Tongan Haircut

My last. In the 5+ months I've been here in Tonga, I've gotten two haircuts. When I first arrived I was using my clippers, but later I wanted to let my hair grow in a bit. I got a haircut that was ok...just ok...and then recently I was looking like a resident of the Mushroom Kingdom and went in for a second cut. Which circles back to my opening statement.

There are no barber shops here, just stylists, with names like "Barbie's Hair Salon" that don't inspire much confidence in this Ken. I'm also a palangi, with a fine, soft, free-flowing head of hair. Quite different from the hair on your average Tongan (usually thick and curly). Which might explain the frequent Tongan dialogs between stylists when I sit down in the chair (that is, when it's not faka'ofo'ofa palangi, which means "handsome white man" and is one of the few phrases of Tonga I can recognize). But this time, the stylist changed twice before someone started in with the scissors. That should have been my cue to go, but I figured I was committed once I had that towel around my neck. So my real moment of panic came halfway through the cutting when the stylist told me something to the effect of, "my brother cuts men's hair, but he isn't here...but I am trying my best." And since I said I wanted to keep most of the top length, I left looking pretty much like Guile from Street Fighter.

No, I will not add a photo (of myself, but here's Guile to help you visualize). But I will stop getting my hair cut. I assume my beard already helps me resemble the "Canadian lumberjack" from the fantasies of many Tongan ladies, so I'm letting my hair go wild and untamed to match it. Something I have attempted before. At least until it's Mickey O'Neil length, and then I'll reevaluate...or get it cut in roughly five months when I go to New Zealand.

Midyear and Canada Day

I haven't forgotten about the blog, but there hasn't been much of note and I'm determined not to fill this site with rambling day-by-day stuff. That being said, I'll tell you some rambling week-by-week stuff! We just finished midyear exams at the school. My kids (I always call them "my kids" which makes the other teachers laugh, but for some reason it comes out of my mouth more naturally that "my students"; I think because I'm still getting used to the idea that I'm a teacher), did fairly well. Not stellar (well a few did stellar), but because of the way it's all set up, their midyear mark just determines if they can sit the final and has no role whatsoever in their actual final mark.

So with that in mind, they all scored high enough to sit the final if they choose to, and we've still got two more terms to prepare for that. Essay writing was the hardest for most of them, which is no surprise considering English is a second language. I remember French being tough, and I don't think I had to write a bunch of essays on historical topics in my grade 10 and 11 French exams. The most frustrating part is that it's really cultural in Tonga to "save face," and avoid being embarrassed. As a result, I have to work extra hard to get the kids to come forward with questions, because they'd rather not know that risk being embarrassed showing that they don't know.

Canada Day is next week (I'll beat you all to it by 18 hours!), and I've prepared a "lecture" (no note taking required) for my students. The Simpsons joke, "It took the children 40 minutes to locate Canada on the map" is probably an all too frightening reality in my classroom. As previously mentioned, people assume if I'm not from the United States and I say I'm from further north, I must be Norwegian. My "not boring parts of Canadian history" Canada Day class includes French explorers who thought they had discovered China, or at least thought a great lake was the Pacific ocean, the war of 1812, and the Summit Series. I mention hockey enough in class that I thought it would be fun to throw that in, especially for the class where we're studying the Cold War. Keeping in mind that I have just 45min, I decided to forgo a lot of other certainly not boring highlights like Vimy Ridge and Juno beach and focus on some more "fun" events. Remembering my favourite Heritage Minutes helped a lot! So if you do nothing else on Canada Day, be sure to take comfort in the fact that I taught a bunch of island kids, who seemingly never heard of Canada before I showed up at their school, my own skewed and glossed over version of our history!

In the Meantime

If there's something you can depend on in Tonga, it's holidays (and taro). Between Tongan holidays, Australian holidays, New Zealand's holidays, Catholic holidays, and just plain days off of school, I have a day off almost every week. Last week was the March to Parliament (day off), Ex-Student's Day (day off), and today is some Catholic holiday (so, day off). In fact, in the next seven weeks, I will be working for about two of them. The next two weeks are mid-term exams, during which I have to go to school for just one day to invigilate my form 6 students (the ones from the picture). After that, back for two weeks of school, and then three weeks off for the midterm break (I've already booked my flight to Ha'api).

Just sharing a little insight into island living. When I was maybe 10 (? Mom and Dad would know) I used to have a t-shirt that said BEACH BUM with a crocodile wearing sunglasses. I had no idea how true that would become (though my sunglasses are way cooler than that crocodile's 80s pair). I've taken a bunch of pictures around Tonga in the last couple weeks that I'll post, but in the meantime I though I'd just put up a link to an article I just read that basically explains everything that's been going on in Tonga's recent history, and the topic that's on everyone's tongues right now:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/a-party-fit-for-a-king-ndash-but-not-needy-tonga-839606.html

Geckos

There are no snakes, there are no alligators, there are no crocodiles, there are no snapping turtles, (thank God, because I’ve biked through many a mangrove swamp). There are no native mammals except the fruit bat, and it doesn’t count. But there are geckos, geckos, and geckos. And geckos. All sizes, all colours, united by the exact same little gecko turds they leave everywhere. They cling to the walls and ceiling like Spider-man, and you pray that two of them never find each because they’ll issue forth ear-piercing…just awful…war cries before they fight to the death (meaning until one of them lets go). They don’t bite, but they do leave their tail behind if you get too close.

One in particular lives near my food cupboard, eating every ant that tries to reach my honey pot. I wasn’t sure what to think of them when I got to Tonga, until I saw one eat a mosquito in an amazingly quick movement, huzzah!

The honey gecko admiring a bit of fancy Tongan electrical work. Despite his usefulness in keeping away ants, I often find him licking the side of the honey container, making him just as guilty.

A gecko hanging out on the screen of my window, completely oblivious to the fact that a simple flick of my finger would send him flying...not that I would do that...

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.