Tonga - The Fun Part

Last I wrote about Tonga I'd quit the farm in protest. So what the fudge did I do?

Day 3
Left and went to palangi cafe to have $4 breakfast and collect my thoughts. Taka and Sapep gave me a ride on their way in to Bruce's office. "Are you okay?" Taka asked. She hadn't seen me since picking me up from the airport. "Yeah, just making a change."

As my food arrived, Sapep came over to my table. Bruce wanted to invite me to come work and live at his house, where there were no chickens. I suppose Bruce didn't realize I wasn't primarily grossed out by the chickens; I was grossed out by his lack of ethics.

"I've heard bad things about Bruce."

Sapep, oddly, looked shocked. "Like what?"

"I'd rather not get into it. Thank Bruce for me, tell him I'll call him if I get stuck. For today, I just want to be alone."

Sapep left. I looked up and realized I was seated next to the Australian policeman from the plane. I gave him my update, and he smiled at me through his moustache, like "oh honey, you have no ideas the stories I hear every day."

I took a room at the fanciest hotel in town, where I luxuriated in air-conditioning and a creepycrawlie-free environment. My WWOOF pals, Becca and Lucy, met me at the hotel bar where we had girly, tropical cocktails. Typical tourist behavior was in full effect - I felt I needed a day off from reality.

We tried going to the local bar, but it was pretty awkward - we severely stood out, and I wasn't sure how to respond to the old guys beckoning me over. I for one didn't have energy enough for the challenge. We moved along to one of the millions of Chinese convenience stores where you strain your neck to see items through a grated front window. When they saw that we were palangis, they let us in the door so we could browse the aisles. "We just can't trust the Tongans." They expected us to respond in agreement. Awkward.

As we passed Friday night revelers on the street, they called "Bye!!!" to us with big smiles, every fifth person getting it right and instead saying "Hi!!!" One guy said "Wassup" - I think he was the hippest guy in Tonga.


Day 4
I got an email from Bruce asking me to explain my departure - I did, concisely, and he responded simply: "Regards." Deed done.

The farm staff still had my back, and invited me on a day trip to Pangaimoto Island.



I'd never been snorkeling before. It's wicked! Becca is a snorkel guide, so she pointed out the lizard fish, parrot fish, angelfish, zebra fish, and I also identified a HUGE black and gold starfish, a big purple puff, and a white snakey-looking long thing. Vika waded into the water armed with a kitchen knife and came back with bags full of dinner. She showed me how to gut a sea cucumber, which turned the water a royal purple (and their poop comes out all hard like little gemstones -- never thought I'd say this, but it was the cutest poop I've ever seen!)

"Big Mama," proprietress, hooked me up with rum served in a coconut, and a fruit plate from heaven (watermelon, pawpaw, coconut, pineapple and banana, all imbued with the heavenly flavor of localness). Though it's technically a resort, Pangaimoto is frequented by locals (especially on Sundays when mainland shuts down for church).

Back at the pier, there was a giant flea market where people sold old clothes and half-used shampoo for a dollar. The sassy, early 90's American sayings on the t-shirts for sale didn't quite match their new environment; I passed a young, barefoot girl wandering around alone, looking impoverished and unsupervised, wearing one that said "Spoil me, I'm a princess."

I put my day of luxury behind me and checked into the local hostel for the next few days, where you get a bed for $7.50/night. It was odd to be around the chatter of the international travel circuit again -- always the same drill, having to explain the itinerary of your last 5 months for the millionth time to the umpteenth stranger. We had a kava ceremony but it didn't do anything other than numb my lips (I would have rathered my ears).


Day 5
Vika hooked us up again with a tour of Tongatapu. I saw the famous 3-headed coconut tree, the blowholes (below -- they go on like that forever)

and we chilled on the beach. I dipped my head in the water, which I'm told counts as swimming and is illegal on a Sunday.

We buried our legs in the sand and Vika answered any question I asked. I learned about the proposed fishing regulations (there's not currently any catch limit or licensing requirement) for 2011, and how all the families who depend on the sea to eat are angry about them. I learned that there are nuts you cut open, chew up in your mouth, and then you let the gooey, chewed mass dry in a shell in the sun until it becomes 'oil soap' (it serves both as sunblock and as a protective layer for your skin so the ocean doesn't turn you all salty).

Vika's incredibly attractive nephew (my age as well, so probably married, though I didn't get up the nerve to ask) told me about how the church bought his gramps, a fisherman, a new boat when he couldn't afford it. I wonder if this is why the missionaries have taken such a hold in Tonga -- they set up the big fancy schools and other lacking infrastructure, and allegiance is bought. I wonder if, all this time, its been mistaken for real adherence. I know that's a ridiculous claim, with 99% of the island siting an imported, one-god religion (at least to the census takers), but in talking and hanging with the people you do a get a sense that a reverence for many gods of the earth-n-sky still exists. (Ryan, if you're reading, do you know anything about this?)


Day 6
I made a friend! Love it when this happens. Dani and I, roomies from the backpackers, spent the day on a fruitless mission to rent bikes. I rebooked my ticket to go back to NZ early -- the only other WWOOF opportunities were on one of Tonga's outer islands, and you have to pay a lot to get there.

Dani and I found a baby chicken on the street and adopted him for a few hours.





Yes that graf was there before we arrived. Could it be more hilarious?

Tongatapu, the main island, was starting to get repetitive. Dani and I ran into half of the hostel's guests at the visitor center and we sat on their couches fanning ourselves with brochures, looking bored as shit. The guy at the palangi cafe asked where I'd been the day before. The guy who drove around the hostel guests knew I'd come from the farm because he saw me get picked up at the airport. Smalllllll town.


Day 7
Dani and I got outta dodge and took the ferry to 'Eua:



Waiting for the boat we sipped fresh lime'n'pawpaw juice, which I thought was the best thing ever, until Dani pointed out that it tasted a bit like puke backwash ("Twice the flavor, zero the calories," she quipped). It got worse from there. The boat was crowded, with some people napping on mats on the floor, and it smelled like the various unrefrigerated seafood that had been brought on board. Awful loud music blared over tinny speakers. It was either bad island covers of songs that do not need covering because they are already perfect (like "I'll Be There" and "Lately"), or cheesy islandy rap. I lamented that the boat crew didn't prefer crunk like every third car driving around downtown Tongatapu.

Once we arrived in 'Eua, everything was perfect. Our luxury backpackers - the Hideaway - was perfect, our generous host Taki was perfect, and our feisty fellow guests, just about. If WWOOFing had to turn to vaca, this was the best way.



That night Dani and I drank beers with our new friends, including Ronnie, our village wise man. He told us about his first sweatlodge, and the vision it brought him of an erupting volcano, a waterfall, and a vagina, all combined into one simultaneous entity (makes sense when you think about it!) I determined that I should find my way to a sweatlodge stat. (And what do you know, I found myself at one two weeks later, without even trying.)


Day 8

Went 4WDing through the forest, getting thwapped on the head by trees from my seat in the bed of a pickup, and landed at a gorgeous rock pool beach. Our host warned us not to get too close to the edge of the rock pool, as there was a tide that would pull us under the coral reef surrounding the island and suck us under for all eternity... but other than that, it was totally relaxing.

At night, copious drinking, and antics that I watched from a sober distance. Taki broke it down for me: "Here, people are in debt but they're happy. At home -- he was raised in Tonga but spent much of his adult life in Australia -- people are in debt in boxes (apartments) staring at boxes (TVs)."


Day 9

All the other guests went out 4WD trekking, and I stayed behind to chat with Taki more. We talked about food, and how in Tonga there's no need to can or preserve because fruit ripens even in winter, just slower; plus, people really eat with the seasons. We talked about how palangis avoid each other. I explained how competitive and cliquey schools are, and how they train us to tolerate competitive workplaces and living in boxes. Taki mused that people are good, it's just the conditions they're brought up in that make them how they are.

He also joked about how overpopulation is making us sick of people (funny because it's true). People in Tonga have 8, 10, 12 kids (to this day, you're "weird" if you only have a few), but in substenance lifestyle, you bring all your kids to the plantation, they all work, and thus you have enough food for them. That got us back onto food, and how "convenience food" is f'n with the Tongana' health; Taki said many people don't know how bad it is for them.

For dinner Taki fed us fresh-caught lobster. Taki's guests talked about all the parts of the world they were from, had seen, wanted to see. I realized I hate the U.S. less now that I've traveled, which is a surprise. I see now that there's no paradise, and it's not all black and white.

From my bed I could still hear the waves crashing over the reef as I fell asleep.


Day 10
Taki hooked me up with a bike and I took off to find treasures.



The bike was falling apart, I ran out of water many miles from the nearest store, but it was bliss. A bunch of schoolkids, walking en masse in their red and white uniforms, started running alongside me as I biked. We laughed loudly and smiled wide at each other. Those buggers kept up for quite some time! It was a shot of pure joy.

Ryan arrived on 'Eua that night. He'd stayed at Hideaway before, and both Taki and Ronnie were happily anticipating his return. We became immediate friends. He's a nurse and a PhD student studying infectious disease. I watched him clean Ronnie's extremely large and infected wound as I ate dinner. I prayed that I would not meet the spider Ronnie's leg had met.


Day 11

Ryan and I hiked (ok, leisurely strolled) to the extremely, extremely giant and ancient Banyan tree and caves. We talked about how people on vacation show sides of themselves they don't show at home, and so quickly. Indeed, it's one of the great pleasures of this kind of travel. By the end of the afternoon I felt I'd made a friend for life.

I hugged Taki goodbye and hopped in the bed of the truck like an ole pro. I was whisked away to a teeny plane.





All the Tonga pix

Back on Tongatapu, at the international airport, I needed to find the internet to prove that I had a ticket from NZ back to the U.S. I was lead to a small room where some official-seeming man was watching internet porn. He didn't bother resetting the browser for me. He asked if I was married, then asked for my email address. I said "No." Though all Tongans speak English, he didn't seem to translate. He asked how old I was, and when I told him that yes, I am single and 30 *on purpose*, that it's normal where I come from, he looked at me in pure disbelief and rapidly raised his eyebrows 12 times in a row.

Tonga was for sure the most profound experience of my six months overseas -- indeed, of my life to date -- but sadly, even if I found a way to stay there, some parts of me just don't translate.