Follow the Mission of Bob & Cathy Bean

Monday, June 24, 2013

Tonga, this place is great!


Timing is Everything
The first time we went to one of our Ward socials, we went at the announced time of 7 PM.  The Beans and the other senior couple in our ward at the time, the Johnsons, were the only people there.  The school cafeteria was the location and the lights weren’t even on.  We were about to leave thinking we had the wrong night or something when another couple from the Ward arrived, the Fie’eiki’s.  They assured us the social was that night and we were at the right place.  We were just a little early.  It was now 7:30.  When I asked about the announced time, they just smiled and said these things usually start a bit later than scheduled.  This particular social got started about 8:30, which is real expected start time for a 7 PM social.  All of the rest of the socials have been just fine, as we now know when they really start.

The last social was really fun.  It was supposed to have light refreshments for a potluck.  We brought some tarts and the Johnsons brought some cookies.  We found out that light refreshment means you only fill your plate twice to overflowing versus a dinner when it is three times.  They had a pig, taro, two kinds of chicken, potato salad, rolls, fish, yams, other salads, etc, with otai for the drink, a very special treat.  At one point the senior couples were asked to get up and dance the waltz to the music playing.  If there is a dinner, there is always a dance.  Anyway, after Cath and I sat down I remarked that we had actually danced the foxtrot instead of the waltz.  Sister Tonga leaned over and said, “It’s OK Elder Beans, we can’t tell the difference anyway.” We chuckled all night.  Heck, we don’t know the difference either.  

Yawning Experience
We had a sweet young woman named Talita come in to our afternoon office a while back to start her BYU Hawaii application.  She is from the island of Eua and her mother was with her.  Eua is just a short distance from this island.  The BYUH application process takes quite a bit of time and multiple visits to our office.  She was eager to get started and Sister Bean and I were assisting her.  Our office is not big, but we have a couple of comfortable chairs.  I was wondering what her mother was going to do while we worked on the computer with Talita.  Mom just sat there for a time, then, she brought out two sticks from her bag about 18 inches in length.  I thought great, she is going knit something to pass the time.  Wrong.  I looked over a minute later and she was holding the sticks across her chest and had closed her eyes.  Within a few minutes we heard snoring like a B-52 going overhead.  Talita was a bit embarrassed, but there was no waking mom.  It was a crack up.  Tongans are pretty relaxed and can sleep anytime and anyplace.  We witnessed that first hand.  Naps are common at any time of the day.  When it was time for Talita to go, mom woke up, put her sticks away and out the door she went.

Go Coconuts/Bombs Away
Tongans use every part of the coconut.  They take the husk off to expose the face of a coconut.  There are two eyes and a mouth.  The mouth is a soft spot where a hole can be punched in.  Insert a straw and enjoy the juice.  Just don’t try to put it in an eye.  After the juice is gone they take their machete and cut the coconut in half.  They then eat the white meat, or scrape it out for making otai or just coconut milk.  The shells and husk are then fed to the pigs and goats.  Coconut milk is made by taking the scraped coconut and putting it in the outer husk and squeezing and twisting the meat to get all the milk out.  The rest goes to the pigs. Unfortunately coconut trees rarely grow straight up.  Because of that some of the roads that are well travelled have coconut trees overhanging the road.  It is common to see cars with big dents in their windshields with the usual spiderwebs going all over the place from a coconut bomb hitting it.  Most of the people do slow down when they cannot see much through their coconut windshield.  We had one land about 50 feet in front of us one day.  They are very heavy.
 
Sluggy
We woke one Saturday morning a while ago to some crackling coming from our kitchen.  I got out of bed hoping it was coming from outside, but alas, it was coming from the socket by the stove.  It was smoking and smelling the place up.  I had Cath stand in the kitchen while I found the circuit breaker and turned it off.  We got a hold of the maintenance people and they sent over an electrician a couple hours later.  He pulled the cap off the electrical outlet and got a surprised look on his face.  He showed me the inside and there it was, sluggy, fried to a crisp.  A slug had crawled up into the outlet and slimed the contact points and that was the end of him.  The electrician cleaned up the socket and it works great.

Cougar Blue
One of the big events of the year for the middle and high schools is an annual track meet.  It goes for three days and the schools are out as the meet runs from morning to night.  It is held at the stadium in town and there were typically 6-7,000 people in attendance each day.  It was on TV each night and ran for weeks after the event.  Since we have an office in town we decided to stop at our lunch time and take in a little of the event.  Cath visit teaches one of the runners for Liahona High School and we were hoping to see her run.  We sat down, and there were three seats in front of us open.  In walks a guy and a friend and they sit right in front of us.  He was wearing a BYU hat, which is not totally uncommon here due to the large LDS population.  We introduced ourselves and he said he was here on business.  When we asked what type, he said football recruiting.  It was Steve Kaufusi, the defensive line coach for BYU.  He was on a long Pacific island recruiting trip and was here in Tonga to look at a few boys.  He is also from here and is the nephew of our mission President, President Tukuafu.  We talked football and it was way cool.  He is a very nice guy.  Out of 6,000 seats, he comes and sits right in front of us.  It was a treat.  We got a picture too.

Fire in the Hole, Literally
The humanitarian missionaries, Elder and Sister Webb, asked us a few weeks ago if we wanted several bottles of Wellington.  Wellington is a bathroom cleaner and we use it, but we had a couple of bottles already.  He said he had to get rid of a ton of that stuff.  It is one of the cleaners that go to the missionaries to clean their apartments and bathrooms.  He said that one set of Elders made a bomb out of Wellington and blew up their toilet.  The mission president is taking no chances and no one gets Wellington anymore.  He wouldn’t tell us who it was, but I’m betting they were sorry about that the next day when the time came.

Not Even Close
The opening of Parliament begins with a parade of schools, mostly middle and high schools.  A lot of the schools have a banner and a marching band that leads their section followed by rows and rows of students.  The parade should take about 45 minutes because the route is not long, but it took 3 hours due to delays and events in the middle of the parade having to do with the King opening Parliament, etc.  Liahona High School was one of the last schools to come through.  Sister Bean and I had just about given up but we came back to see Liahona, the Church school.  The band had new uniforms that a couple of sisters in our ward had just finished that morning and they were sharp.  All the other schools marched well and played well, but Liahona was outstanding.  The crowd went wild.  The drum major called the brass section forward and they danced while playing.  They had a cool routine that was a real crowd pleaser.  We saw it again on TV that night.  That was pretty neat.  We are pretty proud of those kids.  They practiced by marching in front of our house for weeks.  We went up to say hello to some of our students at the parade and Winnie turned around wearing a Seahawks hat.  Pretty cool.

I Need More Power Scotty
Sister Bean and I drive along the waterfront on the way to our morning office.  Not long ago we noticed a very different ship in the harbor just in front of our office.  After a couple of days I brought our binoculars so we could get a better look.  It had a big central body and then two arms sticking way out with pontoon-like apparatus attached.  It wasn’t long before we realized it was a Klingon warship.  I believe they are called Bird of Prey, or something like that.  You’ll have to ask Jeff or Krissy the real name for sure.  We feel pretty special to have had a Klingon ship here in Tonga.  Someone was trying to tell us that it was just a giant tri-maran the other day, but I know better.

The Ship Is In
The USS Pearl Harbor arrived in Tonga 10 days ago.  It is a humanitarian ship that goes from port to port visiting lesser developed countries to provide medical and dental services and give supplies.  In this case the Church donated multiple containers of school supplies for primary and middle school children.  These were offloaded and taken to selected schools around the island.  We had the privilege of being at Kolovai Government Primary School last Thursday for one of these events.  This vessel has 700 crew on board, plus some Aussies and Kiwis, and other volunteers who provide service.  We had a Sister Davies from the Yukon in Canada in our Sacrament meeting last week.  She was here volunteering.  While the medical/dental/ mental health people go to the clinics in the village and work all day helping upwards of a hundred people, Navy personnel go to the school in the village.   

There they play games with the students on their playground such as skipping rope, kicking balls, throwing the rugby ball and football, running and jumping.  At the appropriate time the principle calls them all together and they sit down.  Our humanitarian missionaries then take over.  Elder Webb speaks some Tongan, but Ana Ika the Welfare Manager is also along to interpret.  They make a nice presentation of the school kits that the Church has put together that includes paper, pencils, sharpener, eraser, scissors, ruler, all in a nice bag with straps so it can be like a back pack.  They love it and know it comes from the Church.  The people then offer gifts of thanks.  We were standing pretty tall that day.  The Church is really blessing lives here.  I even learned how to throw a rugby ball.  

At some of the bigger presentations the Navy band is there to play.  They also gave a concert Friday night in downtown Nuku’alofa that we went to for a while, and they are very good.  Rock and roll classics to Justin Bieber.