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| 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.
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| 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. |
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| Puli doing the laundry outside. |
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| 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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