I am sitting in a dockside restaurant in Auckland now, having successfully managed the first leg of my return trip. The mussels here are humongous. It is mid day and I made it to my hostel. My flight doesn't leave until tomorrow night at 7:40, so I have a lot of time to kill. Auckland is another beautiful harbor city, and has 1/4 of the whole population of New Zealand. Every city I have been to on this trip has been a harbor town. Perth, Sydney, Wellington, Nuku'alofa, and now Auckland. My passport now has three spaces left for stamps. I will have to get extra pages before our trip to Liverpool.
OK back to yesterday. As I was saying I am more disappointed that I didn't get better footage of the dancing at the feast, because the costumes were so drastically more interesting. They were hand made and each was different, woven from green leaves of some plant. They also had splashes of other colors mixed in. The outfits at the dinner dance were simple costumes, flowery blouses and grass or matt skirts. And they never did the sit down dance I had been waiting for. I am hoping there are versions of it on the DVD I bought. The live music was great, and some of the dances, surprisingly a number of the male dances were more engaging than I expected. I will look at the footage I took at the feast and see if any of those movies (off of my still camera) are worth while.
So back to the school. I was glad I did it. It was weird, talking to a group of students about my life in theater when they had never seen theater in their life. Lyndsey's daughter was in the class, so she actually watched my video twice. After class Susan, the teacher, introduced me to the principal, and we discussed some how the experience I had is a problem with alot of their material. The books they use are often from Britain or America, and many of the situations described have nothing to do with Tongan life. So the teachers have to explain alot outside of the books, or alter the assignments so they are more appropriate.
I started to walk back to town, and Ranu (not Gna'u, as I was calling her before) said her brother would be back in 1/2 an hour to pick her up, so if I wanted a ride. But I wanted to walk. Ina ny case they passed me as I was walking later and gave me a lift back to town. I decided I wanted to have one more swim before I left this place, so I packed up and headed across the island on my bike again to the far beach. I again got lost, but found my was to another great beach. Very similar to the other ones, with a tall break of coral reef protecting the inner swimming area. I was walking around on the coral, and in this one deep cove there were some brilliantly blue fish with an orange stripe. I so wish I had a mask so I could look at them. Instead they remained beautiful blue blurs under the water's surface. I swam for 30 minutes, then rode to Tavita's house. They were relaxing on the dock, and I sat down with them. Eba brought out some juice. Tavita went and caught a chicken, and they asked if I liked chicken. I said yes, but I was going to the dance tonight, so could the chicken be ready in two hours? they suggested I come back after and eat then. While we are having this conversation, Tavita is holding the rooster by his wings on the dock in front of me. We agree to that. Teki wants me to take down some information. We have talked about me sponsoring Tavita, who wants to come to America for his daughter's birthday. Sponsoring means writing a letter on behalf of a person so they can obtain a visa. So Tika calls his daughter out, who speaks the best english of all of them. I ask her for an address here that I could send things, as well as a list of all of their names. She writes all of this down, as well as the info I needed for the sponsor letter. While she is doing this, Tavita takes the chicken around the corner. I can't see him, but I can see the group of kids watching him, then there is a load Thwak! snd the kids all jerk and graon to the sight of him beheading the rooster.
When the daughter is finished writing, I tell Tika that if I am to come back here after the dancing, I should go and say goodbye to Lyndsey and her family. I then proceed to leave on my bike, and as I am driving down the road there is Tavita, holding the headless rooster and starting to pluck him. We shake hands and I go.
Head home, call Lyndsey, and Ebon comes to pick me up. Lyndsey has a friend over named Jo who is another NZ expat. I talk about Wellington,, and she rants about how bad Te Papa is doing and how it is badly managed. I later understand that she is an artist, and figure that most of her miff is with the fact that the center opened and concentrated on bringing in international art shows, instead of showing local artists, like her. I had given the Robert Smithson salt to Ranu at the school, so now I explained what I would like to happen if possible. It seems like a lot of people drive their personal yachts out here, then want to just fly home, so they hire a local to drive their yacht back to their home town (Austalia, NZ). So Lyndsey will keep her ears open, and when that happens next, she will get the person to dump the salt for me on the Minervan reef. I also prepared a postcard, so that when the person dumps the salt, they can write down the date, time and weather, then send it back to me when they get back to Tonga. Let's see if it happens.
We talked a bit more, then I had to go to the show. Ebon drove me with all the kids. I told them how the fisherman fishes. i told them I had stayed out on the prisoner's island. They seemed interested and a little put off. They sometimes work with a group that puts on skits to educate the locals about enviromental issues and such, and here I am going around encouraging bad environmental practices, and staying where I didn't belong. But Ebon was also intrigued by how Tavita did it, so I filled him in on what I knew. It was a little awkward, but was OK. I asked them if they would be interested in possibly helping me transcribe and translate some of the conversations I had recorded. So when I dump these sound files onto my computer, if they are good enough I will email it io them and hopefully they can tell me a little of what was said.
Next was the dancing show, which I have already described. I then got a taxi to Tavita's. This was the first time I had been there at night and they had bundles of christmas lights that they plugged in around the property for light. I sat and ate the rooster, which was delicious though the white meat was very dry, and they didn't give me something to drink until half way through the meal. Again they had three times as much food as I could eat placed out for me. We talked some more, then The daughter brought out this giant piece of art that they gave to me. They are originally made by people to give to the Royal family when they return from trips. This one was given to Tavita's mother, and now they were giving it to me. It is humongous and beautiful. I want to call it a Taro cloth. When you walk around the streets of Tonga, you always herar this hollow hammering. I first thought it was construction, but later found out it is women beating Taro bark on hollow logs. They pound the bark and make these giant sheets, that they then paint. It is literally hundreds of hours of work to make one of these. I haven't unfolded it, but it seems to be about 2x6 meters in size. What do I do with it, attach it to a wall in my basement space? I thanked them over and over, we took a family portrait, then they drove me home.
I packed until 1 am, tried to get the alarm clock widget Peter had sent me to work to no avail, then set my phone and had a restless night, paranoid again that I would miss my plane. Tavita showed up at 4:45, an hour early. i suggested we go ahead and go to the airport, but he said he would sleep in the van and I should just wake him in an hour. I did, we went, and as we drove to the airport the sun was rising. There were more people out and about than I expected. People just trying to avoid the heat. There were a number of joggers at 6AM, again suprising because exercise isn't a common Tongan thing to do. When we got to the airport the sun was up and Tavita helped me with my bags. I gave him the sandles and radio I had bought, as well as my NY Public Radio bag and $50 for Petrol. We shook hands and he left. I had a meat pie and waited for the plane.
Well that does it, I am done. I hope you have appreciated the missives. Now I just need a vacation to relax and recover from this experience.
For those of you in New York, I hope to see you soon. For those of you in Chicago, I want to get out there some time soon, so will keep you informed. Oklahoma, you have my love, we should talk about when I can come visit there, too.
Kisses and crossed fingers that I make it back to NY on time.
Love,
Joe
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