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Tonga
So we're in the South Pacific Polynesian islands....aka paradise....your typical coral atols surrounded by turquise waters the shades of blue which you wouldn't believe and fringed with white sands, coconut palms swaying in the breeze, and Heather and Bob wondering whether to drink another coconut, go for a wee snorkle, just laze on the beach some more or relax in the hammock in the shade......not kidding!
However we did arrive in Tonga tapu...the main island of Tonga and straight to Nukalofa...the 'city'.....so not so pretty here I have to say. Big contrast again arriving from New Zealand.....dirt streets, potholes, few street lights, shuttered shops...apparantly not cos there is a crime problem..just the way they do it here.....mostly Chineese owned shops...some Tongan.....but the Tongan's don't need to run shops...so they generally don't. The culture here is that everybody has land and can feed themselves off the land and most people have Pigs...Kalafi whom we stayed with on a little island had 92!...but that probably is not the norm...but in the city most households have a garden ...a town really..nothing above one storey...wooden houses, some fawnty, huts and corrugated iron and pigs...pigs roaming the streets everywhere and lots of little spotted piglets running around...and dogs....my god the dogs!...they start up at night bark bark barking, fighting, running around and more barking...and when they've finished the cockerels start around 5.30.....and yes this is still in the 'city'...and back to the Tongan way ...so they don't really need to work apparantly cos with their land they always have enough food...root vegetables and coconuts and pigs aplenty...and if they need anything and a family member has it they just ask and the family member has to give them it ...they cannot refuse..its just the way...and for other things like white goods, bricks for houses, clothes or tinned makerel or tinned corned beef...which they love they get money from family overseas...everybody has family overseas...family extends unendingly and families certainly from our generation are 10 or 12 children. ..and there's no stealing in Tonga..just borrowing, unless the borrowing is from a Pelangi ( thats us...and anything not Tongan). If a Tongan does work it could be that on pay day the grandfather will hang around and ask for the money and being the head of the family it would be impolite not to give them it...and so when they did run shops within a year they had no stock left as family would come and ask for something...and be given it........abit of an exageration I think from the person telling us...but kind of fits with the cultural practices.
So we had a few days in Nukalofa...the main town, organising getting out of town off to our little island paradise. In that time we did manage Toni's tour...Toni is a Pelangi from Leeds who's been here for 22 years...he runs a guest house business....with his green house, blue house and yellow house and also does day tours of the island by mini-bus with his dry Yorkshire 'this is how it is in Tonga' take. So we saw the now unused Kings coconut plantation, which is slowly being converted to beef pasture, a Royals coffee plantation, all the root vegetables, flying foxes ( fruit bats), beaches....went snorkling...shallow reef..and much too shallow to have seen the black and white banded sea snake which we saw!.......sea snakes are more poisionous than land snakes!, which luckily they don't have in Tonga. ...and caves and blow holes and cemetaries...which are very interesting.....gravel mounds adorned with bottles, flags and plastic flowers...the more garish the more respect....and we saw lots of mourning people. In Tonga the districts are divided between 'the nobles'..members of the Royal family who are the chiefs of the area..and when 'a noble' dies the whole village wears special 'mouning dress' which is a black dress/tunic with a hand woven mat wrapped around the chest to below knee level, tied at the waist with hessian-type string. Similar clothing is worn whilst mourning family members. This dress may be worn for a year. The matting is also traditional atire for other cultural occassions and the 'mouning matting' is always old, and dirty and torn...I think the older the more respect. The country is very religious....there are a mixture of churches...Weslyian..christian, Catholic, and Mormon being thebiggest I think...with the Churches providing the secondary and sometimes primary education for its followers....there are particularly new and flashy Mormon churches and schools on the island. The gevernment provide only primary education for their children.
Tonga has never been colonised as such so still remains an independent Kingdom ( just like Fife!...), with a strong cultural identity, 'though heavily influenced by the passing missionaries. It has no or very few industries...bit of coconut oil exporting, and tourism...so heavily relies on aid from other countries...so all over you will see a 'China road', 'Japanese fire station', 'Australian building', 'New Zealand ferry' etc....just as individual appear to be heavily reliant on family members overseas, so too is the country heavily relaint on overseas aid.
We didn't meet the king of Tonga whilst we were here as he was apparantly in Scotland...a place he visits often seemingly.
..and I bought a brolly!...it was raining...raining hard!...its not supposed to do that for Heather and Bob visiting the South Sea Islands!
I also managed to fit in another waxing!...in a very nice clean pharmacy. I took the opportunity half way through when my beautician went to phone her next client to say she was running behind....oh my legs are sooo hairy! ..to use the toilet. When I went to get up ( yes mum, I do sit on other peoples toilet seats, but only after wiping them with soaped paper or alternatively covering the seat all around with' two squares ' pieces of toilet paper!)...I couldn't!...there was still wax on the backs of my legs!...so I had to peel myself off the seat, luckily I'd not used the toilet paper around the seat method as that would just have been too embarassing going back in with bits of tissue stuck to my legs!....(yes the tops of your legs in addition to your bum are in contact with the seat!)......also luckily there was toilet cleaner in the bathroom so I managed to save the next 'sitter on the toilet seat' person from a sticky situation!
We flew to the Ha'pai group of islands...35 min plane trip. It was Father's day...another excuse for a feast...and the plane was full....of people mostly big people ...and cakes...very big cakes...in the overhead lockers and on knees and sometimes not wrapped too well and therefore all down the front of the cake carrier! The main road through the island runs straight accross the runway so when a plane is taking off or landing the cars just wait either side of the runway. Its quite an informal affair the airport....the runway staff ... you know the ones with the round orange bats that direct the plane in?...well they stop playing ping pong with these 'directing the plane' bats...and stoll over in their flip flops.....and wave the bats about a bit 'till the plane stops where it always stops 'cos there is no where else for it to stop.....put a chock under the wheel then walk back to carry on their game of table tennis. Meanwhile another person is unloading the luggage by hand by climbing up a ladder and lifting down the often big cases, and black polythene and string wrapped parcels the size of a small bed, on to a trolly then piling up the bags inside the 'terminal' building...actually very new concrete...probably Ausieaid.. small building,.. for us to pick up.
(sorry don't know what I'm doing here to get these chnge of fonts appearing)
Our accomodation arrangements were to get a taxi from the airport, go to the Tonga Visitors Bureau (TVB) who will have spoken with the owners of the place you've booked and arranged for them to pick you up by boat to transfer to the paradise island. We had faith, so far these kind of informal type arrangements have all worked out fine....so far! There were a few cars at the airport but all seemed to be picking up family members ..there was certainly no black cabs in sight! So I asked a guy standing around if he was a taxi...he shouted over to someone else who asked if we're looking for a lift ...it was only after our sacks were in the back of the 'seen better days SUV', with huge Tongan guy completely pissed and out of it slumpt in the passenger seat in the front that I realised that our driver too was pissed...obviously celebrating Fathers!...by this time there were no other vehicles in the Airport!...oh well its not too far. but the guy couldn't find his key...forgotton where he'd put it ...so luckily we had to get out..and even more luckily another car appeared and our driver asked them if they would give us a lift...they were only there to pick up a Fathers day cake which had been sent by their family from the main island by plane. Lucky for us. So we were taken and dropped off outside the TVB. Went to stroll in ..it was closed!...the town looked kind of closed!...I spotted a shop...ask there I thought...no English...maybe the office would open at seven!...seven?...its dark at seven...there are no other 'Vistors' here..why seven?...its about 3.00 now...Oh I guess she may have meant seven the next morning..but I wasn't thinking that then.....but I had a mobile phone..yes...with a Tongan sim...yes...and a lonely planet book with the phone numbers of our accomodation...yes...and called....the phone worked ...yes....but it was unobtainable! However another number of another place we planned to go to later rang..yes... and it was answered and he met us and took us to his house..where I held the new baby Tiana...and chatted to his wife and other kids while we waited till he organised a boat to take us to his family's place ..our beach fale...on the adjoining island.....YES!..and "did the TVB in Tongatapu tell you we were coming?" "No, havn't heard from them."So we arrived in Ul'lava...we thought we might not... as although the small fiberglass boat..which we waded out to, with bits out of it and no lifejackets or anything like that and his 4yr old son and 9yr old nephew came with us, did have a 75hp engine..which is huge for the size of the boat...it was completly rusty... ( found out later that the boat had sunk twice with the engine attached!)...the starter motor was hanging off...and the guy started it with a small fraying bit of string round the flywheel...and after eight or nine attempts it stutterred to life and chugged along for five minutes and conked out but the same process again brought it to life, and after picking up a small box of fish..turquoise parrot fish.. which he had caught the day before and put in the freezer and which was going to be our dinner.....we carried on at quarter throttle and were delivered to our own piece of paradise.
The sea is turquoise, white sandy beach with 5 small fale...huts...with a hammock hanging on each out front...and a small table and two chairs..greeted by our hosts Kalafi and Taina who live here all the time. There is no electricity on the island...no generator....when its dark we light the oil lamp at the side of our matress bed and sit out on the beach and look at the wonderful starry night ( day two and beyond as day one it was cloudy!), we enjoyed our fresh fish and will be offered lobster later and more fish when the son goes snorkling and spearfishing at night to catch the fish which Bob and I have marvelled at during the day!...Thats the snorkling time after cooking our own breakfast .. we have use of their kitchen, porridge..which we can have with coconut milk and apples we've brought with us,..and coffee...water is rainwater collected straight off the gutter and into a concrete tank, with a tap at the bottom...just fill the pot from the tank...to boil on a regular gas cooker..using bottled gas but no burners on the flame so just a single blue/black flame which burns the hairs off the back of your hand when you light it...the water which comes out the tap and also for flushing the toilet...there is a flush toilet!...and shower ...is pumped by hand by Kalafi from a well....and is brown!...and not drinkable... and between the reading and lazing in the hammock time, and chatting to very friendly and humerous Kalafi, who tells us he stayed and helped his mother prepare dried coconuts on this island, for coconut oil to sell, when he was thirteen, after his father had died as she couldn't afford for him to go to school...as there were 9 siblings above him! ...then he became a boxer...encouraged to do so as he was a 'tearaway' as a young man ..getting drunk and fighting...so he became a boxer...around the islands..fighting for money...many stories..., and watching Tiana weaving a mat...the ones they wear for the special occassions or use as table cloths....also walking holding hands barefoot along the sand.....musing about life here, and at home..... ......and another day goes by in paradise.
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