Lola & Toni in the Tonga

Water in Tonga is an interesting thing.  There is a city water service if you live in an area where it is provided.  There are wells and pumps in rural areas, and there are what we call sima vais on most houses.  A sima vai is a rain water collection tank that you can get fresh drinking water from.  It is collected from the roof of most houses through the gutter and piped to the tank.  Since city water can be expensive, and it also tastes pretty bad, sima vais are the best way to go.  You get fresh, good tasting water for free.  Luckily, our house has a sima vai with a pump to provide pressure to the house.  Some houses you have to go fill up containers from the simas and bring it in the house to use.  The only thing we use city water for is the toilet.

Right now we are in the hot, rainy season in Tonga.  It rains here quite a bit, and when I say rain, I mean huge tropical downpours.  This is a wonderful because it fills our sima vais up for the dry season, where it still rains, just not as much.  Recently, it has been raining quite a bit, so we have not worried about our water supply.  In fact, we had a record rainfall day where more than 11 inches fell in about 8 hours.  It flooded many businesses, and took many days to dry up, but we were rolling in water, or so we thought.

So, one day last week I was taking a shower, and much to my surprise, the water pressure went way down.  I couldn’t understand what it might be until the neighbor mentioned that my sima must be dry.  No way, couldn’t be dry after all the rain we have had.  Sure enough, I climbed up on top and popped the lid open to find that it was in fact dry!!  How could this be, we were out of water.  Well, I climbed up to find that the pipe going into the sima had been blocked by leaves and debris, and all the rain we had actually rushed out of the gutter without going into the tank.  So, now what do we do?  The neighbor suggested filling up the sima with city water (there was a valve to do this), but we didn’t want to drink it, and it would cost way too much to fill it up.  She turned it on anyway thinking that was the best solution.  As soon as she left, I turned it off and climbed up to clean the gutters out.  Later, the neighbor came back to turn it off, and actually turned it back on.  I am not sure how long it was on, but I turned it off as soon as possible.  Well, at least we had enough for a shower or two now.  The rest of the day I sat waiting for rain.  In Tonga, everyone told us to pray, but that didn’t seem to be the solution to the problem.  It rains almost every day, except for this day.  Luckily we were about to go to the island group of Ha’apai to visit some other peace corps friends, and we were hoping it would rain while we were gone.

So, to make this a happy ending, the night before we left, it poured rain.  I guess it poured for the four days we were gone, and it continues to pour down.  So now, we are back to having our fresh water.  It really makes you think about what you take for granted when you live in a place where, even though there is plenty of water, it may not always be enough.  We are now trying to conserve our water so this doesn’t happen again.  Oh, I will also make sure that the gutters are clean.

Ok, so this training thing was a while ago, and I have so many other things I want to write about, but I have to get this out of the way. 

After our first homestay in Fu’amotu, we boarded a boat to the island group of Vava’u, the location of our second homestay.  The boat ride was a story unto itself, an 18 hour journey in fairly rough seas.  I may talk about this later.

 As soon as we arrived in Nei’afu, Vava’u, it started raining.  When I say raining, it isn’t that really nice tropical rain you get in Hawaii that cools everything off.  The rain in Vava’u is something like I have never seen.  It started when we got off the boat and rained for about four days straight.  Just when you thought it couldn’t get any harder, it did.

We all arrived to our homestays incredibly tired and disgusting after rolling around on a ship deck for 18 hours.  Luckily Lara and I had our own little hurricane house that we were to stay in.  We got cleaned up at the main house which was a walk through the mud to the shower and back.  Not so good for keeping the feet clean.  We slept for almost a day.  The next day we had off to explore and went for a walk with a couple of the boys that hung around the house.  Whenever we wanted to go somewhere, there was always someone that went with us to make sure nothing bad happened.  I don’t know the last time I had a 17 year old boy babysitting me.  For some reason, they thought that a couple in their mid 30’s might get lost on an island.  Even when we went to town, we were accompanied by a young boy so nothing bad would happen to us in the big city.

 Well, the second leg of training was a little more centered on language than culture.  We spent three out of five days of the week in our local village, and two days in the center village where everyone would show up.  Like I said previously, the volunteers were broke into three groups of 11 and placed in different villages.  Lara and I were placed with most of the older volunteers in a village named Ta’anea.  We had the most mellow village of all.  We spent our time learning language, drinking kava with the local men, and hanging out with the host family when we had a chance. 

After a while, our schedule seemed a little repetitive, we started to feel like little school kids.  Our host families would bring us something to eat for breakfast, we would go to school, and then we would have some time to study and eat some more.  As the weeks passed by, I was dying for a cold drink, but it wasn’t appropriate, and we always had someone tagging along with us.  If someone in our village found out that we had drank something, the rumor that we were drunk would be in the village before we got back.  This also impacted our host family, so we stayed pretty good most of the time.

The one time we let a little loose was during Thanksgiving, where the current Vava’u volunteers cooked a traditional American Thanksgiving meal for us.  It was a great treat after eating Tongan food (which is pretty good) all the time.  It was also at a bar, and after many weeks of not drinking, I decided to let loose a little.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t seem to drink as many beers as usual.  So, I got a little drunk, but I did find out one important thing……I speak great Tongan after I have been drinking.  Lara may not agree, but I was talking and talking like people understood.  Lara had to drag me away from our host family when we returned so I wouldn’t embarrass us more. 

Anyway, outside of language and culture, we finally were able to participate in some business workshops.  This is the stuff we actually came to do.  Through the Vava’u Peace Corps office and the Vava’u Youth Congress, we provided a small business training.  We also were broke into groups where we did different projects with the youth.  I and some other volunteers ran an interview and business skills workshop at Vava’u high school, while Lara and some other volunteers did a computer training workshop at the school.  It was a great experience that gave us a good idea of what we were up against here in Tonga.

Another part of training was that we were to participate in a cultural day.  This day would be called “Aho Faka-Tonga” or Tongan day.  Every village was to make Tongan food dishes, a craft and come  up with skits and dances to perform in front of all our host families and villages.  In my mind, Peace Corps puts way too much emphasis on this day, but it was fun all the same.  We all looked silly  in our Tongan dress and performing our Tongan skits.  I will upload some pictures of Aho Faka Tonga day soon.  You will know, because Lara and I are dressed the same.

 Anyway, I am getting too long winded.  Training was very long and busy, and we felt like children.  We were all very burnt out, and needed a little freedom from the families we stayed with.  After six weeks, we all boarded airplanes to Tongatapu to finish our training and swear in as volunteers.  Training, like I said, was very hard, but it was an invaluable experience that made us all much more aware of the culture around us.  We learned the culture, how to behave and dress appropriately and made some great family and friends in the process.   We also had the chance to see a good part of Vava’u, which is a beautiful island group.  We also went out on a boat with the rest of the trainees and some volunteers for a day.  We spent some time snorkeling at a little island which was incredible, and then we swam into a bird cave.  I will download pictures of this beautiful island.

 We were glad it was over though, so we could move on with our assignments.  We were both placed in Nuku’alofa, Tongatapu, the capital city of Tonga.   I am sorry, but I left many things out about training.  If we hadn’t procrastinated getting this blog started until after we arrived, we would have been much more specific about things.  If anyone has any questions, I would be happy to answer those. 

T&L