Tonga National Canoe Festival October 1 - 13th, 2007

The Tonga National Canoe Festival is a youth project I am working on with the Tonga National Youth Congress.

The project's main focus is to revive the almost lost art of Tonga canoe carving. We are bringing together 6 master canoe carvers native to Tonga to teach 30 youth to carve a traditional Tongan canoe. There are 5 teams with 6 youth each. Each team represents one of Tonga's island groups: Tongatapu team, 'Eua team, Ha'apai team, Vava'u team, and a combined Niuas team. We will be documenting the whole event from the aquiring of the wood to the launch of the freshly carved canoes on the final day of the festival and the youth interactions with the elder master carvers throughout.

I will soon post photos of our trip to aquire the wood with our head master carver. I am excited about this project as it gains momentum up to October.

Here are the photos:
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/vanessa.tuione/TongaCanoeFestival

Riding the bus in Tonga

FAKA'UHA TIME!!! = RAIN BATH

Highlights from Diane’s Birthday:

For Photos go to: http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/vanessa.tuione/DianeSBirthday

When we were playing an ALL PLAY round of PICTIONARY and the word was “path”, the palangi player drew a path through the woods and the Tongan player drew a shower with soap and water.

When playing PICTIONARY, the word being “handicap”, the Tongan player drew a stick figure and crossed out the forehead and their Tongan teammate immediately knew the word was “handicap”.

The nicknaming of the Tongan food and the palangi food:
Lemon meringue pie = keke koa = soap sud cake, it seems funnier in Tongan
Brownies = keke pelepela = mud cake, ditto
Faikakai from Talafo’ou = Cloggers! (the explanation would gross you out)

The Grub!
Fane’s lu sipi
Lars’ famous brownies
Diane’s sangria
Sophie’s keesh
Maikolo’s lemon meringue pie made especially for Diane
The “this is why we love” papaya from the Talafo’ou crew
Good try on Vanessa’s attempt to re-create the kumala/sweet potato salad from Elaine’s birthday but it wasn’t the same. Will try again.

The birthday wishes to Diane from far away friends:
Elaine & Fatai, Randi & Filo and Martin

When auntie Fane offered her 8 year old niece a cup of sangria and instructed her niece not to tell her mom and to get ready to get drunk.

Ahhh George bringing back memories of the old days…
George asking Nesa afterwards for a cup of coffee especially made for herself when Nesa doesn’t drink coffee.
George watching two movies back to back (the second one by himself) after everyone left and during the second movie falling asleep sitting up on a kitchen chair in the middle of the room.

First experience with Sex Ed in Tonga

Very…yeah. If I was a parent I would not want this woman teaching my kids Sex Ed. I see the other side of the story about why Tongan parents are very reluctant to allow Sex Ed to be taught in schools. Then again, parents definitely do not teach their kids at home and Sex Ed is needed. This facilitator in particular needs to be screened again for more training. She is a Tongan facilitator who works with the Red Cross and I assume she leads Sex Ed classes regularly. She led our session partly in Tongan and partly in English.

I had a number of problems with her presentation.

Problem #1 The numerous uses of the F-word in place of using the phrase “have sex”. The phrase she used in her broken English was “get a ‘F’”. (The abbreviations are mine not hers.)

Problem #2 Telling a class participant that she can tell how far he has gone by the questions he asks. (At the conclusion of the class this participant is the first she approached with the box of free condoms.)

Problem #3 Asking the class who has used a condom before and singling out the males, prompting them to answer.

Problem #4 Having each member of the class feel the “rough rider” condom on the plastic penis while making exclamations like “Nice!” or “Ouch!” each time the guys touched it.

Problem #5 Poking the air with the plastic penis and then preceding to make noises and expressions to mimic as if she was enjoying the moment.

Funny joke & #6 After explaining to us how to properly use and discard a condom she pours a little bit of someone’s coffee into the demo condom to simulate the now “used condom”, knots it up and tells us now you can toss it in the trash or save it in your scrapbook “as a museum”.

I have a new roommate from Japan!

Her name is Tomo, short for Tomomi. She is a Japanese volunteer (JICA) who will be in Tonga for two years. It’s Japan’s equivalent to US Peace Corps. She is assigned to work on HIV/AIDS education with the youth office where I work.

The photo is of one of our many sleep overs. Tomo, Diane and Latai in Tomo's room.

I have learned a few things about Japan so far which I will share with you now.

Tomo is from Nagoya which is the third largest city in Japan, about 6 hours from Tokyo by car and 2 hours by bullet train. Wow, wouldn’t a bullet train from LA to SF be great? Tomo says it travels about 300 miles per hour at maximum speed. There are 125 million people in Japan. (300 million in the US) Tomo tells me there is some diversity in the major cities but nothing like what she hears about the US major cities. There is a Toyota factory near Nagoya where a lot of Brazilians and South Americans live near and work.

Anyway, I am going to have a good time learning a little bit of Japanese while with Tomo and together we will learn Tongan. I really enjoy these cultural exchanges, except for when they are annoying. But, I know this cultural exchange with Tomo will be very enjoyable.

The only thing weird thing that I have encountered so far from living with Tomo is the toilet seat sweater. I am not talking about the toilet lid, but the seat. It has a sweater on it. Different, but it is warm. I just never occurred to me to put something on the toilet seat to make it warm. I heard about heated toilet seats in Japan now I know from what those evolved.

“Where’s the Miko?”

One of my acquaintances here in Tonga up until today thought I was Mexican. Today he asked me why is my last name is Tui’one. He was surprised to hear that my dad is Tongan from Vava’u and was even more surprised when I told him my mom was Tongan also, from Kolofo’ou. He told me, “I thought you were a Miko. Whenever I don’t see you I ask, where’s the Miko?”