Sunday, July 29, 2012

30 July 2012

I can't believe I've only got a week left here. Time is passing so quickly, but so slowly!
Victoria and I always joke about how we're getting to experience the full Tongan lifestyle. We live in the same house with a young family. Laundry and meals are always together, if there is any food. Finding food, or even the money for food is a daily challenge. Crackers or bread for every meal is not uncommon. when the water stopped running 6 weeks ago, we all started using the outhouses and filling up buckets with rainwater to shower with. We go everywhere as a family, all of us in the van together with the music blasting, dancing crazy in our seats. The kids scream and cry and climb all over everything to sit on our laps with their heads out the window. We attend feast after feast and dance after dance, allowing our host mom to fix our hair or our outfits time and time again. Our host mom tries to help us understand what "Tongan boys like" so that we can have "lots of partners" at all the dances. Unfortunately all of our partners are either under the age of 16 or over the age of 65. Sometimes it's annoying to be treated like a 6 year old, but that's our life now. At feasts we make sure to bring home plenty of food for the family. We even accompany them to their grandma's house, where we're given banana bread (which we hated initially because it's fairly flavourless and the frosting tastes like butter, but now we love because we're always hungry) and Indian apples (the most delicious treat here). We happily and messily eat everything with our hands, sucking the juice off our fingers afterwards to try to get them clean. Sometimes we even get kuava, one of my favourite fruits here, despite how odd it is and how hard and small the seeds are.
We've become accustomed to an almost painfully slow lifestyle that is quite the opposite of things I experience at home. For example, if we are not able to get an interview in on a certain evening, I have nothing to fear because there are countless evenings ahead. Obviously that is coming to an end, but like I said before, time is so different here. For the Tongans, mornings begin around 5:30 am. You can hear music playing, roosters, dogs, children screaming or crying, breakfast being cooked, etc. The mornings are then filled with school, weaving, and going to the bush. The early to mid afternoons are the slowest times of day. Most people take naps if they can. The kids sleep whenever and wherever they can. Just last night all four of them fell asleep on a blanket on the floor of the living room and slept there the whole night. Other times they're up until 11. Any car ride longer than 20 minutes puts them all to sleep in the most uncomfortable positions I've ever seen. Manoa, the 2 year old, likes to stand on his seat next to his mom while she drives with his arm on her shoulder, and I swear to you I have seen him fall asleep in that position.
Probably the most interesting and problematic concept here is that when anyone has food, they are obligated to share it with whoever they are with. This is really hard for my American and capitalistic mind to embrace...Now I don't mind sharing the things I have, but when money and food are scarce anyway, and my stomach is grumbling, my mind snaps immediately to survival and hoarding food.
This last week Victoria and I performed our traditional Tongan dance, called a "tau'olunga." We performed it at an outdoor "concert" for the Tongan church to raise money. So we dressed up in our outfits, had beautiful leis tied around our necks, were rubbed up in oil, and went out to dance. I was really really excited. I messed up a few times, but people still came and stuck money on us, and an old man gave me a lei. We raised 124 pa'anga. I think people were surprised and even thought it was a little funny to see two palangi dancing and exclusively Tongan dance.
On Saturday we went to the hospital to meet the newly born baby of one of our good friends, Faaki. The little girl is named Lusia Victoria Elise. Can you believe it! Haha we thought it was a joke at first, but it's serious. She was so tiny, with skin the same color as mine and deep deep blue eyes. A beautiful baby. Babies make you think about life, you know?

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