Ten Days in Tonga

August 15, 2014

Nestled in the South Pacific Ocean amongst Fiji, the Cook Islands and Samoa is the tropical island nation known officially as the Kingdom of Tonga. Like any kingdom, Tonga has a King who lives in a “palace” (it’s really just a big fancy house) and has an expensive private yacht. But it also has a Prime Minister – this is a constitutional monarchy moving towards democracy.

Many people have never heard of Tonga. Neither had I, until a fellow traveler gave me a rave review of the country shortly after I arrived in New Zealand. The Kingdom is made up of 3 island groups, which I’m told are all quite different. I only had the time and budget to visit the main and most southerly island group, the Tongatapu group.

Captain James Cook, after he first landed there in 1773, dubbed Tonga the Friendly Islands. And with reason. The first thing I noticed about Tonga is how overwhelmingly friendly it’s people are! They are welcoming happy people. They’re also very relaxed and easy-going – this is reflected in something I refered to as “Tonga Time”. Compared to most of the western world, things in Tonga move without hurry or schedule. The notion of time in Tonga is very loose – things like scheduled ferry departure times and tour start times are definitely not set in stone. Basically, the ferry leaves and tours start whenever everyone is ready to go! This was a bit of a nuisance when I was eager to leave the remote island of ‘Eua, where I spent 2 days more than I wanted to spend because of cancelled or delayed ferry crossings. Oh well, c’est la vie. That’s Tonga time!

The second thing I noticed about Tonga is that there are churches everywhere. I mean, everywhere. Ever since Christian missionaries arrived in 1812, Tongan’s have been are devoutly Christian – almost all Tongans are churchgoers. Mostly Protestant, but also many Mormon and even some Jehovah’s Witness. I had the opportunity to attend church on Sunday, which was something I was told no visitor should leave Tonga without doing. Anyway, there’s nothing else to do on a Sunday because everything is closed! Ferries don’t sail, planes don’t fly, and sports or other events are prohibited. The streets are empty and the churches are full. So anyway, I went to church and I didn’t understand anything because it was all in Tongan, but when I heard SINGING! The congregation sang often and with passion. Even the children sang at the top of their lungs. The sound sent shivers down my spine – it was truly moving!

Another thing I noticed right away was the cultural dress that many Tongans wear. Men wear a skirt-like cloth around the waist, called a tupenu. Similar to the kilt in Scotland, the tupenu is worn by young and old and can be paired with casual, professional, or formal shirts. Women also wear tupenus, but they are longer to cover the ankles.

For formal occasions, Tongans wear a woven mat around the waist, called a ta’ovala. This would be worn over the tupenu. There are many different kinds and styles of ta’ovala. Basically anywhere you would see westerners wearing a suit, you will see Tongans wearing a ta’ovala. All government workers in Tonga must wear one, they are made special by family members for a teenagers graduation and for weddings, and it is very disrespectful to attend a funeral without one. Both men and women sometimes wear them to church, and even some schoolboy uniforms include a short ta’ovala over the tupenu.

There is also the kiekie, which is a decorative waist belt with strands that hang down around the mid-section. It is worn by ladies over their modern dresses or skirts. I even got to wear one when I went to church!

I had a great time in Tonga. I enjoyed the sunshine and the beach, went to the local market in Nuku’Alofa, ate plenty of fresh fish and local fruit, escaped the advances of a group of eager young Tongan men in a bar, chatted up plenty of friendly locals, and took in all the sights.

One of my favourite days was spent riding around the main island of Tongatpu on the rickety old public transit bus. While the destination of each bus is marked, they don’t seem to follow any kind of real schedule – they run on “Tonga Time”. At the terminal, the bus just sits and waits until it has enough passengers to justify a trip, or else it just leaves whenever the driver decides. I hopped on and rode the whole route to the northernmost tip of the island and back. It was a great way to take in the goings-on of daily Tongan life. From the windows I saw farmers tending to their fields, many a piglet prancing around, women hand washing laundry and pounding tapa cloth called ngatu (decorated cloth handmade by drying, soaking, and beating strips of tree barks), and children going home from school. The children in their uniforms would sing songs together as they walked along, best friends would hold hands or link arms, and they would all look out for one another and for the younger ones. They were smiling and happy, which made me happy and made me wish that western schoolkids could be seen behaving more like these Tongans – I think we would all smile a lot more if they did. When all the seats in the bus were filled and several people were standing in the aisle, I thought the bus was full. I laughed to myself when the driver pulled over to a group of two dozen school girls on the side of the road. There’s no way, I thought. But, with enough shuffling and rearranging, the already full bus managed to accommodate another two-dozen riders — not without at least one or two on each empty lap, including my own!

The coolest thing I did in Tonga was swim in the ocean with humpback whales. That’s right, I SWAM with whales. It was an overwhelmingly exhilarating once-in-a-lifetime experience. Tonga is known as the only country in the world where you can actually swim with these majestic creatures. They migrate every year from cold Antarctic waters to the warm, protected waters of the Tongan islands for calving and mating. These whales are 12–15 meters long and weigh 40 – 60 tones each, making them literally 50 times my size. But they feel even bigger when they’re swimming right next to you, and you know that simple a flap of their fin could potentially kill you and they could swallow you whole without even noticing (whales have not been known to have a taste for human, they prefer krill, but still).

On my whalewatching day trip with Deep Blue Diving, we went snorkeling, saw several whales swimming near the boat, watched a newborn calf breach (jump out of the water) several times, and swam with a mother, her calf, and their male escort – a random male offering protection to the mother and her newbown calf, hoping for an opportunity to mate with the mother before heading south again for the summer. All in all, it was an unforgettable day.

The only Tongan experience on my list that I didn’t fulfill was of tasting kava, a traditional herbal drink brewed from the roots of the kava plant. It has proven medicinal benefits and psychoactive properties. Kava is traditionally consumed in ritual ceremonies, which have been studied by Anthropologists interested in the psychological function of the kava ritual as a symbol of Tonga’s intricate social stratification. I had heard about this in school, and thus was very interested in seeing it for myself. However, when I got to Tonga I learned that this type of ceremony is reserved for men only. In some cases, women are allowed to attend and sometimes foreigners are able to taste the drink outside of the ceremonial context, but I was not so lucky. Oh well, I’ve heard it tastes horrible anyway. For anyone interested, there is a brief anthropological description of the whole ceremony here: http://www.kavaroot.com/kava-folklore/25-kava-folklore/74-informal-kava-drinking-in-tonga

Aside from missing out on kava, and a couple of miserably rainy days stranded on a remote island, I had a terrific experience in Tonga. I have to admit, though, it is nice to be back on familiar turf with widespread access to hot showers and internet ☺