Contradictions – Tonga blog part 2

It’s hosing down with rain today – serious tropical rain. The type that floods the dinghy, fills the water tanks in half an hour and soaks you to the bone if you so much as stick your head outside the cockpit. Unlike Wellington though, the rain here has the decency to fall downwards instead of diagonally and it’s not exactly cold (26.5 degrees) so we can’t really complain. Internet connectivity is still a little iffy out here but I am making slow progress with the facebook album. I will let you guys know when that is all finished and captioned before I start on the pictures of Tonga itself. I am able to email blog entries from the boat via the radio though (I will write about that sometime because it’s a pretty cool set-up all run by volunteers) but can only send text.

I decided to break the Tonga blog into two parts because there is so much to say and I didn’t want to bombard you all with a giant chunk of words.

DISCLAIMER: I am also pinching quite a bit of this from the observations Paddy has made in his email updates to friends. (There – now no-one can accuse me of plagiarism!)

In so many ways Tonga is a great, glorious contradiction. It is deeply conservative (women have to have their shoulders covered, men can be arrested for not wearing a shirt in public) and also deeply religious (you can pretty much walk past three churches in a single block) – it is also vibrant and tolerant in ways which can be surprising. One that particularly tickles my fancy is Tongans’ acceptance, and even celebration of, homosexuality and cross-dressing (which is I guess the closest Western term) as part of their culture. The fakaleiti are the Tongan version of Samoa’s fa’a fafini – men (sometimes gay, sometimes straight) who choose to dress as women. Traditionally the practice came about when Tongan families had too many sons. The mother would choose a son to be raised as a girl to help with the ‘women’s work’ – thought I doubt this is still the case now. Before the feminists jump down my throat, I am not saying raising a boy as a girl is a good thing or that there is such a thing as ‘women’s work’ – but I believe what stemmed out of it (a relatively open and tolerant attitude towards gender and sexuality) is definitely a good thing. (In saying that, public displays of affection are a no-no whatever your gender or sexuality.) We have seen fakaleiti around town, working in shops and they even have their own beauty pageants. Too often people use the bible as a tool for persecuting those who are different and don’t fit a particular mold – yet here we have a very conservative, very religious culture celebrating those differences (although it is very male-centric – I am unsure whether there is a similar attitude towards homosexual women. If it is it is very much underground.) I also particularly like the Tongans’ attitude towards death. Graveyards are not grey and sombre places. They are bright and vibrant and festooned with artificial flowers and fairy lights in all the colours of the rainbow. There are pigs and dogs running through them (and also sadly quite a bit of litter in some). Overall though, it seems to be a celebration of who the people were and many of them even have a lovely ocean view! I have been inspired by this and have decided that when I die I want orange plastic flowers and fairy lights, good luck trolls, a couple of pink flamingos and a garden gnome. In other words, I want to completely lower the tone of the cemetery!

Sadly though, some of the contradictions in Tonga aren’t so colourful and the other side of the religion coin is one of them. The churches have huge power in Tonga. There are only two government run schools in the country, the rest are owned by churches – you name the denomination and it has a school here. This is not necessarily a bad thing in that they bring resources and opportunities to the community – but it’s where those resources come from that is the problem. When we did our tour of Nuku’alofa our guide Wesley spoke to us about the huge number of churches. One village alone houses seven of them. That would be fine but the level of poverty in these villages and the comparative affluence of the churches, speaks volumes.

Tonga is an incredibly poor country and things here are mostly priced out of the reach of locals. Petrol is $3 a litre and diesel $3.13. Any form of food with protein in it is an unbelievable price (ie $18 for five chicken drumsticks) and even basic books in the local book shop are $40. The interest rate at banks is 14% and if you qualify you can get a “special” rate of 12% from the development bank. Given the low incomes and high interest rates most people are condemned to a kind of subsistence living. Tongan citizens each receive a family block of land to farm and much of this produce is sold in the local markets. The markets are definitely the place to shop for fresh food with everything from eggplant and fresh beans to watermelon and pineapples at about $3. I would also like to add that I have been doing my bit to support the local economy by purchasing lots lovely shell jewellery!
Paddy also bought me a beautiful necklace (a bone carving of a stingray) from a local chap who rowed out to the boat for ‘a cup of coffee’ – we reckon that it’s good to support people who are going out and making an effort. Tonga’s food, crafts and tourism keep things alive here – but a large amount of the country’s income also comes from relatives overseas sending money back to their families. Despite that people don’t seem unhappy – they just seem to get on with life and try to be as enterprising as they can. You can definitely spot sales pitches designed to lure money out of unsuspecting tourists but there doesn’t appear to be any real malice or bitterness in it. In our experience so far theft doesn’t seem to be too big of a problem here either.

People here seem to focus on the stuff that matters to them. Family is a hugely important part of the culture and this is very apparent. People also seem to concentrate on just living life – which can be a bit of a shake up to Western priorities.

Another thing that is taking a bit of getting used to is island time – which is a pretty fluid concept around here. Opening hours for places are pretty much just a guideline and things take a lot longer to happen. A classic example of this was when we went to fill up with diesel and water in Tongatapu. It took from 8am to 2pm and involved waiting for water to dribble from a tiny hose into our tanks. It was an old garden hose with about 20 joins in it where leaks had been fixed. This, combined with the already low water pressure made it a pretty slow affair. You can’t get impatient though. What we have discovered is that, while Tongans take their time with things (ie serving a person in a shop) when they do deal with them you get their full attention and they will bend over backwards to help you – so you get a much more enriching experience than a quick five seconds of a busy person’s time. The flip side of this is that many projects start off with a hiss and a roar and then never get finished, which is a shame.

We too have been affected by island time and have found ourselves starting to do things like going in to town to do the shopping and forgetting both the shopping list and guide book to find the ‘supermarkets’ – and the other day we went geocaching (a geeky pastime I picked up from my Dad – google it if you want to know more) without the gps. We are starting to find the balance between being uptight and being too laid back now though!

Politically Tonga is a rather alien place. It still bears some of the scars of the pro-democracy riots (buildings and shops that haven’t been rebuilt or are a shadow of their former selves) and – despite the fact their new king seems to spend more time in the UK than in Tonga – there are plenty of ‘long live the king’ slogans about. Most people don’t seem to be overtly political and I think sadly this may be because many are too busy concentrating on living from day to day. When crowned king George Tupou V voluntarily surrendered his powers “to meet the democratic aspirations of many of his people” – whether that happens will remain to be seen. While an estimated 40% of Tongans live below the poverty line, the equivalent of a third of Tonga’s yearly aid budget was spent on the king’s coronation – which may give a bit of a hint as to priorities. Relations between Tonga and Fiji are also strained to say the least. Both countries are in the process of squabbling over who owns Minerva Reef (officially it is part of Tonga) and at one point some Fijian gun ships turned up there in a bid to scare the tourists off (that happened before our lot arrived there.) Local sentiment appears to be just as fractious – Wesley was adamant that, despite the Fijian army being 10 times the size of Tonga’s – the Tongans could kick Fijian butt whenever they wanted to – according to him, “The Fijians might be big, but they are not smart”. There is also immense pride in the Tongan “navy” which recently sailed to Fiji in little more than a dinghy to pick up a Fijian military defector. It will be very interesting to see the other side of the coin when we get to Fiji.

Anyway – I broke the blog into two so wouldn’t hit you guys with a huge slab of text, and I turn around and do exactly that. The next one will be shorter, I promise!

These are just my thoughts on what we have seen the short time we have been here though so please don’t take it as gospel. On a trip like this you really only get to dip you toes into a culture before you are off to the next destination – I think we’d need a couple of years here to get an idea of what was really going on!

Bye for now xxx