Paynesville Press - January 11, 2006


Guest Column

Thanksgiving, volleyball
and centipedes in Tonga

By Dan Starken

October 25, 2005
I'm also working with the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry here in Vava'u, which there's a seemingly endless amount of work to do so at least I'll not be at a loss for things to do. This consists of a variety of things ranging from, surveying a project (planting fruit, timber, and other trees) underway in a neighboring village and writing reports on their progress and assuring all the work is being done, since this project was funded by a grant from the New Zealand High Commission.

Also, they have a variety of computer-related crises and training they want me to do once they found out I worked as a computer programmer back in America. Computer skills here are pretty minimal to non-existent, so I'm comforted by the fact that I'll at least be able to help in some sort of tangible way in that arena, even if my village never makes any money on their vegetable garden.

The only other consistent thing I'm doing is helping to teach a kindergarten class in my village. The kids are easily distracted so it's always a challenge, but they are cute as can be so it's always a joy to go there.

Not much else is new with me. I'm hoping to go camping with some of the other folks from my Peace Corps group (there are three others from my group that are also here in Vava'u, and I see them fairly regularly). Basically we are planning on going out to one of the many tiny islands in the immediate area of the Vava'u island group and camp for a night or two.

It's always an instant reminder of the beauty of the South Pacific every time I get out on the water. Sometimes it's hard to appreciate where I am when I stay in my village all the time (my village is not right on the coast, and there are many tall trees protecting it on all sides so it's not easy to see the ocean from where I'm at).

As far as my health goes, I'm doing very well. I had a little bout of the lazies last weekend. I didn't have much energy to do anything and had a bit of a headache, but it was minor and subsided by Monday so I'm back to feeling well.

It's hard for me to grasp that it's almost November since things have definitely heated up here in the last couple weeks. I'm not sure what the actual temperatures here are. (Nobody seems to know or care, since it's either hot or comfortable here most all year round.)

To me the temps feel like maybe 85 during the day with dewpoints in the 70s. It's funny that you will see more umbrellas on sunny days here than on a rainy day. Tongans don't mind the rain but don't much care for the sun.

November 28, 2005
The Peace Corps folks here in Vava'u had our own Thanksgiving feast on Friday of last week. We were able to get turkeys and stuffing from Nuku'alofa, Tongatapu, and potatoes from New Zealand, along with a variety of other things, so we had a somewhat American Thanksgiving.

Getting decent dairy products here is very difficult. They come from New Zealand, and they are garbage, so I couldn't get my mashed potatoes to taste as good as usual, but it was a welcome change regardless.

Things here have been going fine, though a little out of the ordinary the last two weeks. A men's and women's volleyball team from Nuku'alofa came here two weeks ago and have been running a tournament here in Vava'u for any village that gets a team together. It's been pretty good because most villages' youth (mostly the guys) play volleyball several times a week just for fun, so the team from Nuku'alofa taught them the rules of organized volleyball and officiates all the games. They seem to really enjoy it, even though they've had plenty of net violations (which are of course non-existent in their usual play).

Basically all Tongans love to smash the ball as hard as they can, and they're pretty dang good at it, since almost all of them farm by hand and are in great physical shape (at least the younger guys). So most all of them can jump really high and are strong. Most of them haven't really mastered the skill parts of volleyball though, i.e. passing, digging, blocking. It's amazing how quickly they've picked them up after the team from Nuku'alofa started teaching them two weeks ago; they're still not real good at them, but they're not bad at them anymore.

The tournament has been running Monday-Saturday the past two weeks, usually starting at 2 p.m. and going until 6 p.m. There is a girls class, a guys class two, and guys class one that have been playing. My village (and the two smaller neighboring villages) have a class two team and a class one team together. I haven't really played much volleyball with my village to this point because I've been busy with my different jobs, but when I did play, I didn't really try too hard since it was pickup volleyball and we play on a dirt field with everyone wearing flip-flops or going barefoot.

So I didn't think they probably thought much of my ability to play (not that I'm good or anything, but I've played in a few leagues before so I picked up a few skills at least). So I went out and started practicing one night with them last week (the Mormon church in town has a basketball/volleyball court outdoors with lights, so that's where they practice). I started to play a little harder then, and they invited me to play with them on their class one team. I don't hit as hard as most of them, but then again I don't hit out of bounds as often and can actually dig and pass and block a little bit.

So I ended up playing with them in the tournament last Thursday, and we won pretty handily, not that I had much to do with it. Our guys played well and didn't beat themselves, playing smarter as opposed to the "Tongan way" of trying to kill everything. It was a lot of fun, and it was kind of funny when I walked on the court (there were probably a couple hundred spectators) hearing the gasps from the crowd that a "palangi" (what the Tongans call most any foreigner, especially white people) was playing.

I think the general perception of "palangis" here is that we're among other things, generally smarter than them, due to the perception that all white people are rich. But when it comes to physical endeavors, such as any sort of physical labor or physical exertion, that we are inferior (maybe too strong a word). It doesn't seem all that unreasonable to me since most Tongans physically labor most days of their life, while most palangis don't strain that much physically to maintain our lifestyles.

Another thing about Tongans is they love to laughŠat just about anything. So if a kid is riding down the street on a bicycle and falls off, Tongans will laugh hysterically about it, not really seeming to care all that much that the kid might have gotten scraped up. Likewise, when playing volleyball, if someone smashes a ball and it hits someone, Tongans will roar with laughter. It's just the way it is hereŠthey're not meaning to be malicious; it's just funny to them.

So anyway, when I was playing in the tournament on Thursday, most of the Tongans I'm sure were skeptical at the palangi trying to do something physical. My first time serving, I mishit the ball and it hit the net and fell short on our side and a good part of the crowd starts laughing at me. It was a pretty interesting experience after growing up in the "sportsmanship environment" of the U.S.

Fortunately, it wasn't too traumatic. I think, having pitched for so many years in baseball, I usually could care less what the crowd does or yells. After that I played fairly decent, getting several solo blocks, and towards the end, I started jump-serving and aced a fewŠnot so much as a peep out of the crowd then.

Up until then, the only guys that were jump-serving were the team from Nuku'alofa. It was pretty enjoyable to play some real volleyball and even more so since we won pretty handily. I've been trying to weasel my way out of playing after that, since I feel like if I play, then there's another Tongan from my village who has to sit on the sidelines. I feel like I've played plenty of organized volleyball, so it's a lot better if the Tongans get the chance to play while they have the opportunity, complete with referees.

As luck would have it, I cut up my feet a little bit on Friday, so I've been using that as an excuse to sit out and let the other Tongan play in my place. My health has been pretty good here for the most part, with no major problems. About the worst of it lately has been a few cuts on my feet from various things. I got a cut on my foot from a rock going to the sea a week or so ago; then was playing volleyball in my old village of Mangia, when I got cut by a six-inch piece of metal sticking out of the ground on the volleyball field. Then I got a few more cuts from climbing a coconut tree last Friday.

That's another thing that's surprised plenty of TongansŠthe fact that I can climb a coconut tree and have done so several times. I got my cuts last Friday because I climbed a coconut tree after I'd eaten too much Thanksgiving food and was feeling too lazy to get my technique right. Oh well, lesson learned.

It's pretty cool to be able to climb a coconut tree whenever I get thirsty for something other than rainwater.

Other than that, I'm preparing this week to run a three-week computer workshop for people here at the University of the South Pacific in Neiafu, Vava'u. The people who run this branch of USP wanted to make a little extra money and offer some sort of outreach to the community, so they advertised a computer workshop which I will run. It filled up in about a week, so I'll start that next week.

On Saturday and Sunday of last week, I went out to a couple little islands with a few of the Peace Corps folks here to go camping. It was really nice, save for the fact I was hobbling around because of my feet. There was only one Tongan on the island we camped at, and he was on the other side so we had the place to ourselves for the most part. I stayed on land most of the time because of my feet, but the others went snorkeling and spearfishing (one of the guys speared a four-foot reef shark).

Then on Sunday, I went to another island (a 20-minute boat ride away) that has a village on it and ended up eating at a family's home. It was a pretty good little feast, complete with a whole roasted pig and plenty of the other Tongan mainstays: breadfruit, lu (like spinach leaves but with coconut cream and either chicken, fish, or minced meat), fresh watermelon, 'otai (which is a drink they make out of coconut and fresh fruit (this time watermelon).

The village I went to was very cool. There was only a small dirt walking path going through the village, and all the people were exceptionally kind. I ended up riding back into Neiafu that Sunday evening with the villagers since the pains in my feet made camping a little less then enjoyable. It was about an hour ride with 30 some Tongans on sort of choppy seas, but good regardless.

The new Peace Corps training group arrived last Wednesday here in Vava'u. There's 14 of them, and they seem to be doing okay, though a few of them were sick. It's very interesting to see how they are right now, considering the fact that it wasn't that long ago that everything was still very new to me. This group will be teachers, while our group is youth and small business.

I'm not sure if I wrote or not about my run-ins with the dreaded "molokaus" here in the last few weeks. "Molokau" is the Tongan word for centipede and, they are notorious here for their painful bites. It's really the only critter here in Tonga (save for the sea) that is of any danger at all.

So basically, I got woken up twice in the past few weeks with stinging pains only to discover a centipede had bitten me during the night. The first centipede was around four- to five-inches long and the second one was only two-inches long. The bigger the centipede the more painful the bite.

I didn't catch the first one before he escaped, but I caught the second one and killed him. It basically feels like a sharp persistent pain. The first centipede (the bigger one) bite hurt for a couple hours and the area of the bite swelled up about the size of my fist. (I got that bite on my back). The second one got me in the chest, and it swelled up about the size of a silver dollar and only hurt for an hour or so. I had put my mosquito net up after getting bitten the first time (including tucking it in under my bed), but the second one managed to get inside my mosquito net anyway, so that wasn't too reassuring. It's been a little rough sleeping the past couple weeks, but it's getting easier.

I also was sitting playing solitaire on my floor one evening recently and felt a little tickle on my knee, after lifting it up I saw another centipede (a small one) getting ready to bite me, but I moved in time to avoid it and gave him a good smashing.

Starken is a 1996 PAHS graduate who joined the Peace Corps in July and went to Tonga in the South Pacific.



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