Thursday, November 20, 2014

Ko Hoku Fãmili Tonga (My Tongan Family)

My home-stay family's yard. Mango tree, palm trees, Milise's garden, the pig-pen and ''umu (underground oven) in the back.
It took one night of home-stay for me to learn that roosters do not crow at dawn, when the sun comes up. They crow at four o’clock in the morning, well before the sun comes up; and again at five after four o’clock in the morning; and again at six after; and again and again every couple of minutes until they must have woken every rooster from one side of the island to the other. 
            The roosters would wake the dogs, which would wake the cows, which would wake the goats and sheep, which would wake the church bell-Toller (sounds more like a gong actually), who would wake my host family.
One of my host-family's dogs briefly allowed out in the yard.
Puli and Inu, my host-father and 13 year-old -brother, shouted through paper-thin walls, to Milise and Sioa, my host-mom and 14 year-old -sister, in the next room over, across the narrow hallway. By the time the sun was up, Puli was outside tending the pigs, cows, dogs and ducks; Milise watering her garden; Sioa, cooking breakfast and getting ready for school. Inu was usually still lying in bed, maybe even crying about something already, even though it was barely 6 a.m. I didn’t speak Tongan well enough yet to know what it is that made him upset, but there always seemed to be something.
The plants inside Milise's greenhouse.
Ripening tomatoes in Milise's garden.
On days he was feeling sick—or really just giving a lackluster effort at fighting off a kava-induced hangover—Puli would half-mumble, half-moan Sioa’s name repeatedly, never changing his pitch or tone, until somehow she heard him and responded to whatever request he made.
“Sioa…Sioa…Sioa…”
Not quite the Big-Toehold maneuver or the tone-deaf rendition of “wake up, Sami, wake up. We wish you well, we think you’re swell. Wake up, Sami, wake up!” that I grew up with back home, but same concept. Sort of.

Puli was always apologizing to me for how loud Tongans are. I told him that I was used to it, and that he hasn’t seen anything.
I’m not the only crazy palangi in my real family. But, I am the only palangi in my crazy Tongan family.
Puli taking a nap under the mango tree.

Puli is 5’10” or so, with a round face and eyes that are permanently crinkled at the corners from smiling and laughing all the time. He’s a softy. Especially with Sioa, who he calls his right hand. “Daddy’s girls,” and “Momma’s boys,” are universal.
He’s used to walking around the house without a shirt on, bare stomach hanging out for everyone to see. That was until I came around. When I moved in, he tried to learn to keep his clothes on in the house too. But he’d always slip up. He’d be walking around doing his thing, until he saw me, then he’d panic and start scrambling to find a shirt, towel, curtain, blanket, anything to cover up in front of the palangi.
Puli covering himself up with a spare tropical print shirt while making lu for Sunday 'umu.
He works as a primary school teacher at a government school called Tokomololo, on Tongatapu. When he comes home from school, after working in the bush, he’s still a teacher.
They had a bookshelf lined with donated books set against the wall in the main living room of their home. In the hallway between bedrooms, a worn-out whiteboard rested against the wall, math equations and English phrases scrawled all over it in black dry-erase marker.
A view from outside of their home library.
During the second week of home-stay Puli woke me up at 5:30 one morning to tutor me in Tongan.
“You’re gonna be best in your class!” he said as he proceeded to overwhelm me with Tongan grammar points that were far too difficult to wrap my head around that early in the morning.
That never happened again.
 
Puli, Inu and Sioa using the whiteboard to study at night in the hallway between their bedrooms.
Milise was my mom away from my mom. She fried my breakfasts and boiled my dinners, overseeing how much I eat at every meal, occasionally grabbing chunks of bread from Sioa and giving them to me because “she was already two of me.”
When I stayed home from training because I was sick throwing up all night and morning, she made me stay in bed, giving me hot tea and a heating pad to settle my stomach, and wrapping a shawl around my head to protect me from the dangers of the cool breeze outside.
She worried. Like my real mom, I’m sure. Maybe even more. I was a half-hour late coming home from training one day because a couple of the other PCTs and I had stopped to hangout on our walk home. She called ‘Elenoa, our training manager, Taua, my language instructor, and at least two other home-stay parents asking where I was. I hadn’t had to report back to anyone in so long that I hadn’t even thought to let her know.
Milise using thread made from pandanus leaves to weave a new ta'ovala.

At around 6’0”, Milise towers over me, and stands taller than or even with most people I’ve met here so far. If her size didn’t already give her a formidable presence, her personality would. She’s tough, with a resting b*tch-face that could compete with the best of them.
Tough. But, not cold.
In social settings she could out-drink, out-sing, out-laugh anyone. You could hear her outbursts of hoots and cackles from across several rooms. Especially if there was karaoke involved. 
On the morning I was leaving for ‘Eua, she showed up at the wharf to send me off with a fresh-made lei around my shoulders and a tight squeeze for good luck. She was already making plans to visit in December.
Sioa tip-toeing over the coral to go for a swim in the ocean.
Sioa was the little sister I never had. She has her mom’s height, her dad’s round face, and beautiful black hair that falls in a slight wave all the way past her butt. In many ways, she is a lot like teenagers in the U.S. She would take somewhere around 4.7 million selfies each day using my iPhone, which I pretty much didn’t see from the time PST started until it ended two months later. Nothing was just mine anymore when I moved in. Some of Sioa’s favorite things were my iPhone, my laptop, my camera, and my ukulele.
Sioa and I on our way to the beach. One of maybe 100 selfies taken that day.
She spent what seemed like hours in front of the mirror, borrowing my mascara to do her makeup, doing and re-doing her hair a dozen times until every bump was perfectly smooth, and otherwise preening in every way possible to look perfect to go out in public.
We had dance parties, movie nights—some “girls only,” kicking Inu out, and some including him—and would lay in my bed together talking about our families and what we wanted to be when we grew up. She would wait for me almost every night to eat dinner, where we’d sit at the table gossiping about boys and the latest scandals in Nukunuku. On Saturdays, we’d do the laundry together. Or, well, she would do the washing and I would watch, only becoming useful when it came to the folding. We’d sit on the floor of the living room folding the whole family’s clothes, comparing the ways things are in Tonga to the way they are in the U.S.
Inu and Sioa selfie game strong.
Inu, much like my real brothers, only liked me when no one else was around. In public, he’d usually just pretend like he didn’t know me.
He was always getting into trouble for being fakapikopiko (lazy) or not listening. Some days he’d come sprinting home from the neighbors’ houses, busting through the door and leaning against the wall to catch his breath. I didn’t always know why, but at least one time I know he’d gotten into a fight with a kid from the next road over whose dad had chased him all the way home.
He hated going to church and would do just about anything to avoid it, for which he’d get a nice beating later on. When he did go, he’d distract himself by playing with pebbles or generally misbehaving. His ta’ovala was never on right. He’d fasten it haphazardly with the kafa rope, so that it was crooked in the back, just barely hanging on.
Sometimes he’d just straight up leave early.
 “Inu is so bad, he doesn’t listen,” Milise would say to me several times a week at least.
He is so smart, though. He likes reading about Greek mythology and would sometimes look over my shoulder when I was reading the whole The Lord of the Rings series. 
For two straight months, after listening to it on my phone, he walked around the house belting out the song “Let it Go,” from Disney’s Frozen. You could hear him singing it in the shower, in the yard, and sitting at the table as he did his homework. All day, every day.

The kid eats like a grown man twice his age. He’d wolf down an entire loaf of bread in one sitting. And that would just be his appetizer. The last morning of home-stay I challenged him to an eating contest. I beat him, but only because it was for speed, not to see who could eat the most. Obviously I set the rules, because he would have destroyed me otherwise. He already challenged me to a rematch in two years, before I go back to the U.S.
“I am looking forward to it,” he said when I was walking out the door to leave.
Inu's face after I beat him in our final eating contest.
He couldn’t make it to our Swearing-In ceremony because of end of the school year exams, but when it was over, Milise handed me a woven armband made out of thread from pandanus leaves. She told me he’d made it in school and had wanted to give it to me.
Vakamisini hanging out in her porch domain.

Part of me thinks that Vakamisini is the only one from home-say who will really miss me. She is the family cat. White fur with black spots, and fierce as a jungle cat. She’s a hunter. I’ve seen her leap from the table to the ceiling of the porch to ensnare a lizard in her jaws of death. Poor little boiiii was a goner before he even knew what hit him.
She wasn’t supposed to be allowed indoors, but she’d sneak in anyway to sit on my lap while I ate my breakfast, trying to snatch up whatever she could get while I wasn’t looking. When I couldn’t finish the bowls of porridge laid out for me that were bigger than my head, she’d help me out. Before I came, no one but Inu called her anything other than pusi, the Tongan word for cat. She earned the name Vakamisini, which means “motorboat,” because of the way she would purr when I’d pet her. It was like she’d never gotten that kind of lovin’ before.
Hanging with the pusi.
I made it my goal to become a part of the family, not just treated as a guest. I tried to learn to be Faka-Tonga. I road with Puli to the bush. I went to church every Sunday dressed in puletahas and ta’ovalas. I ate me’akai Faka-Tonga (Tongan food), and I often ate it like Tongans do: with my hands, and way more than one person should be able to eat at one time.
What I got was something in the middle.
             For the first four weeks or so, I was never allowed to do chores or to help out in any way. I couldn’t cook my own meals, do my own laundry or wash any dishes.  When I made my own bed after the sheets had been washed, Milise scolded me, saying I should have waited for her to do it.
            I slowly worked my way up to doing big things though. By week five I poured my own cereal. Week six, I washed some dishes and helped Sioa fold some laundry. Week seven, I scraped the insides out of a couple of coconuts to feed to the ducks. Serious moves were being made. I think if I’d been able to stay another few weeks, I might have been able to dress myself for church on Sunday like the fully capable adult that I’ve been for the past four years.
          Probably not, though. Putting a big ta’ovala on by yourself is hard.
Puli doing the laundry outside.
The bush knife and hakalo I used to scrape out the coconuts to feed the ducks.
             We did share everything though. Including all of my techy devices, and most importantly, food. They helped me navigate the language and culture. They told me what to wear and when to stand and sit in church—yes, I even messed that up. They laughed at me when I pronounced words wrong or accidentally said bad words. They laughed at me even harder when I tried to tau’olunga (traditional Tongan dance). I never had to be alone, if I didn’t want to be.
            I was also never left alone, even if I did want to be.
            They told me that one of the reasons why they treated me that way was because they hoped that if they ever came to visit in the U.S, they’d be treated the same way. I hope to make that happen one day.

            The other reasons are all just part of what it means to be Faka-Tonga.
           
For Your Entertainment:
1) "Let it Go" cover by Inu Vaiagnina:


2) Dance party featuring Sioa and I:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ismx1jQz7Fs&feature=youtu.be

3) Me beating Inu in our goodbye eating contest:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvBIERwzalE&feature=youtu.be

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