Long live the...King?

The coronation celebration became two-fold this week, when the Prince undertook a massive and unplanned step towards democracy. He surrendered much of his absolute power, including his role in day-to-day government affairs, to the Prime Minister.

Tonga is unique because it is the only Pacific monarchy that survived colonization. When the British arrived, they found Tonga to already be heavily Christian, and with a constitution to boot (thanks to missionary Shirley Baker, a key figure in Tongan history). The would-be colonizers chose to leave the friendly King in place, and only make the island a protectorate in the British Empire. Thus Tonga became the only country in the Pacific never to have been formally colonized (which I think explains why, unlike the islands of Samoa and Fiji, Tonga has no McDonald's downtown).

As democracy eventually took root in American and British pacific colonies that gained independence, Tonga remained an absolute monarchy throughout her history. In recent times, criticism of the monarchy has been on the rise (the royal villa is one of the largest houses I've ever seen but I can't get a decent picture because the driveway is miles long, yet something like 40% of Tongans live below the poverty line). Parliament, where the King appointed the majority of the MPs and chose the ministers, was just a rubber stamp for his decisions. When King Tupou IV died 11 Sep 2006, it looked very much like the Crown Prince had no real plans to move Tonga towards democracy. When it looked like the parliament would adjourn for the year without any steps towards democracy, riots broke out in November 2006 with government offices and assets of the King initially targeted. I say initially, because more than 60% of the downtown area was destroyed, including Tonga's only theater and bookstore, much to my chagrin.

As a result, the Prince's coronation was delayed all the way until now. A "state of emergency" of declared, giving the Prince powers like the ability to randomly close streets for no apparent reason when I'm biking downtown. Also, as many as six New Zealand police officers swarmed the country to help keep the peace.

So, everyone have been looking towards Friday's coronation celebration with a bit of trepidation as to what might happen. The Prince earlier agreed to sell off his controlling stake in Tongan assets including the power company, a telecommunications company, and even the brewery. But it still came as a pretty big shock when the Prince announced earlier this week, days before his coronation, that he would immediately relinquish almost all his political power to the Prime Minister.

The majority of the seats in Parliament will be decided by vote in 2010's election. The King will still attend Parliament, but won't have a say in the government's affairs. Essentially, he chose to go the British route instead of the French route (off with his head!). Tonga's pro-democracy leader was one of the first to respond to the announcement. "I think his majesty has made history," he said. "Monarchies in Europe always found it difficult to relinquish their power but in our case our monarchy did something which was different. He was willing to surrender his power to the people and remain only as a ceremonial monarchy from now on." Plus, he got over $30 million selling off his assets. Not too shabby for a week's work, I say.

So, the monarchists are happy, the pro-democracy people are happy, the hundreds of palangi amassed in the streets who will still get to see a coronation are happy. And what better way to jump start the celebration then to give the gift of fire to thousands of Tongan children! Yesterday was the start of the three-day coronation festivities, and last night Tonga's schools were given the task of lighting palm-front torches around the islands of Tonga. Not the best idea to give ten foot flaming torches to young children? Well it can't be much better then arming them with machetes, which we do every Wednesday to tackle to dense brush around the school.

Loading up our torches. Not only were the kids told to each carry a torch to the beach, this truck made four trips. And that was just our school!

Flares were launched from Tongan Defense Force ships around the island telling us when to light the torches.


Which was right about...now. Thank you Prometheus!


Just like Narnia, Tonga does have a street lamp. But in this picture, those points of light are torches on part of the stretch of island 'Api Fo'ou was responsible for.

This time...Lapaha

With the might of the Catholic School Board behind me, I ventured once again to Lapaha determined to see the langi with my form 6 (grade 12) history class. It was, especially for the kids, a trip to remember. That’s mostly because they rode in the back of an open truck and it rained. When it rains, it pours. But it Tonga, when it rain, it pours in a torrential onslaught. Luckily for me, it stopped when we got to Lapaha and I remained dry. Unluckily for them, we hit another storm on the way back.

One of our deputy principals had spoken several times to the Mu’a town officer, who had assured us that the site would be open. But it’s Tonga. So when we got there and found it locked, I was much less surprised than I would have been had I taken this trip when I was still new to the culture. This time, with a cell phone call, I got the key and unrestricted unsupervised access to the richest concentration of archeological remains in Tonga!

The history lesson that follows comes largely from Wikipedia, meaning it could just have easily been written by Leo as by someone who actually knows something about Tongan history. Still, I also found the key stuff in the only book on Pacific history I have, Howe’s Where the Waves Fall.

The Tu’i Tonga Empire was a powerful Pacific Empire, centred in Tonga with an influence that extended to Fiji and Samoa. The empire began around 950 AD. To put that in perspective, its around the same time the Eastern Roman Empire was at the height of its power, Vikings were raiding France, and the Chinese used gunpowder in battles without actually coming up with the idea of a gun. The first Tu’i Tonga, ‘Aho’eitu, was the son of Tangaloa ‘Eitumâtupu’a, the Tongan God who came down from the sky, and a mortal Tongan woman. That’s because they knew the empire would be doomed to fail without at least an endorsement from a god, or better yet a half-god emperor to kick it off.

From the twelfth to sixteenth century AD, Mu’a, the town we visited, was the capital of the Tu’i Tonga Empire. And although the empire eventually disintegrated, Mu’a stayed as a kind of spiritual centre. The Tu’i Tonga lost political power but gained spiritual power, becoming high priests. My Wikipedia source says “they were perhaps even more awesome than as kings.” Coincidently this was about the time I started looking through the textbook too.

When the Tu’i Tonga died, they were buried in the langi – big man made hills surrounded by huge slabs of coral rock, usually in three or more tiered layers. There are 28 around Mu’a, 15 being “monumental,” but we focused mainly on the Paepae’o Tele’a. That’s because it’s the biggest and best preserved. And when you've seen the best, why settle for the rest! The stones are enormous, and legend holds that, through magic, the slabs were moved from ‘Uvea (aka Wallis Island) to Tonga. I am sorry to say that this was probably not the case. The Tu’i Tonga were powerful, but their magic was best adapted to making slaves move the big rocks around after they were quarried from the coral around Tongatapu.

The Paepae’o Tele’a was long thought to hold the body of Tele’a (‘Ulukimata I), a Tu’i Tonga from the sixteenth century who was one of the mightiest. His actual body may not be inside, because legend holds that he drown at sea and his body was lost. That didn’t stop me from taking a quick look while I was there, throwing the archaeological knowledge I gained from dozens of Indiana Jones viewings into practice.

The Paepae’o Tele’a - it's like they started to build a pyramid, and then with a true Tongan attitude decided, "meh, this is high enough," and took a nap.

My class, minus two students who may have skipped the trip, making them lucky this teacher doesn't include beats in his discipline plan! Really though, I don't know if teaching is supposed to be this fun. I look forward to every class because this group is good for a laugh but ready to work, every day.

Waving goodbye to the site, momentarily considering keeping the key for future access, remembering that I got it from the house of one of the most powerful chiefs in Tonga, then heading to the truck, to return the key.

Island Dogs

Good God, I hate them. Hate is a strong word, I know, but I’m just reciprocating their own feelings for me. I wrote that they all got together one day and decided they hate me. And there are only three kinds of dogs in Tonga:

First, there are wild dogs. These dogs don’t just wander the streets, they also hide in the bushes, and they are mangy, feral, ill tempered, and usually run in packs. You know in the bloopers at the end of Talladega Nights Will Ferrel says one of the problems facing America is packs of wild dogs that control most of the major cities? That is Tonga.

Second, there are guard dogs. Theft is high in Tonga, and with so many wild dogs around, a lot of people just throw some scraps of food at them until they start to guard their property. These are the kind I run into most when I’m biking – they always include the road as part of their territory. There is nothing I have found that will pump more adrenalin into your system then turning a corner and hearing three dogs on the other side of a fence growl and foam at the mouth as they begin running in what looks like the start of a race at the track. That’s because Tongan fences do not include working gates, and so seconds later you can bet those dogs will pop out of the yard at sixty miles an hour looking for you. When I ran into several such dogs on my way to the west coast, my bike chain had just jumped into the grove between second and first gear (as it sometimes does on the pothole filled roads). Trying to shift it up with dogs snapping at my ankles was…terrifying. I employed a theory I had been working on – cars in Tonga don’t slow down for dogs, and once a dog gets hurt he realizes that he should walk a little faster crossing the road. I gave the closest, meanest looking dog a solid kick in the nose, taking care not to lose my toes in the process. In that instant he looked right into my eyes and got ten times angrier. My chain finally hopped up to second gear, I immediately shifted it to third, and biked like never before.

The third kind of dog in Tonga is the dead dog. All three smell bad, but this is the only kind that poses no immediate danger to me.

Goofus and Doofus, along with Cat. Obviously I haven’t learned their real names, but these animals (and the dogs’ mother) patrol our apartment and are the only mammals in Tonga (bats included) that like me.

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