Being Human in Vava´u

Gail Varga
Oct 29, 2017
7 min read

Far from saying this in denigration, with a hint of jealousy I can describe Tongans as simple people: they are positive, they do not over-think things, they do not moan or indulge in blame, they respect the property of others (there is little or no theft or locking things up), disproportional prosperity of the individual is frowned upon so prosperity tends to be shared, and they do not generally involve themselves in the complex thoughts that consume us in the west when we rationalise notional divisions between ´them´ and ´us´ (whoever them and us may be in any give situation).

In Vava´u the rich soils confer a deep affluence upon the communities from which I also benefited in the shape of delicious produce from the women who share their love through vegetable sales and gifts in the local market.

I got to know a few of these beautiful people a little and learned a lot from them, but until a boundary of getting to know each other has been passed, Tongans are friendly but detached. They seem to have no particular desire to include white visitors in their daily lives or invite them into their culture. Hearing singing or seeing the dressed up locals attending a cultural event that is unknown among visitors like myself lets me know that their culture is really for them. It gives me faith that Vava´u culture is on a relatively firm footing because it is not for sale, not a spectacle, and they are not looking to the west to legitimise their traditions (on western terms...) by capitalising on it. Great news.

Vava´u has its own history, which has often involved warring with the other Tongan island groups, so does not always embrace the other islands as part of the same country. Although Tonga has been united for a long time now, many people still refer to Tongatapu (the ´main´ island group in the south, hosting the capital, Nuku’alofa) as Tonga, a distant country of which Vava´u is not part. We visited an unusual relic which ostensibly recorded the discrete population of Vav´u´s right up until the middle of the 20th century: a very long rock wall.

A stone was taken from the reef and placed on the wall at the arrival of the first child of any family, thus recording the community. In the western mind, such an archaeological treasure should be preserved, shown off, studied, recorded, but in Vava´u it is not. Half of me thinks this is because they do not expect (or haven´t thought) that visitors might be interested in their traditions and history, and the other half wonders if they value it themselves very much (this is the half that is viewing the desecration of the site with litter and by the taking of the stones for building purposes). All in all, the Tongan mind and the Tongan way remain mysterious to me and seem to go on in secretive ways which leave me curious but not wanting to interfere.

Another historic event which took place in Vava´u is the Tuku fonua, the declaration in 1839 by the then King Tupou I giving the country into the care of God rather than the protection of a colonial power, thus resisting colonialism where every other island nation in the Pacific did not. Tonga is the only Pacific island nation to have uninterruptedly practised indigenous rule to this day, and I wonder how much of the mysteriousness I sense stems form this self-possession. Of course, I find it mind-bendingly strange that the choice was seen to be between God and Britain, which are pretty disparate things in my mind!

The God that Tupou I chose in favour of was already the Christian God brought by missionaries of course, and Christian fervour remains alive today. In a smallish village of, say, four hundred people, one can inevitably find at leas six churches of different denominations, all with respectable congregations. Sunday is strictly a day of rest, and even the pigs that escape the Sunday umu (ground oven) or spit have a lazy time in the shade.

Although the perhaps laudable inner workings of Tonga and Tongans remain obscure to me, some of the problems are all too easy to see. In Vava´u they suffer from low quality, useless or even harmful imports as much as in any small island place. Packaged food of dubious food value, cheap plastic products, alcohol, movies with startlingly irrelevant content, devices... Where all this breeds unmeetable desire, malaise, discontent, ill-health and disenablement of traditional skills, it is extremely serious of course, but even I had to find the black comedy in it sometimes...

When this sort of imported lifestyle is brought under the banner of ´business´ I find it terribly wrong. When it is brought under the auspices of ´aid´ it really makes me angry. When almost no remains of historical traditional culture exist here (partly due to the materials at hand to build from), there is an extra pitiful irony about the remains of the stuff that the west has misguidedly installed in Tonga to ´help out´.

Most modern machines that are brought in reach the end of their useful lives sooner than they would do in their country of origin, simply because there is no follow up plan about how to service them (and let´s face it, things don´t even last long enough in the developed world). Thus, yet again, I saw examples of dead plant machinery and the like littering this country.

When things go wrong in a tiny microcosm of an island group like Vava´u, it is all so visible. Today, vulnerable ecosystems no longer live under the protection of a balanced population with a realistic understanding of what destroying them means. Yes, the people here lived at the top end of the scale between no ecosystem = no people and thriving ecosystem = thriving people. That precious understanding has been usurped by a misplaced belief in progress/aid/the west/products/money as problem-solvers. Under this latest model, lifestyle habits, politics, law and regulation are no longer developed and carried out as though the natural world was important, or even as though people were important and depend on the natural world....

One particularly interesting import is democracy. As one of the few remaining monarchies on the planet, Tonga is liable to attract a dim view from the blinkered and self-important ´democratic´ world. Over time, Tonga has been developing and increasingly giving power to a parliament made up partly of commoners, modernising (aka westernising) the old system wherein the king and the nobles had sole power. But! Shock!... While I was in Vava´u the king fired the whole parliament because they were making moves to circumvent his overall say-so, and he simply put his foot down. What a democratic outrage!! But let´s remember the transparent corruption of the government here and the mixed feelings of the populous about them, next to the unequivocal adoration of the king by absolutely everyone I have spoken to (although there´s hearsay that some Tongan expats abroad deride the king). Especially at a time when the western model of democracy seems to be failing in so man places, I thought this was all very exciting! Perhaps Tonga is one country who are at least potentially closer to finding a better way because their system is in flux?

What with all our interference over time, understandably there is some anti-palangi (anti-white) feeling in some quarters. We, and other boats, were unfortunately subject to a lot of bureaucratic messing around due to the racist and unrealistic chief of customs denying extended permits to cruising yachts (because, apparently, we are all drug smugglers and illegal whale-watching operators who are irrevocably damaging the Tongan economy!). I don´t know if racism against palangi is on the rise, but we were caught on a merry-go-round of ´come back next week´ for two months or so, managing to slip through eventually without too much pain.

Other yachts, ´puddle-jumpers´ who have crossed the Pacific this year, started to come through, creating a whole new palangi culture, a brief flourish of nightlife and a week-long festival with yacht races and barbecues and, the most important thing to most boaters: the swap-meet/bring and buy/trash and treasure sale. I stayed well away from it all and hobnobbed with the fishes instead, but can say that I have made some really lovely contacts among the sailing community this year. Several biologist/ecologist/environmentalist/alterntaive-thinking sailors have nourished me with lots of thought-provoking discussion (as well as laughs), and I had the joy of hanging out with some of the youngest members of the sailing community, who always bring new perspectives and fresh delights.

Leaving Vava´u, it was easy to reflect on much wonderful time pottering about ashore,

calm paddling hours,

dropping the anchor in beautiful anchorages,

lounging on the boat,

or even the wet and windy days which kept me aboard hand-making foul-weather ravioli... as one must.

And, last but not least, now I can truly and absolutely say that I have finally found the manufacturing export in Tonga: toilet paper.

I wondered at the dexterity of the hands that must have wrapped each individual roll, was intrigued by the wonky angle of the cut edge and the occasional wood chip in the paper (yes... think about it...) and then discovered that the inner cardboard tube was sometimes sellotaped together to save materials. Wow, this was an eye-opener; such a thing would not be economically viable in most places because the cost of the labour to stick on the tape would be higher than the value of the saved cardboard roll. Probably it is not viable in Tonga, but maybe they just happily have not noticed, and long may it be so.

It is, of course, ridiculous to write about being human in Vava´u without including a single photo of a human from Vava´u. I am preempting your complaints by mentioning that I just don´t feel nice about taking pictures of people in general, not strangers at least. However, below are the larger versions of the above pictures and afew bonus extras, including some mercifully human pictures of me thanks to Dean: