Saturday, April 01, 2006

Rain (with permission from Prince)

This article appeared in the Courier Express and Main Line Times...

April Showers-DuBois, Pennsylvania, you’ve got nothing on the Kingdom of Tonga’s wet season. I write this on a deservedly beautiful, sunny, “living in tropical paradise” day—one that Tonga earned for enduring four weeks of rain.

Not to imply that this was all-day, every-day rain. Some days provided a constant mist, as though we were striding through a sprinkler system. On others, we experienced intermittent cloudiness and intense downpours. The clouds get it out of their system in a fury of precipitation. One night, during such a downpour, I was playing volleyball with a group from my village. The pace of the game actually intensified during the rain.

Tongans’ perspective towards rain is completely different than mine. During downpours, I have flashbacks to standing in a cold April storm at Showers Field (how appropriate?) during baseball practice, cursing every drop. I think of the Saturdays, when I wouldn’t leave my house in fear of the harsh, icy, precipitation.

In Tonga, house doors fly open at the first drop of rain, like a DuBois adolescent during the season’s first snow storm. Many run to the shore to swim. I’m in constant debate with my Tongan friends over the best time to swim. I’m called crazy for taking to the waters when the sun is high in the sky. That’s as ridiculous to them as swimming in the rain is to us.
People hide from the sun more than they hide from the rain. In Tonga, one sees more umbrellas on a sunny day than on a rainy one, a shield for the year-long sunlight that comes with the package of being this close to the equator.

Popular “Rainy Day Activities,” could fill volumes, not books. When it’s raining hard enough, Tongans “faka uha,” shower outside: soap, shampoo and all.

In Tonga, it’s good to rain on someone’s parade. For one, the rain cools things down and provides brief relief from the humidity that drapes over us like San Francisco fog.
More importantly, Tongans depend on the rain for their health. Rain is our drinking water. Water doesn’t always come out of the spicket in Tonga. For some, there is no running water, for myself and others, tap water is to be used for washing, only. Chalky with a large content of calcium, it’s basically undrinkable.

All Tongan drinking water comes from sima vais, 500-gallon cement water tanks. During rain storms, water runs off tin roofs, through the gutter system and into pipes that feed into the sima vai. If it doesn’t rain, I drink chalky water. But, people who live on outer islands just don’t drink.
In an agriculture-based society, draughts turn into food shortages. In Tonga, each adult male is awarded four acres of land by the government. Many work their plots as subsistence farmers. Because of this, Tonga is an anomaly in the developing world. Its lack of wealth is certainly not followed by a lack in weight. As a group, Tongans have the largest body mass index in the world. Heavy rain and this government program add up to calories. This all changes when the rain ceases to fall. When harvests go bad, Tongans’ lack of income becomes a factor. Needless to say, after January and February, none will face this scenario for quite some time.
From my short time here, I’ve taken a Tongan approach to rain. One could say that I have a new appreciation for precipitation. When our first April shower hits, you’ll find my soapy face, staring up at the sky, and possibly singing a song in my great, village-sized shower...and it won’t be “Rain, Rain, Go Away.”



Parallel to the backwards way in which Tongans view precipitation, the phrase “when it rains, it pours” has taken on a new light to me. The outpouring of support from the readers of the Courier Express has been moving. When passing on reports of the movie/school/sport supply drive—at Kohlepps True Value Hardware and Lakeside United Methodist Church, given by Carol Smith, my aunt, at Owens-Illinois, by John Manfredo, my dad, and at the DuBois Area High School, by instructors Barry Gallagher and Cindy Nichols—I’m greeted with high fives...even in Tonga, a universal expression of excitement.

The villagers of Makave were perhaps more excited that your readers took such an interest in their culture. The January 1st issue of the Courier Express was poured over by nearly every member of the kava circle at a February fundraiser. The village noble, Tu’i ‘Afitu has taken the paper to be laminated and displayed in his home.

With the news of incoming videos, project planning has gotten underway. The Vava’u Youth Congress, where I serve as management supervisor, is offering a free business workshop in mid-April. Members of the Makave youth group will be in attendance to learn business skills and to write a business plan for our falefilimi.

This business plan will be our map to constructing shelves for the store, developing a movie organization and bookkeeping system, and marketing our new venture to Makave and the surrounding villages. We plan to begin the store from Makave’s town hall. After raising money from video rentals and kava fundraisers, we will construct a new store, on land donated to us by Tu’i ‘Afitu.

Without the help of the DuBois community, this project wouldn’t have been possible. For that, the Makave youth group is indebted to the people of DuBois’ generosity. Because we view you as partners in this project, we will continue to write about our advancements, challenges and successes in our experiment in business.

Malo lahi ‘aupito, kauDuBois, ngaue fakataha mo mautolu. Thank you very much, people of DuBois, for working together with us in Tonga.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home