Watching the sun rise with 10,000 people

I woke up at 5 on Thursday morning, and Wellington's streets were crowded. The dark roads and storefronts belied the busy groups of people streaming North toward New Zealand's Parliament complex, which includes the national archives, the courts, and - everyone's destination on Thursday - the war memorial. We were all there to commemorate ANZAC day.

Ko e Hala Hangatonu: The Straight Path

After the Kermadec Exhibition, the ideas started multiplying.

Last year, NZ artist Dame Robin White worked with Tongan-NZ artist Ruha Fifita to create two huge works on tapa speaking to the trade of goods and ideas between Tonga and New Zealand.

Each stage in the process of making tapa the traditional way takes hours, days, and months of continual work; time that is filled talking, telling stories, and sometimes singing, and after the work was done, Robin and Ruha kept talking. It was time for the next project.

Walking to an Island

Living in the South Pacific, one would expect to have white sand beaches a stone's throw away at all times, and to be a regular feature of the underwater local landscape. However, Tongatapu is a fairly rocky island with high barrier reefs, and the nice local beaches require that you either jump into a car or a boat to go find. That is, all but one...

Restaurant service on the beach, 10 minutes from downtown

The only beach in town

Among the construction that has been going on around Nuku'alofa for the last few years, the project that I was really, truly glad - even excited - about was the walkway that stretches from the Royal Palace along the water west to the town of Sopu. This last week, we were a bit tired from several very hectic weeks, so we decided to stay closer to home, and visit one of the only beaches here in the capital city.

Climbing Tsunami Rock

When I told friends and colleagues where we went this last weekend, the most common response was "huh?" Tsunami Rock, also known as Maka Sio'ata, is largely an unknown gem in Tongatapu. With its mysterious and forbidding name, the giant three-story boulder sits just off a tiny and beautiful beach on the western side of Tongatapu - and no one knows exactly how it got there.

The tree-sized boulder: Tsunami Rock

Visit Hufangalupe: The Refuge of the Doves

Hufangalupe, the natural arch

For the last few months, we've been struggling with what to publish. You've already read about feasts, celebrations, funerals, our daily schedules, having fun, what Nuku'alofa sounds like. You've read about easy cultural faux pas, the top five pests in Tonga, cooking underground, and hierarchy in daily life. You've followed our holidays, our work transitions, our observations from globalization to chop suey. 

We wanted to talk about our experiences here and how they related to daily life and culture in Tonga, but surprisingly, after three years, we're largely out of material!

If there's one thing we've predictably been miserable at, it's that we've been very slow at visiting some of the must see sights in Tonga! It took us two years to visit a beautiful underwater cave pool on the island, and three to see a gorgeous natural archway, 30 minutes' drive away. So, we've set ourselves a new question: what is it like to visit Tonga, from our perspective, after having been here for a while?

This week, we'll talk about that gorgeous natural archway: Hufangalupe.

Christmas, the third

This year's Christmas decorations are out of strips of coloured paper

Christmas has come around again, marked by a steady emptying out of the city as people visit family and friends around Tonga and abroad. Nuku'alofa in the middle of summer Christmas looks like any other time of year, but hotter and emptier. For us, Christmas here has always been a rather sad time. Most of our friends here have already gone abroad for the holidays, there are few decorations in the city, and not many Christmas events other than the occasional choir night. Even in most churches, the season is mostly just another day of normal service with occasional Christmas songs. It's just not as big of a deal here as in most other places I've been. That is why, this year, I wanted to make Christmas into a big deal - at least as much as I could with friends, decorations, and food. In part, all this is a celebration for making it through an incredibly difficult year.

The Giant of the Pacific, Australia

Mid-last month, Elena and I departed on our first visit to Australia in the three years that we have lived in the South Pacific. We had a fantastic time, and tried to make the most of our time in the country, visiting a diverse range of visual and performing art shows, restaurants, markets, gardens, and a zoo, as well as spending time with good friends that we met during our work in Tonga. As it is difficult to share everything that we did, here are some snapshots and commentary of just some of the highlights of our visit.

Our first stop after getting off the plane

The US elections in Tonga

Obama at a campaign event (AP Photo/John Raoux)(Credit: AP)

 I never thought the US presidential elections would be such a big deal in the middle of the Pacific. For weeks up until election day, I was asked "Who are you going to vote for?" and "What's the difference between the candidates?" and informed about the latest crazy election-related news that had come out that day. Never did I expect this in Tonga.

Navigating with Sea and Stars

The Hine Moana

Last week, the Hine Moana majestically sailed up to the pier, the one just near the fish market, painted sails full to the waiting crowd. The vaka, or ship, is one of seven open-ocean voyaging canoes that have seen ports from Auckland, NZ to San Francisco, USA, and is manned by a crew that has been learning for the past year how to navigate the broad Pacific Ocean using the complex calculations based on stars, currents, sea creatures, and other methods that remain a mystery to most.

Training, Trust and TBEC

TBEC's services are bilingually English and Tongan

When the training centre started, it was met with skepticism. "Will it really help to send my staff to these trainings? It might reflect badly on my ability as a manager if they need it." "Isn't that the centre that helps palangi (foreign) businesses?" people asked. "I'm doing alright right now. I don't want to risk meddling with some new idea," others said. At the time, I was working at Tonga Development Bank, and heard about it through the grapevine. The hope people had, like almost all hope for new projects in Tonga, was cautious. This was the humble beginning of TBEC, or Tonga Business Enterprise Centre.

The True South Pacific

 

Clear water and sailing in Vava'u

The tourism industry in Tonga has always seemed to me like a two headed dog with each head eying warily and distrustfully at the other. You can take one look around downtown and see that Tonga is blissfully not a tourist trap - and that's why most tourists come here. Tourism numbers are generally low, but out of the major economic sectors, agriculture, fishing, manufacturing, and a few others, tourism is the only one showing a bit of growth as potential to support small businesses and families all around Tonga. On the other hand, it's viewed by some as a culture-eroder and as a blow to personal pride to work in customer service.

In my job, one of the major areas I look after is NZ's support to tourism in Tonga; a large and complex programme that is fraught with differences of opinion, politics, and barriers at every level - because in many ways, both heads of the beast have a good point.

Farewell, Asa

Asa walking to an island through a tidal flat

We were very sad to say good-bye to Asa a week and a half ago, and he wrote a great reflection on his time here:

Three months have come and gone surprisingly quickly. As of the 4th of September, I’ll have been in Tonga for a total of 83 days since the 12th of June, and it’s been quite an adventure. I’m not sure if I could call it “There and Back Again; a Human’s tale” as I at no point traveled with dwarves and a wizard to slay a dragon and reclaim a mountain home, but it has been quite fun.

Running through the ancient capital of Tonga

When I was in high school, it was some perverse joy of US gym teachers to round up the class full of awkward, sweaty teenagers, spend months teaching them how to throw a ball into a hoop or how to hold a hockey stick, and then with no endurance training, let them loose on a track and tell them they will be timed as they stumble their way through a mile. I could barely do it; even two years ago, I could barely run five miles (8 km).

And so it’s a wonderful thing that here in Tonga - where you walk a block to a meeting and when you arrive, you’re greeted with exclamations of “you walked all the way?” - I am proud to say I ran a half-marathon, through the ancient capital of Tonga.

Whale-song in 'Eua

Yet again, last weekend I was reminded why 'Eua is such a deliciously amazing best-kept-secret place to have a holiday. We'd gone back to 'Eua several times since living there, but this was the first time we went entirely for fun. The island of 'Eua is a large (for Tonga), samosa-shaped island off the East coast of Tongatapu, and is geographically completely unlike the entire rest of Tonga. While other islands are tiny, flat beautiful atolls spread atop porous volcanic material and ancient coral, 'Eua is a small mountainous slab of continent, bursting with natural springs, high rocky cliffs, and massive networks of subterranean caves.

The New Red Roof



Langafonua's fading red roof

Every day as I sit at my desk, I look out at the normally faded red roof of Langafonua Gallery and Handicraft Centre. Given to Langafonua by her Majesty Queen Salote, reigning monarch of Tonga from 1918 to 1965, the building is beautiful but in need of repair. And the past couple of days have seen Langafonua get a newly painted, shiny red roof. This is the start of what I hope will be some exciting developments for Langafonua and the handicraft sector in Tonga as a whole.



The Royal Wedding

The biggest talk of the city - along with, of course, the vote of no confidence that the Democratic Party has leveled against the Prime Minister - has been the royal wedding between HRH Crown Prince Tupouto'a 'Ulukalala and Hon. Sinaitakala Fakafanua. Not the least because of the divided opinions surrounding the fact that they are second cousins - on both sides, a fact especially savoured by foreign news sources.

In fact, it's not just the foreign news sources that look upon the marriage with skepticism, it's also close members of the royal family; the HRH Queen Mother Halaevalu Mata'aho and the current King's sister, HRH Princess Pilolevu were conspicuously absent from the past week's celebrations. This caused general scandal and also quite a bit of sadness from the general public, dismayed to see the royal family so divided after most have been thrilled to see the practical and considerate approach the new King has taken since commencing his rule.

Mark's Photo Project

Back in April, I started on a photo project to take at least one thoughtfully composed photo every day. We had recently bought a nicer camera that we could use old manual film lenses with and had not really begun to take full advantage of it beyond general snapshots of events we had been to. I wanted to take better pictures to more vividly document our time here in Tonga, and this project has been the push I needed to do this. The second major reason for the project was to participate in the Shifting Sands and Movement Art Exhibitions that Elena organized with On The Spot, and for which Elena was already preparing art pieces. Although I was still in the middle of my month when Shifting Sands came along, I was able to exhibit 4 photos in the Movement Exhibition, three of which are included below (see the captions on the pictures).

Without further ado, let's get right into it:

These are some of the 59 photos I selected out of the nearly 3,000 photos I took between 15 April and 5 June. The original month stretched into nearly two as I was having fun, and so I didn't stop at the Movement Exhibition.

This photo was taken in "possibly the best bar in Tonga." She looked so bored under Audrey Hepburn.

Highlights of this year's city-wide feast

Asa and I sit, ready for the feast

That is, if you're Wesleyan. The end of June always brings a huge influx in visitors to Tonga; Tongans come back from all sorts of places overseas as well as into the capital from the other islands, and all congregate on a huge field in front of the Wesleyan offices - and eat, meet, and eat some more.

We've always enjoyed going, especially to friends' tables. It's a hugely festive air, and we're lucky to know people who are excellent cooks. This year brings a special treat in that we're able to introduce Asa to the delicacies and sights that normally no visitor to Tonga at any other time has a chance to see:

First impressions of Tonga: Asa's visit

 After a ten-hour layover in Fiji that stretched to a full twelve hours to cap off his multiple-day journey to get here, my little brother Asa made it safe and sound to Tonga for an extended visit during his "summer break" from university in the United States.

Asa and Mark doing dishes- we put him to work already.

And are we ever excited to have him! After the last seven or so years of too-short holidays too infrequently, we're enjoying all spending some good time together. Asa's an avid reader of the blog, and so we invited him to be our first "guest blogger" to relate some of his first impressions of Tonga.

An editorial note: Asa mentions being able to get all sorts of items and be very comfortable here, which is absolutely true. However, he's also in the unique position of living with people who have already figured out where to get these hard-to-find items and restaurants, already know a lot of people, and have already figured out how to budget to afford the occasional - very expensive - cheese, wine, muesli, and other goods that may be normal to someone in NZ, Australia, or the US, but that are luxury to us and most people here. We've been enjoying showing him everything we've discovered over the past few years.