I can't say, "It seems like only yesterday, we were in Tonga." It actually seems like a far-off dream to both Mike and me (though we have longed for the lazy, gorgeous days of the South pacific a number of times since we've been home). We have been so busy unpacking that we've hardly had time to explore San Francisco, and we definitely haven't had time to blog about details of the trip. Well, now Mike is off to Boston and I have some time to catch up on the things that he doesn't really keep track of. So...here's Ha'apai.
Rugby is huge in Tonga. Every week there were several events to go watch. This was when "our" village, Faleloa, was playing against the other end of the island. The little boy in front of me lived was the nephew of Pulotu and Lua, the couple we stayed with.
The beach was less than a mile away. We walked there several times a week, and it was absolutely stunning. Ha'apai, specifically Foa, the island we lived on, is home to the best sandy beaches in all of Tonga.
Tonga is one of the best places in the world for boat trips and sailing trips (albeit
way out of the way). Mike and I had a sailing trip planned, but ended up going to Fiji instead. What a tough lie, right?
Me weaving with Pulotu, who was basically the head of our household. Lua, her husband said regularly, "...and if you need anything, ask Pulotu." Anyway, Pulotu is a phenomenal weaver. She made gorgeous mats that were ordered from New Zealand, Tonga, and the United States. Each mat brought in a couple thousand US dollars. She taught me the process...it's so complicated!
Zac, one of the boys that was on our island. He and Phil (and Bryan, who was on the other island we were connected to), became good friends. I call them all boys because they hunted crabs and fished and explored and played with us. We were like little kids and became good friends.
This was our house! Mike in I stayed in a small room that was on the right when you entered the house.
There were pigs EVERYWHERE. This is not a joke. Often, when I would email my family, I'd count the number of pigs I saw on my way to the house that had internet. It was about two blocks away, but I usually counted over 50 pigs.
This is Spot.
This is Spot. Seriously. Both named Spot. Pulotu said, "Yes, yes, they both Spot. Then when we yell, 'Spot! Spot!' they both come running to eat." Spot died. And got eaten by the people who hit him.
One of the many visits to the ocean for this step in the weaving process. After the leaves are collected, stripped, separated, rolled, boiled, and tied to the rope, they are left in the ocean for one week to bleach.
These flowers were all over in the trees!
On the way to the beach. No big deal.
We caught a rat in our room. Here's the story from the email: Okay, so, we have some critters. As I mentioned in the last email. There are several rats in the kitchen (not big yellow-toothed rats, but still, rats). We named them Ratitouille collectively so that whenever we see a rat we feel like we are friends with it. Anyway, the rats use our bedroom as an escape route, because the bathroom has several holes that lead to outside. The other day, Mike thought it would be a good idea to plug up all those holes…but then a rat got stuck in the bathroom and I saw it, but it hid under something that we couldn’t reach. Well, a few hours later, Mike had managed to trap the rat under our plunger. Of course the idea of plunging the rat to death crossed our minds, but then we thought about cleaning the remains and decided against it. We also thought about putting a piece of paper under the plunger and then dumping him out the toilet, but the paper wouldn’t be strong enough, and, hello, what if he came back from the sewage thing to haunt us!? So, we ended up getting an extra linoleum tile from the front room and putting it under the plunger and taking the rat outside, for a walk, so we wouldn’t have to have him in our room anymore. But, Pulotu (mom) saw us and when we told her what was going on, she told us that we had to kill it. But we were just going to let it go outside so that we didn’t have to deal with the guts! She followed us out of the yard and up the hill a little bit and grabbed a huge rock and held it out to Mike. We didn’t know what to do. So, Mike took the rock, Pulotu took the plunger, tile, and rat, and I stood there with the camera…Pulotu let the rat go and Mike killed it. It was hilarious, and sounds brutal, but, what were we supposed to do?
Pulotu thought it was soooooooooooo funny that the palangis (white people) caught a rat.
We played games twice a week with our friends from BYU and the families we stayed with. It seemed sooooo fun while we were there. We played for hours and hours at a time. We had to limit ourselves to twice a week so it would still be enjoyable each time we played.
There was an absolutely HUGE rainstorm that lasted an entire morning. This is the leftover rain the
next night. And yes, Ha'apai had amazing sunsets.
The wharf. We went there to watch many sunsets.
At the beach after snorkeling. I have goggle-face.
Hermit crabs everywhere!
A teeny tiny worm.
One day we caught as many hermit crabs as we could find and put them in this bottle. This is partway through the process.
We went to the beach at night and played games with some of the local kiddies.
Do you have any idea how good peanut butter tastes after eating roots for a month!?
On the windy side of the island. That was the first of three times that I wore makeup on the entire trip. I shouldn't have packed it.
That's Paula, essentially our brother, in the middle. We love him.
Me and Fehi at the airport. She is such a sweet, beautiful girl.
We LOVED our time in Ha'apai. Toward the end, it was time to be the end, but, we loved it. My first impressions of Ha'apai, and Tonga as a whole, were put in bullet-point form for an email home. I like bullet-points a lot and think they will help describe Ha'apai:
- Our hosts are WONDERFUL. So fun. They speak little English, and we speak even less Tongan, but, we’re not dead yet.
- We have a bed. We weren’t sure if we would or not.
- We have a fan. It’s a total luxury and we are SO GRATEFUL! Sometimes it’s so hot/humid that it doesn’t seem like it’s even working, though.
- There are pigs running around all the time. They don’t have names, but they have collective names. So, their owner will call out a name, and an entire little clan of pigs will come running to eat coconuts (most of them are really, really skinny).
- I had a favorite pig. He was brown and tiny. I think we might have eaten him last night, though.
- There are geckos called Moko all over the house. I don’t mind them at all. Neither does Mike. They have this crazy call that makes them sound like birds—it took us a few days to figure out that it was them.
- We can walk to the best swimming beach in Tonga whenever we want.
- The mosquitoes here love me. It’s RIDICULOUS. I used to think they liked my blood because it was so sweet—but now I think that they like my blood because it’s like crack cocaine. My bites swell up to be very large and I can hardly think about anything else.
- We brought too much sunscreen and totally spaced the mosquito repellant.
- We are living in a tiny village called Faleloa. It’s across a man-made bridge, about 25 minutes from Pangai, the bigger town, in a really slow car.
- We found a store run by Chinese people that carries chocolate. The only chocolate in Ha’apai. It tastes like strawberries.
- We have rice for breakfast every morning, and more meat than you can imagine for other meals. We also eat fried food every day. Fried food is not my favorite, or Mike’s. For the past three days we have had fried sausage for lunch, along with some kind of root (sometimes fried), and loads of meat for dinner (and more roots). We eat tiny portions and our hosts think we are kind of crazy. Lotu always says, “Ah, you’re scared of becoming fat like the Tongans!”
- Quick story: for the first few mornings here I couldn’t even figure out where I was. I literally woke up panicked, trying to figure out what was going on. Then, a few mornings ago, that faded. Well, exactly two mornings ago, I woke up earlier than normal (hadn’t slept well for a few days), and was just looking around. I like the way the mosquito net blows in the breeze and looks invisible/visible at different times, and I was distracted by a big, ugly, black thing. I blinked and stared again. No way. Yes. Really. An enormous, huge, disgusting spider. Not the kind that you smash with a Kleenex and flush down the toilet, but the kind that you knock down with something large and smash with something heavy and larger and then have to clean up after because it has so many guts. Anyway, Mike wasn’t awake yet, so I stared intently at him and then he woke up (I think it was psychic waves that did it), and I whispered, “don’t move!” but he didn’t really hear me/wasn’t awake all the way, so I said it again, and he asked why. I pointed up at the spider and he said he couldn’t see it (no contacts), but when I told him what it was he didn’t believe me because it was such a big blob in his fuzzy vision. Not only was it on the net, but, it was INSIDE our mosquito net (apparently you have to tuck the thing under you bed completely, who knew)? So, we snuck out of the net and I hit the spider from behind with Mike’s fishing pole case/tube thing and then Mike smacked him to death with a shoe. We had to wash the sheets after, but, the spider died.
- We went snorkeling for the first time today. It was a lot like Fiji except you swim over perfect water for a while and are suddenly at the reef. In Fiji it was water over reef, then a huge drop into more reef. Anyway, today we found Nemo, which is my favorite part of snorkeling! There was a huge anemone that scaled down a large part of the coral so we saw a ton of clown fish. We also saw loads of bright fish, large and small. Apparently the snorkeling in Vava’u is even better…we can’t wait!
- We tried to go fishing this week, but we have yet to catch anything.
- We love crab hunting and catching at the beach! There are big crabs you can dig out of the sand and tons of hermit crabs all over the place.
- Church was fun, but all in Tongan so we got a bit of journaling in
And...that was Ha'apai. So beautiful, so wonderful--and we grew a lot there because it was hard. We wouldn't trade it for anything.
