The Friendly Islands, Tonga

What a shock it was to approach the island of Tongatapu, the largest of the over 170 Tongan islands, and see that it is flat as a pancake!  After the four incredible volcanic islands we had sailed into so far, I didn't expect this to have a highest elevation of 213 ft.  I guess I wasn't paying enough attention to Cecelia and Bill's letters when they were here on a CES mission over a decade ago.  The island is made of a limestone base formed from uplifted coral and it has around 75, 000 residents, or 70% of the population of the Kingdom of Tonga.  It is the only South Pacific nation headed by a monarch, Tupou IV.  The capital city, Nuku'alofa, is just off this little dock and has a population of around 24,000 (and at least two fabric stores).

The Royal Palace as seen from the ship.

When you're the King, you get to have your picture on all the money.

Tonga is often referred to as the Friendly Islands, and that was certainly our experience.  These dancers came to welcome us and were accompanied by the Police band.  They came back to wave us off at the end of the day and thanked us for our visit and the benefit it had been to their economy.  

Here is our guide, Manase.  He told us this was only the second tour he had guided.  The tourism industry is just beginning to bud--in 2016 eight cruise ships came to visit, where as 16 came in 2017. He is LDS and went to the Liahona High School.  I told him that Cecelia and Bill had been senior missionaries and he remembered Bill.  He told us this is summer vacation for the school children, which is why they could commandeer all the school buses in town to shepherd the 870 Viking Sun tourists around on their excursions.  He answered questions about the life and culture here.  It is a country which is developing more in some ways than others.  For example, the main source of water is rainwater collected in barrels, but there is a very small solar electricity array built when high school students took their science project idea to Dubai and got the necessary backing to build it.

Our excursion took us to "Ancient Tonga" a mini Polynesian Cultural Center. 

 We were welcomed with the traditional Kava Ceremony.  Kava is made by mixing the powdered root of the pepper plant with water.  Reportedly, it makes your mouth numb and is a relaxant.  We were not among those who volunteered to participate in the ceremony, so we can't verify that.

After the welcoming Kava Ceremony, we were
entertained with dancing and drumming.




















The making of Tapa cloth from the Paper Mulberry tree was demonstrated.  The bark of these trees which are less than 2" in diameter is stripped off in one smooth motion.  The inner layer is dried in the sun, then soaked in water overnight.  It is then beaten with a square or flat mallet until the fibers have spread and flattened into a thin cloth.  If a larger cloth is desired, another strip can be added by gluing with cassava (tapioca) root and continuing to pound them together.  Designs are painted on the finished tapa using dye made from trees such as the mangrove.  Mat making uses the pandanus leaves which are boiled, set in the sea to bleach, and dried in the sun before being woven.  Mats are worn by the men around their waists and called ta'ovala.  The women wear a kiekie also made from the pandanus leaves and are sometimes decorated with coconut shells.

Volunteers from our group model the traditional ta'ovala and kiekies.








I bought this 28" X 16" tapas cloth backed with a mat at an outdoor handicraft stall that had been set up on the dock.  The 15 USD I paid for it seemed like an insult to the woman who spend hours on her knees making it, but that was the quoted price.



The group also demonstrated cooking in an umu--an earth oven.  Chunks of chicken meat, onion, and some kind of leaves were wrapped in banana leaves to cook in the umu.  At the end of their performance, they shared the resulting food with us.









The theme of Friendly Islands was also exemplified by the set of elders I met in Nuku'alofa.  Elder Burrus, on the left, is from Boise, Idaho and Elder Lei is a native Tongan.  The LDS church is second only to the Methodist church in membership and on our drive around the island, we saw meetinghouses every few miles--we lost count of how many.  A very high percentage of the schools are run by the churches, Methodist, Mormon, and others.  It was the early Christian missionaries who codified the language and educated the people.  The literacy rate is now about 98%.

In addition to a visit to the landing place of Captain Cook, we were taken to see the Ha'amonga, billed as the Tongan version of Stonehenge.

Our drive through the rural areas proved that agriculture is the basis of the economy for the island.  But, as when Bill and Cecelia were here, the greatest export is the Tongan people themselves.  There are more Tongans living elsewhere than in their homeland.  Many of the expats send money back to their families here and provide an important source of monetary support.