous. In fact the Tongan word for hospital, falemahaki, translates literally to house of sick. But the US Navy helped out at the hospital in July and inspected it, and just recently a medical person from Peace Corps headquarters in DC had inspected it as well, so I felt a little better.

We walked into the hospital and found the "check-in" table towards the back, out in the open hallway. They pulled up a few chairs for us, and I had to go through my symptoms as the nurse wrote them down in a notebook and everyone wandering around the hallways and hanging around could hear everything. Not like in America! Some people that knew us even tried to come up and have a conversation during this. The nurse then called the doctor, and they decided to give me an IV to hydrate me and keep us overnight. I think we were treated a little better since we're Peace Corps, we were given a private room (the others all had 4 beds), and bedsheets.

After being here for over a year, we just expect things to be the way they are here. But if you're coming from the States you wouldn't expect open window slats with no mosquito screens in a hospital, so there were mosquitos that could possibly give you dengue fever flying around. And it's not exactly sanitary to have stuff flying in the windows. There's no AC or fans, so then there's the dilemma of having the windows open for a breeze and having the mosquitos, or having the windows closed and sweating the heat. And in the bathroom, there was actually a sink, but of course no soap... in a hospital. And no toilet paper. We actually forgot to bring our own TP, so the nurses were nice enough to lend us some until Brett was able to go back and get some more things from our house. Overall it wasn't a horrible experience, the nurses were all very nice, the needles were new and they used alcohol swabs, and they even gave us breakfast in the morning. So don't be too worried if you ever have to visit a Tongan hospital, just be ready for some of these realities. I did feel a little better the next day. It was really funny when we got back to our house the next morning our neighbors came outside and were clapping when they saw we were back and I was okay.

The first sunrise of 2010

We celebrated New Years with a bonfire on our beach with friends in town, and roasted marshmellows. All the churches here have services from 10 to midnight on New Years, hoping to keep people from drinking or getting into trouble. We counted down midnight, and saw some local fireworks go off in town. Then some of us got up really early to be the first in the world to see the first sunrise of 2010, we biked to the east side of the island. As I write this, celebrations haven't even started yet for New Years Eve in the States, we're so far ahead on time here. Brett and I have now completed a full calendar year here in Tonga.

Palangi style holidays in Ha'apai

Well we're going on round two of holidays here in Tonga, we've had two Halloweens, Thanksgivings and now Christmases here. Only now we're the old volunteers - having been here longer in Tonga, but also in age compared to the new group. During one of our conversations over Christmas Brett and I mentioned Zubas (the popular zebra-striped baggy pants from the 80s), and the new volunteers all had blank stares and no idea what we were talking about. I guess most of them were born in the late 80s, we are getting old! I remember last Christmas was hard, the first big holiday away from home and having just moved into our site. Grant, the volunteer who had been here for a year, planned a Christmas get-away to his island which was really nice. So this year we planned a get-away to Uoleva island, to the nicest resort with all the new volunteers. It was great - snorkeling, laying on the beach, hanging out in hammocks, and we cooked some good meals - pasta and for Christmas a turkey dinner with stuffing and mashed potatoes. Brett and another volunteer, Todd, went spear fishing the first day and after they'd speared a couple of fish Brett saw his first shark! He said he just saw the white tip carving through the water, then saw the rest of the shark and said it was pretty big, maybe 5 or 6 feet. It was a white-tip reef shark, usually not dangerous, but then again Brett had a bag of fish with him! He watched the shark until it disapeared around the reef out of sight, then made a beeline for the shore with Todd. Lucky, our dog, came with us too to the resort and stuck by our side the whole time, she did better than I thought she would on her first boat ride. And all the other dogs survived while we were gone, none of them became dinner.

Overall I think this Christmas was easier than the last, because now we're settled into our home and community here. It didn't really even feel like a holiday until we skyped with our families back home. One of my uncles, cousin, and Brett all play guitar and usually play together over the holidays, so this year they all played guitar together over skype. Technology is amazing, it would be a very different experience here without the Internet. And there have been big changes now in the new group from when we first arrived - many of them now have Internet in their homes, some even wireless. And the connection has gotten better, we weren't able to use skype until about half-way through this year.

For New Years we're planning some kind of bonfire beach party, and will go to the east side of the island to be the first to watch the sunrise of the new year like we did last year. We still have time off from work, so we've just been hanging out. More new photos are posted in our picassa album. Thanks for the comments on our last few blog posts, we like hearing from people!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from Tonga! We'll be spending Christmas Eve and Christmas on Uoleva, the uninhabited island south of us, at Serenity Beaches resort. So most of our time there will be spent sun tanning on the beach, snorkeling or spear fishing, and just hanging out in the hammocks and little fales at the resort. We're going with the 5 new volunteers here and our japanese volunteer neighbor. We'll miss not having a white Christmas for the second year now, but are not missing the cold weather. It doesn't really feel as much like Christmas here - no commercialization of it at least with no big department stores here to decorate and to have Christmas sales, etc. But we have heard Christmas music on the radio, mixed with rap songs. And the Tongan barbeque restaurant has Christmas lights outside. And for some reason, all the kids are running around with fake toy guns now for Christmas, the chinese stores are selling them. For our trip to Uoleva I also did make a few Christmas cookies, with ingredients from a package from home.

A few random updates from this week - last night we had a real Japanese dinner at our neighbor Koichi's house who is a volunteer from Japan. He's going to teach us how to make a few dishes, and real teriyaki sauce. Over the weekend we had a bonfire on our beach with the new volunteers who just moved to Ha'apai last week, and friends in town. Lately we've just been hanging out, enjoying time off now for the holidays. Brett brought one of the new volunteers spear fishing today. More fruit is coming into season now with the hot weather - pineapples, passion fruit, and hopefully soon we'll have mangos, guava and avocado. We always have bananas, I don't think I'll ever be able to eat bananas again after being overloaded with them here. That's about all the updates for now, hope everyone has a Merry Christmas back home!

Tourism Festival in Tonga

Today was the tourism festival here in Ha'apai, and since I now work for the tourism bureau I took lots of photos for them and for the new website. I also got roped into being a judge for the English speech competition on the importance of tourism here in Ha'apai. It was supposed to be a tourism week, but was cut down to only one day-long event of a float parade, arts and crafts display, speech competition, and lots of dances and singing competitions. It is a little odd that they have the tourism festival in December, when there are absolutely no tourists around in the off-season, but they do have more overseas Tongans back in Tonga for the holidays. Some of the highlights - one of the floats had actual running power tools on it (pretty sure that wouldn't be allowed in the US for safety reasons!), another had a live fire pit going that they were feeding with leaves from the bush, it was the float for the local restaurant and they were pretending to cook! I was really impressed with how decked out all the trucks and cars were for the parade, and how many there were for our small town - about 25! In attendence we had the Ambassador of China as guest of honor, Miss Tonga and Miss Tonga Tourism. Another highlight - judging the English speeches by high school kids, I realized one of the speeches I had actually helped edit and write - the Governor's office had asked for my help for a speech I'd assumed one of them was giving, but actually it was for this high school kids' speech competition! It was pretty obvious that other adults had written many of these speeches when the kids couldn't pronounce many of the words. And there were still many mispellings, my favorite was "scooper diving" instead of scuba diving. It seemed like a few of the kids had written their own speeches, so I tried to judge those with higher scores. I'm not sure who ended up winning, we left before the prize-giving since we'd already been there over 5 hours and just couldn't sit through anymore singing and dancing.

We also heard today that there's a cyclone category 2 in Fiji, heading our way maybe on Wednesday or so. We'll see what happens, the waves have been pretty big so we'll probably get some kind of storm here. I think we're pretty used to the natural disasters now so we're not too worried about this one.

*Update on Cyclone Mick, it's heading farther south now so will probably miss Tonga and we'll just get strong winds and rain here.

Weekend Update

Here are a few updates from this last week - Thursday was the last day of school for Brett's students. So they had a program with dancing, lots of long speeches, and class presentations. For each class, they called the students' names and had them stand in front of the whole school and all the parents that were watching. But they called the names in a certain order - starting with the worst student to the smartest student. So everyone could see the order and knew how each kid did in school. I can't imagine that happening in the US, those poor kids that didn't do so well! The class 6 students got their scores back from their big exam which determines what high school they will attend. Those scores are announced later this month on the radio for everyone to hear. Over half of Brett's class made it into the local government high school which is really good, the rest are able to attend church-run high schools. Below is a video of some of the dancing the kids did. The kid in the corner of the video was playing drums on a peice of tin roof. The guy laughing at the end is Brett's class 6 teacher. The second video shows some kids singing at the year-end celebration.

On Friday through the weekend we had a married couple, Kathy and Rob, from the new group stay with us for what Peace Corps calls attachment. The trainees all go and stay with current volunteers to see what real Peace Corps life is like. I think they were all pretty happy to be done with homestay and to have more freedom. On Friday we all went out to Mariner's for karoake, it was fun to have a new big group of people there and to get some new songs in instead of the same old songs that are usually done. Then on Saturday we all went to Uoleva island for a day trip. We went snorkeling and Brett speared a nice sized parrot fish. Brian also caught quite a few fish in deeper waters - the entire time he said a shark was following him. So I think the new volunteers saw a good part of life here in Ha'apai.

Now Brett's done with his job at the school - the school year here runs Feb - early Dec., but I'm still working. He's just been hanging around the house enjoying time off, and doing some paddle boarding with the foam surf board Phil left. At MAFF on Monday I helped with planting some flowers, they had a workshop on Tuesday with people from the main island so they were trying to get the place looking really nice before the meeting. I heard that they're expecting months without rain, a really dry rainy season this year. They've even been trying to conserve some of the city water by turning it off at night. But of course just as we were hanging our clothes out to dry after doing laundry today it did rain a little. We don't have much planned for the rest of this week. Next week on Monday is the Tourism Festival (it's not really for foreign tourists since it's the off-season, but for overseas Tongans that are returning for the holidays).

Celebrations

This last week has been very busy for us. On Thursday we celebrated Thanksgiving with all the new trainees, our group of volunteers here in Ha'apai, and the Peace Corps staff that's been here for training. In all I think there were around 50 of us. With so many people, we did a potluck meal, and had 4 turkeys and a roasted pig. Brett and I made apple crisp (there just happened to be apples in Pangai a week ago so we bought lots), and banana bread. Others did stuffing, potatoes and sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie, salad, green bean casserole, biscuits, and more. Here's a photo of the new group of volunteers (plus Phil) that we took at our Thanksgiving meal. They leave their homestays this coming Friday, then stay with current volunteers for attachment over the weekend to see what volunteer life is like. We'll have a married couple staying with us. Then the new group of volunteers will swear in and move in to their sites, before Christmas.

We've also had a lot of gatherings lately for Phil and Aki, who are both finishing up their 2-year service here in Ha'apai. After our big Thanksgiving feast we had a feast the next day at Brett's school for both of them, along with the kids perfoming some dances. Then a party at Mariner's cafe, with some great food, drinks, and of course karoake since it was a Friday night.

And tonight we're having a dinner at our place for Phil before he leaves tomorrow morning. Since not all of our friends in town were with us for Thanksgiving this is also kind of a post-Thanksgiving feast - with stuffing, potatoes, etc. again. And we decided instead of turkey to have a Tongan chicken, they taste pretty good- a leaner kind of meat. At first Brett was going to chase and kill a chicken on his own with a sling shot, but then decided to just get it from one of his teachers at school. So today we went to the catholic church service, it was a special service for the kids and had really pretty singing, and even some readings in English. Then after the service his teacher brought us a box with a chicken in it, he wasn't sure if it was dead yet so had a string tied to it's legs in case it tried to fly away. We biked back with the box, and realized in fact it was not dead yet. We weren't sure how we felt about killing it or how to kill it, so had our friend Brian kill it (he just ripped the head right off). Then our neighbors helped us pluck all the feathers, and gut the chicken.

It's sad to see our friends leave, who we've spent this past year with. It won't be the same without them here, but we're also looking forward to the new group of volunteers that will be living here with us. Some things I'll miss from Aki and Phil - learning japanese words from Aki and how it's the rabbit in the moon and not the man in the moon in Japan, and hearing about Phil being chased by dogs and throwing his umbrella in fury, and sharing the fish he's speared for meals. It's funny how many different types of people we've met on our small island here.

Familiar Sounds

The noises of Tonga here in Ha'apai have become familiar to us. We sleep in later, not being awoken anymore by the ever-crowing roosters, grunting pigs, and many loud dog fights. Around 6:00am or so the neighbor kids spill out of their house, yelling, crying, singing songs, banging on any piece of metal they find. We used to yell "quiet!" at them through the louvre windows, but now just roll over and fall back asleep. We also hear our sima vai gushing out water in the early morning hours just outside the bedroom window, everyone on our housing compound uses our sima vai tank for drinking water because it's the cleanest. On Sunday mornings we hear church bells quietly in the distance, and the rythmic deep resonating sound of the Church of Tonga wooden drums, all calling people to the morning church services. Soon afterwards, we can hear the church choirs and congregations singing, all accapella. Some of the tunes are familiar from English church songs, but all the words are sung in Tongan. At church, the ministers shout out their sermons to the congregations. Every other morning instead of church music we hear the neighbor's radio blaring out traditional Tongan songs, old American songs, Christmas music sometimes mixed with odd songs like rap or the Macarena, or news mostly in Tongan (with about 10 minutes a day of English news). And so our day begins.

Walking through town during the day we often hear kids yelling "Nio, Nio!" (Brett's Tongan name), many of the local kids know him from school. Once in awhile someone will yell out my name, usually we don't know who all the people are that are calling out to us, they know us because we're the foreigners in town. Sometimes we'll still get Tongans yelling out "palangi!" (white person), and Brett will respond back "Tongan, Tongan"! Kids will also yell "Bye!" as we walk by - not understanding that it's not correct in English to just say bye as people pass by. We'll usually respond with something in Tongan if they do this. As we walk down the middle of the roads, we can hear cars approaching from far off and move to one side of the road. We also usually notice the sound of the plane coming in once or twice a day. If the DVD store is open near our house, they always blare really loud music to make sure people know that they are open. In fact, at any local events the music is always at the loudest possible level.

During the afternoons and evenings the sounds in our house are Brett playing his guitar, he's learned many new songs since being here. The oldest neighbor boy is trying to learn guitar now too. We'll often have lots of kids and dogs running through our house in the afternoons, so lots of noise again. Sometimes we'll shut the door to keep them all out, and play music or movies on the computer. Even then there are still little noises inside the house - the little mokos (geckos) that live inside on the ceiling and walls make little chirping noises, almost like a bird. One of my favorite sounds here are the waves breaking on the beach onto all the loose shells and coral peices, kind of a swishing noise as the waves pull the shells back and forth. From our beach we also hear the Pulapaki twice a week, the only ferry boat now that brings all the supplies to us here in Ha'apai. We can hear the engines of the boat coming into the wharf from our house. Later in the evenings we hear a steady, low voice calling out "ma...ma...ma", calling the pigs to come and eat. Every Tongan calls his pigs this way, every pig knows it's owner's voice and comes to that sound to eat the coconuts that are being cut open.

At night things quiet down. We hear the waves crashing louder now on the beach. And anytime anyone tries to approach the property we hear all the dogs going crazy, barking outside. The barking goes in a line, passed from dog to dog up and down the street. Some nights we hear the men at the kava club singing, just in front of our house a few hundred yards. Once in awhile they have a couple of guitars as well. Other nights we can hear one of the church choirs practicing, singing in unison perfectly, almost fooling me into thinking it's the radio. I can never pick out what they're singing, but it's always pretty. Tomorrow night one of the church schools is having a candle light singing procession of Christmas carols. And now as I finish this post, I can hear a church choir practicing somewhere off in the distance, and echoes of dogs barking up and down the street.

A Typical School Day

It's 8:30am and the bell rings, the children line up at the flag pole in lines by class. The girls are wearing red dresses and white shirts. They have their hair in braids with red ribbons holding them together. The boys wear khakis shorts and white shirts. They sing their national anthem as the flag rises. Once they are finished the principal addresses them about the day and what jobs are to be done before the school day begins. Once dismissed they march off to the classroom where it will be swept and set up by the students before the day starts. The children who are late to school must wait by the gate before they are allowed onto the school grounds. Some days the principle will hit them and tell them not to be late again, some days they will get off easier. Once the classroom is swept and set up the students line up outside and wait for permission from their teacher to enter the classroom. Usually they are let in right away but if the teacher is lazy or in deep conversation with the other teachers the children can sometimes wait awhile before entering the classroom. The classroom consists of old country school desks and benches. Each student has a cubby where they keep their notebooks and pens, no textbooks are given out because no textbooks exist in the schools. Students perform a lot of copying from the blackboard to get information and also do a lot of writing activities to practice. If they misbehave or get questions to answers wrong they get hit. Usually they are struck on the hand by a wooden stick no wider than 2-3 fingers. Most students are unfazed by this, but some cry at times. Tongan students are constantly hitting each other, and when a teacher does it it's no different. I do not hit the students in my classes. I use many classroom management techniques to help control the pace and environment of the classroom. I have tried to teach these techniques to my counterparts, but they are still in favor of hitting.

When the students enter the classroom school is started. They begin with English for an hour, this is where I step in. I usually start off introducing the daily lesson and then make my way into a fun activity to get their attention. I am usually in the classroom for 60-90 minutes. At around 10:30 the bell rings for recess and the students race outside. Locals arrive early to sell the students cake and ice pops. The students play and eat treats for 30 minutes before class begins again. The children also are allowed to come to the library during recess time to check out books or to just find a book and read quitly in the reading area. I supervise the library as class 6 students reshelf books and offer assistance to students with new books. Once recess is over students return to their classrooms and start on their Tongan, Math, and Writing. Some days they listen to a radio program that is broadcasted across the country that covers lessons in all subjects. There are activities that are done to go with the radio broadcast and at times teachers will make up lessons to go along with the radio lesson. I tend to bounce around the school during this time helping teachers with lessons and activities they are doing. At 12:30 the bell rings and the students make their way home for lunch. Some students will stay and play at school during lunch break, but most will go home.

At 1:30 they all return and class begins. Science and Health are covered from 1:30 - 3:20, and sometimes I am allowed to bring students outside for gym. We play rugby, soccer or netball. Most of the kids like soccer so that is the sport of choice most of the time. At about 3:00 students from classes 4, 5, and 6 are called out of class to pick up rubbish around the school yard and then burn it in the burn pile behind the bathrooms. Other students are assigned to cleaning the bathrooms and washing the windows around the school. Every student gets a turn at this and there is no one who gets away with not doing these chores. There is no funding for janitors and the teachers refuse to do any cleaning so it falls on the students to pick up the slack. Once they are done they return to the classrooms where school is dismissed at 3:20 and the students stream out of the classrooms and to all places around town.

Videos - Tongan dance

This is a ta'alunga dance, done by young unmarried girls. It's mostly hand movements, and the whole time their knees are bent. All the motions translate the words of the songs. During the dances people come up and put money on the dancers, the girls are covered in coconut oil. It's a type of fundraiser, this one was for Brett's school. Many times people will also be dancing behind the dancers, showing support for them.

This is an example of some of the dances the boys/men do here in Tonga. These dances are much faster paced than the ta'alunga dance the girls do. They often have drums in the music, and wear these grass leaf skirts. There are also some sitting dances the guys do. The dance in this video was from a performance when the US Navy was here on their humanitarian mission.

Dances (koniseti) are big fundraisers here at events or feasts. But then they play more modern music between the traditional dances, so it's funny to watch a dressed up ta'alunga dancer switch to "la bamba" after her dance is done.

Sorry the clips are so short, but it takes a long time to upload large video files here.

Ha'apai Halloween

Happy Halloween! We celebrated this year with a costume party bonfire on the beach by the graveyard, right near our house. It was actually a pretty busy day - early in the morning all the Peace Corps volunteers here participated in the breast cancer awareness walk. Then we joined the new group of volunteers on a day trip to Ha'ano island where Grant lives. We got to spend a little more time talking with some of them, and getting to know the new volunteers that will be coming here to Pangai, it seems like a good group. And later in the evening we had our Halloween party, with the current volunteers and our friends in town here. Good times.

More new photos are posted in our Picassa photo album to the right.

The Cradle of Polynesia

I haven't written about this yet so thought I should write some of the history I've learned since being here. We are living in the cradle of Polynesia here in Ha'apai, there's evidence suggesting that our little island of Lifuka was the beginning of it all. They think life on this island dates back to 3000 years and has been inhabited since then. There is lapita pottery dated back to then, but sadly it's sitting on old shelves in a corner getting dusty in the run-down museum here, hopefully that will change soon. Lifuka and Ha'apai have a lot of other historical significances within Tonga as well.

The first outsiders to come to Tonga were Dutch explorers in the 1600's, then it was Captain Cook who named Tonga the Friendly Islands based on an experience he had right here in Ha'apai (although in reality the people he met were planning on eating him!). On our island of Lifuka, right near the airport, is where the Port au Prince massacre happened. It was a European ship that stopped here for supplies, but the native Tongans attacked them having not seen white people or guns before. William Mariner was on that ship and survived, and was adopted by a local chief, later he wrote about these experiences. The Mutiny on the Bounty also occured right here, between Lifuka and the volcanic island of Tofua. There have also been numerous shipwrecks here in the shallow reef systems, some of them Spanish/European ships full of gold and treasure. In fact there was one excavated this century, all the divers and people involved had to sign a form to secrecy. And, most importantly in Tongan history, the royal line of the current King of Tonga comes from Ha'apai. The island groups were divided, and a local chief of Ha'apai (Tauafa'hau, who later became King George Tupou I) united and conquered all the island groups of Tonga.

(Above - one of the historical sites, an old quarry)

There are a lot of historical sites here, but mostly they're forgotten and off the beaten path. There are ancient royal tombs, an old fortress that was the location of the first victory for King Tupou I, sites of massacres, pigeon mounds (part of an old royal sport), and more. There are also people still living here who are descendents of Europeans from these ships, or from missionaries and locals who first converted the King and Tonga to Christianity (one of whom I have worked with here). It's also interesting to hear some of the many ancient legends from the locals here, I think I've written some of them already on the blog here.

Being in such an isolated corner of the earth many missionaries are still sent here. Most Tongans are Christian, so the missionaries that come here now are Morman, Scientologists and other types of such religions. What makes me mad is that when the Scientologists come here they are very sneaky and not up-front about themselves. They tell the locals that they want to do workshops or seminars on learning and higher education, which of course the Tongans would want. But then the seminars are all about the Scientologists' religion. And they've gone into many schools and other places doing this, taking advantage of the fact that many Tongans don't know yet what Scientology is and even that it's a religion. Many of the religions that come here try to bribe Tongans into joining - such as offering their kids scholarships and chances to move overseas, or free medical care overseas if someone in their family is sick. I could write a lot more about religion but I won't here.

Well I'll be learning more about the history and sites to see here as I continue to work on the new website for tourism in Ha'apai. Brett has been teaching sports this week at school to get ready for sports day again - this time netball, rugby, and co-ed soccer. We have plans for Halloween on Saturday - a bonfire on the beach by the graveyard and costume party.

Beach bums

Just another reason why it's great here in Ha'apai, the beaches and crystal clear waters. The new group of volunteers had site announcements over the weekend, and our Peace Corps population is going to be much bigger here in Pangai pretty soon - 4 new volunteers and one of the older volunteers is extending and will be here in Pangai as well. So it will be very different from this year.