Reflections On A Year in Paradise

Two days ago we arrived back in Australia, after a year in Tonga.

Looking back, it seems an incredibly brave thing to do – sell your home and belongings, take your three young children (our youngest was only 11 weeks old when we arrived in Tonga) to a foreign country to live.

But now it just seems kind of...well, normal.

It’s been an amazing year. I’m sooooo grateful I got to experience it!

But it wasn’t always easy. In fact, there were moments when it was SO hot and humid that I thought I would die if I didn’t cool down immediately, and I was sick, the kids were whining and clinging, I was sweating like a polecat, mosquitoes biting me, and I wondered if I wasn’t actually in hell-on-earth....?

But out of the hell-on-earth came a spiritual transformation, when I realised that this experience, this life is entirely what I make it. Heaven or hell. My choice!

So I decided to make it heaven. I chose to see that things happen FOR me, not TO me. Every single experience is perfectly, divinely necessary for me to fulfil my full potential, and therefore in my highest good.

I feel I have been thoroughly transformed on the inside. I wonder does it show?

ALL of my worst fears came true. ALL OF THEM! I got seriously sick, my son hated school, and I got bored. And it was the best thing that could have happened!! I survived them all! No. More than that....I thrived.

FEAR 1. Somebody would get really sick. I just never thought it would be me! I got a cut on my foot which turned septic. I couldn’t walk for two weeks, my leg was so swollen and excruciatingly painful. But I survived, thanks to an old nun and the healing salt waters of the ocean. Now I look at my scars and I’m thankful to be alive.

FEAR 2. My son would hate school. He couldn’t understand the language, thought it was a bit of a lark to pass the time. We found out that he was passing the time mucking around outside the classroom. His dad soon straightened him out!! We made him go to school, and we informed the teacher to treat him the same as any other child in the class. After that, he applied himself, and the kid who began the school year unable to understand a word, finished the year placed 3^rd in his grade!! He is now fluent in Tongan and recently performed a traditional Tongan war dance at a school concert.

FEAR 3. I would get bored and lonely. After 6 mths or so, I DID get bored. I missed the food, and the shops, and having my own kitchen, and hot water, and my own bedroom...and....and...

Then I had my revelation mentioned above.

I turned my energy into ideas, plans. I began writing a weekly health column in the national Tongan newspaper (I still am). I made two vegetable gardens. I started doing an evening yoga session in the backyard, and soon  4 other women began joining in.

See? All my fears came true....and it was the best thing that could have happened to me!! To us!

My teenage stepson came with us for the year. All six of us lived in ONE bedroom. Can you even begin to imagine? Some evenings, I had to put the baby to sleep 4 or 5 times, because people kept coming in and out, waking her up. Can you even begin to imagine? Sometimes I had some important thing to do on the internet, and so I organised someone to look after the kids, organised a lift into town, paid for an hour at the internet cafe, and then spent the hour trying to open one website. Can you even begin to imagine?

And yet, I have loved my time in Tonga. I am forever grateful!! I have learnt and grown and been stretched in ways I could never have forseen.

Our family has grown closer from the experience. Our children have a whole different view of the world. My husband and I are closer. When we lived in Australia, I was often frustrated and wished my husband would take the lead more, and not leave everything to me. Funnily enough, in Tonga the roles reversed. I stepped back because I wasn’t always sure what was expected or culturally acceptable, and he stepped forward and took the lead.

And so....what now?

You might have guessed...

We’ve decided to stay in Tonga for another few years. We’re here for the Summer, getting supplies and visiting family and friends. Next year, we’re planning to head back, build a house and start Tonga’s first ever health food shop!! I cannot wait to go shopping in my own shop ;-)

And  do you remember I once said that I wanted to create a kind-of Steve Pavlina website (but without the polyamory)?? Well, I’ve finally started working on it! By the end of the Summer, it will be up and running.

If I don’t post again this year, can I take this opportunity to wish everyone a wonderful holiday season, filled with love and laughter...? Life is good. No, life is great!! Choose to enjoy it, Yes, every darn minute of it!!

One bedroom, six people, and six suitcases! Of course it was infuriating and inconvenient at times, but it was also cosy and comforting to be close to each other at night-time...

The village school my son attended. There were about 200 children, including high school students. Every week the students clean the school, tidy the yard, sweep floors and run odd jobs for the teachers.

 My son getting ready to perform a traditional war dance with his classmates. 

Infected mosquito bites on my legs. We all got them, except our baby daughter. After a few months, we seemed to acclimatize and didn't get them anymore. 

Paradise!!! Away from the towns is lush, unspoilt bush, abundant with tropical fruits, coconuts and root crops

Life and Death In The Islands

Behind her back they spoke in hushed voices. She was still smoking. She hadn’t even been to the clinic yet! And the baby was almost due! Their faces wrinkled with disapproval...

Days and weeks passed and her belly grew bigger. It was sweltering hot, and she was uncomfortable. She didn’t want her sons near her. They were so naughty, always up to mischief, she was tired of it! 

But she delighted in our daughter Sanchia. In the afternoon, while Sanchia slept, she would poke her head in the bedroom door, to see if she was awake yet.

She yelled and cussed at her sons, but her eyes lit up when she held our baby daughter. This baby in her womb was going to be a little girl, too. She just knew...

When the time come, she and her husband – 35 years older than herself – and the two little boys arrived so my husband could take her to the hospital.

He dropped them off and came home.

All day we waited to hear news. Twilight crept in. Late in the evening, as we prepared for bed, the news came...

The baby had died.

Was it a boy or girl, I asked?

A baby girl.

She was born with internal abnormalities. Her stomach was in the wrong spot. She couldn’t breathe on her own. The doctors tried to operate but it failed. When she was 12 hours old, they agreed to turn off her breathing machine, and she quietly slipped out of this world, without ever having made a sound.

There was no further investigations, no tests or post mortems carried out. They didn’t wail and demand to know why. That’s not how things are done here. You simply accept the hand that you’re dealt.

During the night, they quietly left the hospital and came home with their dead child.

All through the night, there were muffled noises, doors opening, hushed voices. Sometime in the early hours of that morning, before dawn had begun to creep into the eastern sky...my husband woke me and whispered did I want to see the baby?

Yes, I did.

Everyone else in the house seemed to be already up. In the sister’s bedroom, her aunties held the tiny lifeless body, and talked quietly. Someone took a white pillowcase to the next village, where the brother’s wife was woken up to sew it into a tiny white dress. Someone else went into the bush to find tuitui (a type of nut that is chewed, then put inside a washcloth and used to bathe in. It cleans the skin and leaves a distinctive and pleasant smell.)

An auntie gently washed the baby in the tuitui, sobbing quietly. In the back of the room, the baby’s father sat, watching and crying silently. The mother seemed to busy herself outside. Could not bring herself to meet their eyes. She knew that they knew. This was all her fault...

Nobody touched her, except my fourteen year old step-son, who hugged her.

The baby was dressed in her white pillow-case dress, and laid on a small table at the front of the room. Then we sat and quietly waited. The mother sobbed into her jumper. Village roosters crowed the coming morning

As the sky began to brighten in the East, the Minister arrived. He said a short prayer, we sang a hymn, and then one by one we went to the front to say goodbye to the dead baby. Then they walked to the tiny village cemetery, and buried her there.

Less than 24 hours ago, the baby was making her way into the world, and now she was already cold in the ground. The abrupt-ness of it was breath-taking.

We all straggled home.

They told her to lay down and try to rest, but she would not. Could not. She proceeded to sweep the floor, then she sat on the front steps, eyes red-rimmed, smoking a cigarette. At least, she didn’t have to try and hide that now...

The next morning she was up early cleaning, cooking, cussing at her naughty sons. And the morning after that...

Apart the mound of sand in the village graveyard, life carried on the same as before, and so did she.

To the untrained eye, it might appear that the angel was never here at all...

In loving memory of beautiful Kava. Born 29^th Feb 2012, died 29^th Feb 2012.

I will always remember.

The Day a Healer Was Born...

Ilami and Jordan are two little boys that belong to my husband’s uncle, but they spend much of their life here in the house we’re staying. (Their little tin hut in the bush has no electricity or running water.)


My Tongan was not very fluent, so I didn’t realise that Ilami had an ear infection, though they must have talked about it. By the time I noticed, his ear was putrid. It was filled with a green discharge, and the smell was so offensive that nobody wanted to be near him. The poor kid...

(I still remember the pain of having an inner ear infection in both ears,when I was a teenager, The pain was so severe that I could not sleep, even with strong painkillers. My heart went out to this little kid.)

Apparently the ear had been chronically infected ever since he was about 6 months old. They had taken him to the hospital clinic, where he was given a dose of “medicine”. Perhaps things have changed now, but I recall going to the same hospital clinic when my first son was a baby and had a bad case of influenza. When we finally saw a doctor he asked me some questions, and then diagnosed a throat infection....without actually looking in his mouth or taking his temperature...???!!!

But I digress...

I racked my brains for what remedies I might have in my suitcases. (I did pack all kinds of potions and vitamins in my bags). I remembered that I had a bottle of iodine, and that it is a powerful infection-fighter. My husband told me to give it a try.

I laid Ilami over my lap and put two drops of iodine into his ear. I had to stop myself from dry-retching, the smell was so bad. Then I gave him a dose of Vitamin C in hopes it would help his body fight the infection.

Then I crossed my fingers.

The next morning, his ear seemed better - less discharge and less smell. As in, the smell didn’t fill the entire room when he walked in. So, I repeated the same dose of iodine and Vitamin C.

I swear I could almost hear my heart zing with joy! This is what I was born to do, my calling. I really would be a medicine woman some day. I could feel it.

We did the same thing for 4 days, until there was no longer any sign of infection. (In hindsight, after further experience with infections, and doing more research, colloidal silver – which I also happened to have in my suitcase - might have been my first choice...)

You cannot imagine how much satisfaction I had with this success! Word spread, and since then, I have all manner of relatives revealing their problems to me. Many of them, I’ve been able to help, even with my limited “medicine chest”. I knew all the hours of devouring books and websites on natural remedies would pay off someday.

Now, four weeks later, Ilami is running around wreaking havoc, and no sign of infection in his ear. In the privacy of our room, we ponder aloud if he might actually be the naughtiest boy in the whole entire world?!

I know I’ll never forget the day I helped a little boy overcome an ear infection, and the feeling it gave me. Best feeling in the world...

Life in an Undeveloped Country

This post was written a few weeks ago, but I'm only posting now, as I've been unable to get to the internet cafe.

Before we came to Tonga, we enquired about getting a visa to stay for a year. We were told that we simply go to Tonga, and apply for a visa within the first 31 days.


But when we showed up at the airport for check-in, we were told that we must either have a visa, or a ticket to return within 31 days.

We had neither.

The airline agreed to let us fly, since we had been given the wrong information, and they (supposedly) rang ahead to Tonga, to let them know the situation.

Ha. Did you ever hear of a bureaucratic problem that was so easily fixed?!

When we arrived in Tonga, at 2am local time, we were the very last passengers in line, and the man behind the counter was looking decidedly sour. Just my luck!! The first unfriendly Tongan in the history of the entire world...

Our explanations fell on deaf ears. He told us it would be a fine of $600 in total, for breaking the rules. 600 dollars!!!

What a start. And I was still smarting over the fact that security in Australia had confiscated my toothpaste for having it in my hand luggage. Apparently it’s considered a “liquid”. Who knew that toothpaste was a security risk these days? I might not have minded if it was just cheap Colgate toothpaste, but these were brand new tubes of all-natural, organic toothpaste to last me a year in Tonga! Pffffft.....furry teeth, right back atcha...

Anywho. Let me try to tell you about life in an undeveloped country.

There is no such thing as a hot shower. In fact, the shower is broken, so we have a shower via a garden hose poked through the bathroom window. If you are lucky, someone will happen to be outside to turn the hose off when you are finished.

Otherwise, you get dressed while the hose continues to splatter up your legs, then you trek outside through the mud to turn off the hose. This pretty much defeats the purpose of a shower, which is why I have taken to having my shower clothed, under one of the frequent tropical downpours, or swimming in the ocean.

When it rains heavily, the water pours off the corner of the gutter, which is where we may be found cooling off, filling up bottles for drinking, or having the aforementioned shower.

Washing clothes is done by hand. This has proved rather a challenge, with 6 of us (my husband’s teenage son is also with us) , and rain every day since we have been here.

Sometimes the toilet works, sometimes it does not. If you happen to do a number 2, during the times it’s not working, you have to go and put some water in a bucket and pour down the toilet. This system works okay....except for when the entire water system is not working, at which point you have to put up with the smell for 20 minutes, until the water comes back on again, and you can fill up the bucket.

There are currently 14 of us living in the house....on weekends. During the week, add another 3 teenagers to the mix, cousins who come from other villages to go to school here. We are lucky enough to have our own room, but those who don’t just find a space on the living-room floor and sleep there.

And then there is the family of four – an uncle, his pregnant wife and two little boys – who are here on a regular basis. I haven’t seen it, but apparently their bush shack is so primitive that it floods when the rain is too heavy.

There are always people coming and going. Relatives turn up at least once a day, bringing with them mangoes or lychees picked off their tree, or mud crabs caught from the sea. Neighbours drop in for a feed or a game of cards.

Our 6 year old son climbs through the fence into the neighbour’s yard and plays with their son. I don’t have to worry over him. Here in Tonga, everybody looks out for everybody else’s children, and everybody knows who belongs to who.

The village school began last week. The first day was cancelled due to heavy rains. The second and third day the students cleaned up the school, mowing the grass and sweeping classrooms etc.

It never ceases to amaze me how in this country, where poverty and mud reign supreme, all the children arrive at school with clean, freshly ironed uniforms.

On the first day of proper school we were late, so we had to take the truck instead of walking. Whoops. My son and his cousin trooped into assembly after it had started, taking their shoes off at the door. The teacher didn’t seem overly concerned. Nobody owns a watch or a clock, so what can you expect?!

The teacher explained that they needed to bring a toothbrush to school, as they would be having lessons on tooth-brushing. (I wondered if all the other mothers inwardly cheered like I did...). Each student also had to bring two rolls of toilet paper.

Upon leaving the school, no sooner had we gone out the school gates, and we got bogged in a massive mud puddle. My husband was driving, so my mother in law got out to push. When that failed to make a difference, I got off the back of the truck to “help”.

Unfortunately, there is something about getting bogged that never ceases to amuse me. I tried to push, I really did, but the revving and roaring and my mother-in-law standing in a mud puddle with mud flying all over her skirt was just too much for me. I was nearly wetting myself with laughing.

Eventually a man, hearing the commotion out front, came out of his house to help us, and we continued on our way.

My mother-in-law has a typical laid-back Islander sense of humour. When we got home she had a great laugh as she washed the mud from her legs.

There is a church service at 5:30am three mornings a week (for the really faithful....or the men who have just finished an all-night kava drinking session), one evening a week, and three times on Sunday.

An hour before church, the bell tolls so you know to start ironing your clothes and taking a shower. A half hour before, the bells toll again, to let you know it’s time to start getting dressed, and when the bells tolls again, you’d better be walking to church or you’re gonna be late...

My husband, feeling some pleased with his devoutness, got up in the dark the other morning, to attend morning church. When he arrived at church, the power went out, so the preacher sent everyone home. “Hummmmpphh”.....my husband said...”after all this effort, surely we could have sat in the dark and talked!” He “hummmmppphed” even further when the power came back on as soon as he arrived back home.

At the moment, there is an abundance of mangoes. Here the mangoes are small and mostly green. They don’t pick them, they simply wait for them to fall off the tree. So sweet and juicy. And me oh my!! You have not tasted pineapple, until you’ve tasted a local pineapple. My sons devour them.

Outside my window, there are banana trees, coconut trees, a mango tree, two breadfruit trees (I think these are called “durian” in English, but I’m not sure), a lychee tree, a lime tree. This is why, in this poor country, nobody ever starves of hunger, nor does anyone sleep on the streets. Every family, every village, takes care of their own, no matter how distantly related.

An acquaintance of mine back in Australia told me that she and her mother once visited Tonga and found it “boring”. I believe if they stayed with a local family, and immersed themselves in the local culture, they would have found it anything but boring.

I am learning so much. Trying new things. I've been eating sprouted coconut. Sprouted coconut!! How healthy must it be! So much has been happening, I wonder how I'll ever manage to keep up on this blog. But I'll try. Really I will.

Adventures in The Kingdom of Tonga

Oh, the stories I could tell you!

Sadly they'll have to wait another day. I'm in a little internet cafe, and my time is nearly up. It costs $3 per hour to go on the internet here (About $2 AUD), which sounds like a bargain...until you discover that each page takes about 5mins to load.

We are having a wonderful time. When I get a chance, I shall tell you all about my visits to the medicine woman, my confiscated toothpaste, getting bogged in the mud, the sweetest pineapples in the world, and a year without shampoo...

I trust you are suitably intrigued...?