Tender Mercies

Tonga Nuku'alofa Mission History 1989-1992

Pictures from Tonga Nuku'alofa Mission 1989-92 Reunion

https://grandmabloggers.com/2019/09/11/pictures-from-the-2019-tonga-mission-reunion/

Ha'apai Part of the Tonga Mission Reunion 1989-92

https://grandmabloggers.com/2019/08/20/haapai-part-of-the-tonga-mission-reunion-1989-92/

Kongaika Tonga Reunion Trip

https://grandmabloggers.com/2019/08/17/kongaika-tonga-reunion-trip/

Cousins Being Bad

https://grandmabloggers.com/2019/07/13/cousins-being-bad/

Natural Medicine Reigns in Tonga

After the birth of my first child in the United States, my husband and I moved to a third world country. I soon discovered what socialized medicine is like in a developing nation. When our children got sick, instead of making an appointment with a doctor, our only choice was to head for the hospital. There was only one hospital to serve several thousand people.

Back in 1974, we were lucky to only wait three or so hours for a doctor. There were no comfortable chairs to sit on. There was a concrete slab that we could rest on. There were so many coughing, feverish and injured people waiting for help. We worried that if our child was not already seriously ill, she would be after we left the hospital.

Doctors had been trained in a third world country, usually Fiji. There was no state of the art equipment. Doctors are lower paid than teachers in Tonga. If we required a blood test, the closest laboratory was miles away, and the results would take two weeks or more.

If a prescription was given, we would head for the dispensary located in the hospital. We received medicine that had already expired, having been donated from a charitable organization in the United States or elsewhere.

Less than a year after we moved to the third world country, I had my second child. This was a very humbling experience for me. The hospital was full and I ended up having my baby out in the waiting area. Several people I had never met before gawked at me as I gave birth.

The hospital had neither disposable diapers nor a nursery. My baby had gastroenteritis and cried most of the time, and there was no doctor available to check on him. I went home from the hospital with a 103-degree fever and a sick baby. Family members are expected to take care of the patients at the hospital, and I had none of my own family living there. My husband’s parents were living in New Zealand at the time.

Thankfully, traditional knowledge has been passed down from generation to generation. It is crucial to the survival of the people of Tonga. Many have embraced a Western diet, and experience poor health as a result. Medicine made the "old way" utilizes tropical plants, gifts of the sea, leaves from certain bushes and roots. Many families in Tonga treat their children with these natural resources. Most villages also have a “witch doctor” who is known for their success in healing through their own methods.

My two young babies got thrush and were unable to eat anything for several days. They also had fevers, because of the infection in their mouths. I was so worried and took them to the doctors at the hospital. They gave me rinses and other medicine, which I used faithfully, but my babies were not getting better. After several days of this without improvement, the babies were taken to the local village healer.

The healer mixed several ingredients together including noni, kava and burnt coconut. She ground it up and poured it into the babies mouths. They cried and fussed, but I was so relieved that the gums started to show improvement almost immediately. I gained a healthy respect for Tongan medicine from that experience.

Ruth Elayne Kongaika was raised in the mainland, USA, and has been traveling in the South Pacific for the past forty years. She tries to capture the beauty of the islands through her photography, painting, and writing.

The Amazing Juggling Women of Tonga

When we lived in Tonga, I was delighted to discover the juggling talents of the women. It is not taught to the boys, but I know some males who can juggle too, including my husband.

In elementary school, instead of learning to jump rope, play jacks or hopscotch, the primary students in Tonga learn how to hiko or juggle. They start very young, about five years of age, and some continue on for the rest of their lives.

The girls and women sing a song as they juggle three, four, five, some up to seven pieces of fruit, nuts or balls. Some claim that they can juggle even more items, but since they cannot hold them in their hands, they grab them out of a bowl placed near them. The juggling forms a round shower pattern. They usually discharge the nuts from the left hand, catching them in the right hand, and then transfer them to the left again, keeping them all in the air at once.

Origin
Most Tongans cannot tell you where the origin of juggling in Tonga began. But there is a myth about it. They say it began in the underworld where a lady, Hikuleo,was the goddess. She was a blind, and would snatch the eyeballs of anyone who approached her in the underworld without permission. She would then put them in a wooden bowl and call her girls to sit in her house and juggle with them.

Superstition
Tongans are generally superstitious and the Tongan girls never juggle at night because the spirits of from the underworld are coming up and they look around. If they are caught, their eyeballs may be taken to the underworld.

Benefits
Many Tongan girls have very rapid and accurate hand-eye coordination which they learned from juggling at a young age.

Record Breakers
Wolfgang Schedbeczek reported that the an 8-ball shower by Bruce Sarafian of the USA is the world's best juggler (according to the Guinness book of Records), but he feels that the juggling women of Polynesia probably have him beat.

It is said that Tonga has more jugglers per square mile than any country in the world. Often they have competitions to see who can juggle the longest. As soon as a girl drops a ball, she sits down. The last left standing is the winner.

Women who learned juggling in their youth can remember it even though they have not done it for years. I guess it would be similar to learning a bike and doing it again years later.

Other Cultures that Juggle
Aside from Tongan women, circus clowns and other juggling entertainers, there are a few other cultures that juggle:

Uvea or Wallis Island (north-west of Tonga): Called hapo usually using oranges, also done in time with a little song. They also have competitions juggling up to six oranges at the same time.
Samoa: Called fuaga , up to eight items whilst sitting or standing.

Cook Islands: Called tilitili koua done with immature coconuts (koua) juggled while chanting. Usually only done with three or four small coconuts (since they are larger).

In Southern Cook Islands they juggle other items such as the fruit of the candlenut tree, the seeds of the tamanu tree, or oranges. They are tossed vertically and transferred from one hand to another in anti-clockwise direction accompanied by chants.

Tuamotu: Called pei done in a counter-clockwise rotation - they reverse it to show skill also done to chanting. They weave their balls from plaited coconut leaf (popo). In Tuamotu it is classified as a dance.

Marquesas Islands: Also called pei . Used to teach geneology as they recite their ancestors while doing it. It also gave the mothers a chance to boast of the number of their offspring. They also make their balls out of fau leaves (Hibiscus).

Tahiti: Also called pei , but using stones or limes.

Traditional and Modern Tongan Attire

In the early 70s we moved from a democratic society to one which was ruled by a reigning monarchy. It was very interesting to observe the cultures and traditions of Tonga. Although in the last few decades some things have changed, the way the people of Tonga dress at many events and ceremonies has not.

http://elayne001.hubpages.com/hub/Traditional-Tongan-Attire

LUTE

My Husband Wrote Me A Love Song

A New Years Eve Celebration Where Time Begins in Tonga

The first country in the world to greet the New Year, each and every year, is Tonga in the South Pacific. That is because it lies very close to the 180th parallel (12 hours ahead of Greenwich). It sits directly on the International Dateline. http://www.tongatapu.net.to/tonga/homeland/timebegins.htm
Tongans value their relationship with God and others. The whole first week of the New Year is called Uike Lotu (prayer week). Every day church congregations meet and pray morning and evening, and in between they feast together. Bands all over the island take their instruments, sometimes-homemade banjos, bass and guitars, and go from home to home hoping for some provisions in exchange for their music.


http://elayne001.hubpages.com/hub/A-New-Years-Celebration-Where-Time-Begins-in-Tonga#http://elayne001.hubpages.com/hub/A-New-Years-Celebration-Where-Time-Begins-in-Tonga#

Our Christmas with no Santa Claus

http://elayne001.hubpages.com/hub/A-Christmas-Without-Santa

Medical mission to Tonga aims to curb diabetes | KSL.com

Medical mission to Tonga aims to curb diabetes | KSL.com

onga has a medical
emergency on its hands. More than half of the Pacific Islanders there
are obese, and one in four lives with diabetes.

A team of health professionals from Utah hopes to change poor habits and
attitudes toward diabetes during a medical mission to Tonga.



The country is a string of islands known for its friendly people, palm
trees and white sand beaches. But recently, Tonga has earned the
reputation of being the diabetes heavyweight of the Pacific.

It's been 25 years since a member of the Royal Family in Tonga got baptized!…

It's been 25 years since a member of the Royal Family in Tonga got baptized!…



I remember when the first Princess got baptized. The royals hurried around with their entourage to put her in a better situation than the commoners. She finally told everyone that she wanted to be treated like everyone else. She was so humble.

Illegal Alien Arrested for Working in Tonga

One rainy day while sitting at my office in Tonga, a policewoman dropped in and gruffly told me to follow her. I asked her why, and she told me to just get up and come with her. It was pouring outside and I did not have an umbrella. I did not want to make her upset, so I stepped outside and became drenched in a few seconds. My mind was racing, trying to think about what might have precipitated this uncomfortable and threatening situation I was in. We had been living in Tonga for eight years. I am from the mainland USA and had married my handsome Polynesian husband and had followed him to his island home.

http://elayne001.hubpages.com/hub/Arrested-Illegal-Alien-for-Working-in-Tonga 

Tongan Watermelon Drink Otai

Origin of 'Otai

ʻOtai is a fruit drink,
which originated in Tonga. They make variations of the drink with scraped
mangos and vi (which is a native Tongan fruit). In Tonga they don't usually
have half and half, but instead use freshly squeezed coconut milk, that is the
most delicious to me. This is not to be mistaken for the juice of the coconut. I'll
save that for another hub.

Tongans even crack out the water biscuits or breakfast
crackers and just break that into the drink, which adds more dimension!!

Tongan Watermelon Drink Otai

My Visit to the King of Tonga

My first official visit to the King, Taufa’ahau Tupou IV was in 1989. My husband had just been called as the new mission president over the small island kingdom of Tonga. Our mission office contacted the spokesperson for the King to arrange for an audience with His Majesty for us and for a group of our missionaries. Our formal meeting would take place at His Majesty’s Royal Summer Cottage. In order for our party to have this audience with the King, we were expected to prepare a meal for him and his royal family. The food we prepared in response to the King’s request, included turkeys, ham, potato salad, and trifle (The King’s favorite dessert). We arrived with about twenty of our missionaries each carrying beautifully decorated offerings.

http://elayne001.hubpages.com/hub/My-Visit-to-the-King

Herbal Remedies Saved My Babies' Lives

I do appreciate modern medicine and doctors, but at one time in my life, it was an herbal combination that saved my baby girl and baby boy's lives. We lived in a small island in the South Pacific. Being fairly new to this environment, I was unaware of the many medicinal plants that the natives relied on almost daily.



http://elayne001.hubpages.com/hub/Herbal-Remedies-Saved-My-Childrens-Lives

He Wrote Me a Tongan Love Song

It took a separation from my usually non-romantic husband to squeeze the sentiments out of him. We had been married about three years and had two beautiful children when I left him behind for a couple of months. No we were not fighting or anything like that. I had a health issue that I needed to check out. We lived in a small South Pacific Island Kingdom. I had given birth to our little son in Tonga, but had complications. My parents came to visit and I returned to stay with them for a while.

http://elayne001.hubpages.com/hub/He-Wrote-Me-a-Love-Song

A New Years Eve Celebration Where Time Begins in Tonga

The first country in the world to greet the New Year, each and every year, is Tonga in the South Pacific. That is because it lies very close to the 180th parallel (12 hours ahead of Greenwich). It sits directly on the International Dateline. 

Tongans value their relationship with God and others. The whole first week of the New Year is called Uike Lotu (prayer week). Every day church congregations meet and pray morning and evening, and in between they feast together. Bands all over the island take their instruments, sometimes-homemade banjos, bass and guitars, and go from home to home hoping for some provisions in exchange for their music.

http://elayne001.hubpages.com/hub/A-New-Years-Celebration-Where-Time-Begins-in-Tonga