Don't Worry, be Ha'apai

We had a week holiday this past week so we (the Sams and I) went on vacay to the island group Ha’apai in Tonga. It was absolutely beautiful. It is hard to put the beauty of Ha’apai into words.

We started our voyage to Ha’apai at 4am Tuesday morning, taking the boat from ‘Eua to Tongatapu. After a quick stroll and an ice cream cone we got on an 18 passenger plane to Ha’apai and 45 minutes above the pacific ocean we were there. We got the privilege to stay with a Tongan family. They took such good care of us.

We spent a lot of our time there on the sandy beaches. One day we asked a man to take us to a small island on his fishing boat. It was about a 30 minute ride to the island of Uoleva. It was unreal. There are no villages in Uoleva, but there are a couple of resort like places. We played on the beach there and swam for a while before heading back to the main island.

The best part of Ha’apai was the large variety of fish. The fish was soooooo good! We ate it raw, fried, and cooked in coconut milk almost every night!

There aren’t currently any PCVs in Ha’apai because there was a very devastating cyclone that hit Ha’apai a little over a year ago. There was a lot of rebuilding still happening while we were there, but the impact of the cyclone was still very visable. There were a lot of house frames with no roofs/ windows, broken trees, and people living in Red Cross tents.

Such a happy experience and just the R&R we needed. Y’all need to go!

‘Ofa atu! 

Ko e Toe Tu'u

Celebrating Easter in Tonga was delightful. In America holidays like Christmas and Easter are heavily connected to Santa and the Easter Bunny, and children getting rewarded for being “good”. In Tonga instead of having Santa and the Easter Bunny they have Jesus. The church has a program for the youth called Apitanga. It spans over the weekend leading up to the holiday. In these few days there is a lot of church, laughter, and of course food. The kids have a big sleepover at the church and the church hall. There are a lot of sessions. The students learn action songs, create skits, learn about Jesus, and good decision making. A big part of Apitanga that stuck out to me was something that my town officer’s wife said. Nancy told me, “The children don’t always understand the depth of their religion and they don’t always make the best choices, but that is why we do this. We do this so they know we love them for who they are. We are celebrating them in the same way Jesus does”.

I of course was asked to participate in an action song. They just cannot get enough of my moves J but honestly, who can?

And I got to lead the himi (hymns) for the Sunrise Good Friday service. My counterpart, Meleongo was the failotu (gave the sermon). As a result of leading the himi I was told after next year I am the failotu -__- And when I was practicing I sure did say “hit shit” in Tongan instead of a holy word. I won’t be living that down anytime soon.

Celebraing Easter in Tonga was nice, but I’m going to push for an Easter egg hunt next year!

Happy Easter, friends from me and Faina!

'Aho Sipoti

A month or so ago I posted a blog about Sports Day at my school. That Sports Day was only the practice day for the real Sports Day. The really SD happened this past Tuesday at ‘Eua High School and all the primary school competed against each other. My school is very small so we had a combined team with two other villages (including Sammy B’s village, Taanga). Our team definitely was not the best team in the competition, but we still got some medals in! Sammy and I announced at the end of the day that training for next year starts tomorrow! Here are some more fun pictures of our Sports filled day!

As a side note there was even more food on this Sports Day :)

GIRLS! We Run the World

The Sams and I have started a hiking/outdoor/adventure club for the girls in our villages! We had been trying to go on a hike to Hafu Pool for a few weeks, but every Saturday we were faced with downpour. Last weekend, we finally got the most prefect weather for the occasion. We successfully took 23 girls hiking. 21 of the girls were between the ages of 9 and 14 and two were Tongan women from our communities that tagged along. Out of the 23 girls there were nine who had never been to Hafu Pool before. It was an exciting day of playing, swimming, eating, singing, and speaking English.

With this club we are wanting to take the girls on hike every month. We want to provide them the chance to see this beautiful place they live and have some adventure. Tongan culture doesn’t really provide girls the chance to explore and bee adventurous and so we are hoping to provide that for them. Along with hiking we are working on instilling other concepts into the girls as well. We are going to try to work on English, leadership, environment awareness, as well as self heath awareness. We want to provide a space for these girls to get to meet girls from other villages and not get outshined by the boys.

Our first hike was definitely a success. All of my girls from Tufuvai wanted to know if we were going to go on another hike the following weekend as soon as we had returned from the first hike. It was so great to get to spend time with my students in such a relaxed setting and it made me feel really good about my community integration and the way my community sees/values me to know that the parents felt comfortable enough with me to let their girls come. It also allowed me to spend some time with the older girls that I do not get to see a lot since they aren’t in primary school. Such a fun day! Cannot wait for the next hike!