Saturday, January 16, 2010

TIME FOR A NEW DICTIONARY



TIME FOR A NEW DICTIONARY
Living in Tonga has certainly jarred my sense of which-way-is-up. This island culture is definitely down-under, being a six-hour plane ride from New Zealand. The stars look somewhat different here. The water goes down the drain counter-clockwise rather than clockwise as in the northern hemisphere. Though I’m tempted to call it “backward,” I realize that it’s just third world. I remember living in England for a year right after college. I saw gadgets and sociological happenings that were ten years past in the US. Here I’d say it’s more like a hundred years ago in America. Sometimes I feel like I am in a Little House book, and other times I feel like I’m in the most beautiful, untouched place on earth; and other times I feel like just regular living is camping.
We live on a Youth With A Mission campus called Lafa Lafa, located on the southern tip of the main island of Tonga. Our home is a beautiful, well-built structure that a German family expanded from the normal two-bedroom hut or fale that is common in Tonga. The home is an answer to my husband’s prayers, who asked God for nice accommodations for his family prior to our leaving our lecture phase in Kona. God definitely did that. But it’s what is around and part of this campus and island that throws me. I’ll try to explain it so that friends back home in the Northwest can grasp what it’s like for us as we swim through layers of culture adjustment.
The campus seemed at first to me like a retreat center with little cabins around. Near our home are three little portable-sized classrooms with little decks and brightly-colored plywood exteriors. These are for the little Christian school that is on the campus (which is currently on summer break here in December). Very close by our home are more small fale’s, which I thought were more classrooms or out-buildings for the campus, but they’re not. They are homes where young men live, part of the Team Extreme ministry run by our friends Lynn(American) and 'Ale (Tongan). I realized that I needed to change my definition of home when I saw young men going in and out of these structures. I had to keep changing my definition of home as we wandered into nearby villages, offering to pray for people or to invite them to our outreach meeting that Friday night. I’d approach a home with a Tongan brother, and we’d knock on the door. Apparently, it’s not considered rude to wander around peoples’ homes in their yard trying to find them. One such day we found a young man asleep in what I thought was a fort of some kind. Wrong. This is not some tinkering by teen-agers trying to get a touch of freedom from their parents’ place. This is a “bedroom” made of corrugated steel roofing softly lined with cardboard. The floor was dirt with a very old rug over it, and the walls were open framing with cardboard stuck in for insulation. The “bed” this young man climbed out of was a table with a foam pad on it. His “kitchen” was a hot-pot for tea. Under his bed was a huge, rolled up tapa cloth, which is a type of matting made by the women from bark of the Ironwood tree, and then dyed with natural dyes from the Tongan soil. I have seen kitchens without stoves under a tree lined by 3 feet high “walls” of the same tin roofing. Inside will be a chair or rock to sit on, and a fire over which 1-2 women may be cooking. Wow. Front entryways, even of nice homes, will have 3 foot-high little concrete walls in front of them that you have to step over when you go to the door. Quite necessary. Keeps the pigs out or in, whatever the case may be.

Besides the term “house,” I now have a whole new definition for “clean” and “safe.” There are very few seatbelts in this culture. I’ve seen a working one once when I caught a ride with a gal to the radio show we were doing on the local Christian radio station. Usually, our family (including our boys ages 7 and 10) climb onto our team bus where a boy will sit next to a parent for stories or singing wherever we’re going. No seatbelts there. And the bus door will be open the whole time, feet from where my 7 year old is sitting. Two nights ago we crossed the island for that outreach evening and had 35 people in the bus that is to hold 25. Two small children were crouched up on the dash board, smooshed against the front window. We cringe and hold our tongues—as well as our boys, tightly.
In this humidity, I have a new definition for “damp” and “dry.” I also have new words for being sick. They all range at this point along the stomach-flu end of things, but there comes a point in you when you know that dehydration or weakness is setting in, and you wave the white flag and declare yourself “sick.” I did this yesterday. It was wonderful just relaxing instead of going out for street evangelism. Though my teammates returned with wonderful stories of what God did, I was able to relax in a longer (cold) shower, and to nap for a good long time. “Relax” and “cold shower” wouldn’t have been near each other in my old dictionary, but they are here in Tonga.
“Going shopping” no longer means a nice, predictable, tight little journey. It’s instead an adventure I can bank on from finding the right shops to the bus breaking down to the city bus getting in a wreck with me on it!
Finally, “Tongan” to me used to mean someone with dark skin who was larger framed from Tonga. They probably would be someone who enjoyed traditional dancing, and may not have the same sense of time that westerners have. I have found that “Tongan” is someone who can “TIHOO!” like the rest of them in excitement. He is someone who can and does enjoy laughing, has a natural shyness, but when s/he gets going, they are the life of the party. Tongan is no longer an unknown face. It is Mata, Mapue, Siddatha, and Sunny. It is Sepho and Nive and their 11 other siblings; it is smiling faces, frequent laughter, ingenuity with their hands, and somewhat of a knowledge of Jesus. Tongans are friends from a new dictionary, yet to be completed.

THINGS I LOVE ABOUT TONGA













I love the color of the skin of the children, and the way they call out to me when I go for walks on our campus. I love the singing of just about every sector of society. When vehicles go by on the road, they usually are vans or trucks full of people, all of whom are singing at the top of their lungs. I love how people don’t seem to need a radio or ipod—a guitar and a friend for harmony anywhere anytime will do.
I love how the people all drive slowly here. No one is in a hurry to get anywhere or to accomplish loads of things. I love how the people aren’t obsessed with looking good, and how being thin doesn’t seem to be on anyone’s mind. I love the bakeries that bake fresh bread every day. We buy it every three days or so, and slice it up for lunch or breakfast. I love the way our vegetable garden (planted prior to our getting here by a German woman) grew to harvest stage in six weeks. I am regularly harvesting the fruit of her labors. I love how it is windy here all the time. Though people have to burn their own garbage and there often lingers a smoky smell, it is not stifling like the Philippines as the smoke is whisked away quickly by that wind. I love how the culture has kept many of its traditions, including women keeping themselves covered in a skirt or lava lava. It’s amazing how holidays are centered for everyone around church rather than a party or a bottle. Though the churches aren’t perfect, everyone goes and hears and participates.
I love how the queen of Tonga hasn’t just given lip-service to wanting to “adopt” the people in the handicapped home; she has made each one of them her children. She brings them personal gifts, pays all the bills, and invites the residents to be her VIP’s when she has to make an appearance at something. I love our home in Tonga, with the leveler windows with screens, the Tongan wood cabinets, and the much space and rooms! I love the yard that God picked out for me here: complete with everything that was in my Hawaiian garden back home as well as things that almost seemed transplanted from my yard: three rose bushes and a honeysuckle. I never even saw a rose bush in Hawaii, having been to three different islands in that state. Yet here, 21 hours ahead of the Portland area, this former City of Roses gardener has pink flora bunda on the front corners of her lanai!
I love the men and their strong dances they do, the chants and “items” everyone does at schools at any event, and the women’s tapa cloths. I like snorkeling here, with coral unlike any I have seen, and tiny cobalt blue fish! I love the unassuming way the people have here, and their laid-backness coupled with effusive humor.
I love the beauty of this land, and how every morning when you awake it is clear and sunny. I like how I can go for a run in the early morning or for a walk at dusk with my boys, always in a t-shirt and shorts or a skirt and we’re warm enough! Though the land is fairly flat, the big sky is so beautiful. The clouds tend to be stacked cumulus ones that are rosy-tipped with sun rays stretching out past them. It’s like God is smiling down on us here in Tonga.