I have arrived back at the guest house after another great and Interesting day.
We started off going to church together. Serena, our lovely
Tongan friend at the house prepared us for church, she gave us all
colourful outfits to wear that were appropriate for church, that
covered our shoulders and knees. Serena used to be a Tongan dancer so
she prepared all of our hair with flowers in beautiful arrangements. I
heard Toni yelling at his family and staff again and perhaps even
hitting them this morning. This seems to be a normal occurrence. It
really saddens me as his family and staff are such good and hard working
people.
The church service in town was beautiful. The king didnt
turn up. The choir was amazing. Today was a special event where all of
the Tongan mothers sang. Such an enormous choir full of powerful and
beautiful voices, all in traditional costumes. We were the only white
people in the church, no suprises.
Sunday is God's day, the day of rest here in Tonga, so
virtually nothing is open, it is a ghost town.
Another traveler who has
arrived 'Elki' from Germany accompanied me to a Chinese hotel
restaraunt as it was the only thing that we could find that was open. As
it turns out, the Government in Tonga was illegally selling Tongan
passports to China years ago. As a result, many people from China have
set up a lot of business here, which has put a lot of Tongans out of
work. Naturally the Tongans were angry about this. Apparently half of
this Island was burned down as a subsequent uproar from the Tongans a
few years ago.
The streets were so dead, so Elki and I were hoping to
either see 'The fishing pigs' or the blow holes.
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| Walking past the Royal Palace on the way home. |
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| Just evacuate to the highest point on the island...there is no high point, it is completely flat... |
Both are on other sides
of the island, with no transport running. Its true though, hitch hiking
really is the way to go here. On a road of no cars, the only two cars
that drove past stopped for us when we signaled them. The first of
which, was going another direction but helped us with directions and
general travel advice. The second car, waved and kept going, so we
wondered if we confused him. We were about to call the hostel to arrange
a lift back and then the second car came back. He asked 'you signaled
me before? ' we told him where we were trying to go.
This man was a local called Daniel. Daniel had picked up
some bread to deliver to his grandmother (the bread shop is open on
Sundays).
Daniel said that he had nothing to do, so he drove us for
40 minutes to the blow holes, he apologised and said that he couldnt
drive us back.
The blow holes were so beautiful, oith exciting and
relaxing to watch.
Daniel ended up staying with us and drove us home.
What a dude! This is not what you would find back home. He told us all
about his life. How Tonga has no University. So he studied Science in
Fiji but cannot find work in that area in Tonga. Daniel owns about 25
pigs, and has dogs. He also has chickens but he said that his neighbors
usually eat his chickens while he is away. He warned us that many of the
dogs bite, so be careful. Daniel told us that he has no traditional
tattoos, as he wanted to be different from all of his family who are
tattooed. He said that most people learn to tattoo themselves anyway. So
if you give some marijuana to a tattoo artist, they'll generally do a
tattoo for you with no added cost. Daniel said that he spotted us in the
(catholic) church this morning. He told us that The Mormon churches are
designed to have tennis courts attached and he showed us on the way
home. Daniel corrected me in saying that most Tongan families tend to
have 15 children! However 'family planning' has been recently
introduced, as people are finding mg it hard to support such big
families, schooling also used to be free but now everyone has to pay.
All of the land is cultivated, thousand of coconut trees and mayolk,
banana and pineapple treas. Manyolk is amazing, a root vegetable
similar to potato, you push the stick in to the ground and a week or two
later it is growing. Forgive me, I have no idea how to spell 'Mayolk', I tried to research how to spell it and can't find it, which means that I have mispelt it terribly!
Also squash are a common thing to be grown. Its so
great to learn from the locals. We gave Daniel some money, but he was
trying to insist that we don't.
We bumped in to some Aussies on the way home, who have just
arrived, employeed by the Australian Government to help regulate trade
here. We told them that we were trying to find information online about
volunteering but that this was scarce. I even handed in an application
to volunteer with an animal recue and care agency and never heard back!
They agreed that information is hard to get here and its best to just
turn up to places on the island like the peace chore.
Its nice to be drinking a pot of tea and reading my book. No screens here other than my telephone.
Nofo a
Xo
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