And More Pictures

“Royal Beer” – in the nineties, the King saw his chance to make some money and a bunch of Belgians saw their chance to unload a profitless business. The result – Tongans drink expensive imported beer like Heineken, Coors, and Victoria Bitter, while palangi (including yours truly) suck back the very cheap Royal Ikale.

The WZ UP WASHUP, it seems even remote Pacific Tonga couldn’t escape this Budweiser craze

Sadly their fate was the same as any other who base their business model on a slogan. Still I bet for a good three months, this was THE place to wash your car in Tonga!

P.S. - I added a Tonga Compared to Canada table to the bottom of this page

More Pictures

Some days the internet here at school is just faster than others. Today seems to be one of those days, and I was able to upload some more pictures:

The Tongan avocado. Freak of nature, perhaps, but just one of these makes a pretty big bowl of guacamole!

The view from my apartment’s veranda. Yah-yah, sweet. I’m right on the edge of the lagoon (the bright light in the background), and the apartment community owns a canoe that I often take out on weekends to just cruise around.

A more typical view in Tonga

A Bit About my Job

I teach senior-level high school here in Tonga, and a school called ‘Api Fo’ou College. It’s one of the largest schools in the kingdom, with over 1000 students and about sixty staff. I work for an hour and a half to three hours a day Monday to Friday (every day I have two classes, three days a week I have four). I also get a grand total of fourteen paid weeks off a year (that's "paid" for me) so it’s pretty sweet. We call it “faka Tonga” which means “the Tongan way” (a.k.a. in Canada as not working very hard).

In Form 5 History the subjects I teach are (or will have taught, by November) International Co-operation (the League, UN, and Commonwealth), Unification and Resolution to Conflict (China and Palestine/Israel), and International Relations (Tonga since 1946 and World War II). I'm not sure if I teach World War II as an example of international relations breaking down, or of relationship building to fight other nations, but anyways. Form 6 History is Origins of WWI, Origins of WWII, and the Cold War. Then I teach Form 7 History – the Pacific, and Form 7 Sociology. Form 5 to 7 is equivalent to grades 11-13.

The school begins at Form 1, and when I see students in town who are not my own, particularly younger kids, I am often mistaken for Quintus. Quintus is the other Canadian who teaches at ‘Api Fo’ou. Quintus is also African-Canadian. But, it seems, all us Canadians look alike and it’s hard to tell us apart!

Typically my students are great, particularly forms 6 and 7, with only form 5 giving me occasional cause to take some kind of action. Last week I had one of those days, but it was much more fun than usual. I had one student who joined the class a day before a test (students are still appearing, even weeks after school has started). I told him to come attempt the test next class in order to see what he’d been missing. I could already tell from day one he was some sort of troublemaker. He came the next day, and chose to fill in the test with joke answers. I marked it correct or incorrect as I felt, and added my own joke corrections to his ridiculous answers. I would later find out that he was not a new addition to the class at all, but instead was skipping a different class where he did not finish an assignment that was due. Evidently he enjoyed the joke so much that he chose to attend my class three days in a row (the day before, of, and after the test in order to get his "mark.") Foolishly, though, he wrote his real name and homeroom on the attendance sheet and was discovered "out of place" by the office staff. Still, I had a lot of fun while he was with us.

For example, he included “Iran” to his answers for the permanent members of the League of Nations Council. So I crossed out his only correct answer (Britain) and replaced it with “North Korea.”
To the question “which League country withdrew from the Council in 1933?” He answered, “John Edwards.” I marked it wrong, and wrote, “John withdrew in 1937, and the correct answer was Barack Obama.”
For the question, “What did the Abyssinian crisis prove to Hitler about the League?” He answered, “Hitler is not a man he is a monsters and is actually evil.” I added, “You forgot that Hitler sold his soul in 1929.”
Finally for the question, “name a problem you think weakened the League, and provide a historical example,” he wrote, “All people just want their freedom. Black people in Fiji are oppressed by Australia and they want freedom from the white people” (he may have thought I’m Australian, most Tongans assume this if not American). I added, “We are all oppressed by Purple people. And with your freedom, where would you get corned beef?” An aside: Pacific countries that once practiced cannibalism now eat mass quantities of Australian corned beef. An eerie coincidence...just what exactly does corned beef taste like? At the bottom of the test I wrote, “A very intelligent effort for only one day of class! You will A+ the exam!"

Traditional Canadian Dance?

I was stopped by a Tongan stranger at the school today, who asked me where a certain teacher was. They were all in a meeting (for form (homeroom) teachers, which I wasn’t), and while he waited we chatted about Tongan history (a subject I always try to bring up). After a few minutes, he said, “you’re Canadian, aren’t you?” I looked down at what I was wearing to see what gave it away., but my t-shirt was Australian BillaBong.
“What makes you say that?”
“I can tell from your accent.” This was the first Tongan I had met my six weeks here who didn’t assume I was American. I’ve been called American more times in six weeks than in my life up til then (though I try not to take it personally).
Sione was a singer, and one of the side benefits was that he had gotten good at telling the difference between people’s accents. Canadians typically talk much cleaner, while Americans tend to “hide their vowels,” he told me. He added that he gets annoyed when people say Canada and America are the same, because he notices the differences. When I tell Tongans, “no, not America, I’m from further North,” they guess, “…from Denmark?” As if Canada is the 51st US state on their maps.
Canada’s anonymity does have its fun moments though. At a staff meeting where the student clubs were introduced, the administration was trying to start up a dance club. “And not just traditional Polynesian dance, “the deputy principal said, “we have international teachers here…Suzuki (really, that’s his name) from Japan, and Taniela (the Tongan version of my name) from Canada.”
I tried to imagine what traditional Canadian dancing would be like, and then mentioned to the nearby teachers a hide and seek dance that I said had evolved out of our yearly national polar bear hunt. I got an approving round of nods.
Instead, though, I started an Ultimate club. The first meeting is tomorrow with 22 students who seem to have never seen a Frisbee before. Still many students made the most common comment of Ultimate players, “hey this would do a lot of damage if you put razor blades on it!”

P.S. – I fixed the blog so that you no longer need a gmail account if you want to leave comments.

Convenience, behind bars

I find the weather here so unpredictable, especially in this, the cyclone season. This morning, right after I got into the dining room for breakfast, it started just pouring rain. Absolutely pouring, though there were hardly any clouds in sight, the heaviest rain I have yet seen anywhere. Then it stopped, like someone turned off a facet. It was still sunny out, and it only got hotter as the day went on. Late this afternoon we had another such rainstorm – several minutes of torrential downpour. On these hot days of blue sky, three or four dark grey clouds appear on the horizon and float over the island until they suddenly let go of everything they have in one great burst.
Before the afternoon mini-storm, after school, I went for a walk to downtown. I know the basic half-hour route now, so I typically wander side streets to see more of the suburb where I live (Mau’fanga). I also enjoy hearing the little children yell “Palangi! Palangi!” and point when I walk by. It means “European” and is the general term for any white guy. Because tourism is still low scale here (only sixty cruise boats will be docking this year), and most tourists don’t venture beyond the capital city, I’ve been told that in many of the surrounding villages I could be the first palangi that some kids see. So, of course, these are the villages I bike to on weekends while I explore the island. I’m sure the kids in Mau’fanga have seen white guys before, but they still get excited. Anyways, this time I took too many rights and not enough lefts and just got completely turned around. I saw plenty of people, but not wanting to look any more like a tourist then I already did (and being a man), I didn’t ask for directions. Side streets in Tonga curve left and right, then suddenly become dead ends or driveways. There are no “no exit” signs and most major intersections are traffic circles, the speed limit is always forty km/h or 55 on highways. After about twenty minutes I managed to find a main street again, but I’d hardly moved any closer downtown.

And it was HOT, around 1pm the sun was almost directly overhead. I stopped at the next Chinese shop to get a drink. Chinese shops are like convenience store in Canada, only…different. A Chinese shop is a shack and a prison combined. A prison to keep the Chinese (always) attendant safe, and all the rest of us out. Its like the booth where you go at a train or bus station to buy tickets. The front of the shack is criss-crossed with rebar through which you can see the wares on the back wall, leaving only a small opening for the exchange of money for goods. And the shops are EVERYWHERE; dozens of a main street, often across the street from each other, selling the exact same things for the exact same prices. I’ve wandered around area of the island seeing no one else on the street and only the occasional house, to turn the corner and find a Chinese woman sitting in an iron bar shack offering me corned beef. On this day, though, I wanted to buy water.
“Any cold water?” I asked.
“Big bottle or small?”
“Small.”
“Chinese water or Australia water?”
“Which one is cheaper?” though I already guessed the answer.
“Chinese water one dollar, Australia water one dollar fifty.”
”How’s the Chinese water taste?”
She shrugged and said “ehh.”
So Chinese water it was! I couldn’t read anything on the bottle except the sole English phrase “natural water,” which is more of an obvious statement then a label. But still it tasted like any bottle of water I’ve had before.