My Bed Saga

My back has been hurting ever since I moved into my house in February. Personally, I think it has a lot to do with my bed, which was a metal frame with wire fencing in the middle. I started sleeping on the floor, but that just made my hips hurt. When Thom came to visit I brought over an air mattress from the Peace Corps office, and after he left, I put that on top of my bed. I had been talking with the medical officer of PC since May, trying to get a mattress, and finally, this week, they sent a foam pad on the boat. Happily, my neighbors also found an extra wooden bed in the house of one of their family members, and I was very excited about the possibility of a combination of the two. The boat, the Pulupaki (which is the only one we have now since the Princess Ashika sank, and this one boat system has resulted in severe food shortages, shipping delays, and painfully slow mail delivery) was spotted pulling into Pangai around 10:30, and at 11 I was at the wharf with Lupe and another woman from my village who has a truck to get my new mattress pad (fakamolu- to make soft) and then go to the village of Hihifo to pick up the bed.

The boat started to unload, and we waited. Some days the Pulupaki and her crew and quite efficient at unloading, but this time that was not the case. There’s a small hut on the wharf where tickets are sold and you can get receipts for items that are on the ship, usually with the container number. The hut was packed with Tongans, and frankly, there’s no such thing as a line in Tonga. Everyone crowds around yelling and pushing, and there’s no order or reason. After 30 minutes, I finally got up to the front of the window, but had to try and yell my name over people screaming behind me in very loud and fast Tongan. Eventually I was told there was no ticket for my item, and I called PC who told me that they did put it on the boat and there should be a ticket. I’d been near the hut for almost an hour, and decided to look around the wharf to see if it’d been unloaded yet, since if something is unloaded, it’s pretty much fair game, and, as a result, packages are mixed up sometimes. It had already been an hour and a half, and the truck that drove me had to get back to Koulo. They told me they would go pick up the bed in Hihifo and that someone else from my village would come by later.

I waited for a while longer and then decided to go back to the “office” and ask them to check the receipts again. This time, after only a 15 minute wait, I got to the front and they found my receipt. But, instead of a container number, it said “c/o Pasifiki” at the top. I asked around for a while, and finally found out that Pasifiki was a person who possibly worked on the Pulupaki and that I had to find him to get my stuff. I finally ran down one of the boys who worked on the boat, but he told me my fakamolu was on the top and I would have to wait until the boat turned around to get it (the boat had turned to back into the wharf so the forklift could drive in and unload the containers). Meanwhile, all around me was chaos. People were climbing all over the boat trying to get on or off of find things. Men on the deck were trying a rope around whatever was on board, pigs, root crops, cases of beer for the bar, and throwing it down to boys who were waiting on the gangplank, dodging the forklifts backing out with huge metal containers containing foodstuffs, cars, and cows, while people were climbing on the forklifts to get up on the ship. Chaos. I realized that all the Tongans who were supposed to have to wait for things until the ship turned were getting boys to climb up and throw stuff down, but as a palangi every time I tried to break into the Tongan system, I was shot down.

I decided to just give up and wait it out, and sat down on the wharf. Soon, a Tongan boy and girl who were about my age came over and started to talk with me. They were actually pretty funny, and spoke really good English, which only meant one thing- they were Mormon. They had both been to America and done their mission work in the Philippines, and kept switching from English to Tongan to “Filipaini” which was quite impressive. The boy told me all about his girl problems and his American girlfriend and the girl kept trying to get me to help him realize that since this girl loves him he should love her too. They were very interested to hear about my boyfriend and kept asking what the “American way” to deal with certain relationship situations would be. Both of them wanted to return to American to go to Brigham Young University in Utah or Hawai’i where there are apparently already a lot of Tongans at, and I really hope they are able to. As much as I hate the Mormons and missionaries, Tonga has me feeling pretty conflicted. One the one hand, the church brainwashes people and makes them ashamed of their traditional culture, but on the other hand it provides a lot of scholarship and opportunities to travel that wouldn’t be available otherwise. I don’t know.

Anyways, I’d been at the wharf for about three and a half hours when the person for my village who was going to give me a ride pulled up. I told him I was still waiting and he pointed to the back of his truck where there was a huge dead pig with a gunshot wound through its head that was bleeding freely. He explained that there was a church feast the next day and that he had to go bring the pig back. I told him I would find a ride back, and was very ok with the fact that I would not be riding home next to a dead bleeding pig. I made the rounds of the wharf and chatted with some people I knew. I was very hot and tired and made the mistake of buying a soda, which meant I had to go back and buy sodas for everyone I was talking with at the time, and then go back and switch two colas for orange sodas because I forgot that Mormons don’t drink caffeine.

I had almost given up hope when I saw three teenage girls flirting with some of the boys who worked on the boat and heard the name “Pasifiki”. Immediately, I ran over and stood with them, telling them I was looking for Pasifiki too. After about 15 minutes of very witty and clever remarks by the boys, we found out the Pasifiki wasn’t actually on the ship- he had stayed in Nuku’alofa. Fortunately, the young girls I was with were dressed in a very western style (which made me think they’d want to impress the palangi) and once I told them I was fiu ’e tali (full of waiting) they started yelling at the boys and telling them to go find the stuff or they would kill them (typical Tongan joking). (Brett likes to tell his kids he will hit them until the poop rainbows, which they find absolutely hysterical. I just don’t get it.) After a while he brought their box down and I started yelling at him to bring mine too. Somehow it worked and, at 3:30, four and a half hours later, I finally got my mattress pad. I walked around the shops, which were packed with people stocking up on things that were unloaded before it ran out and found some people from my village, who said they’d give me a ride, and an hour later, we left town and I finally got home with my new bed and mattress (and my first Tongan sunburn)!

The funny thing is that no one thought it was strange that I spent my whole day waiting for something off the boat. Here, things happen when they happen, and you’re probably going to have to wait. So yes, the rumors you’ve heard about island time are true. Please me kind to me when I come back home…I fear ‘Alicia time’ may need to be pushed back an hour or two.