by Graeme Lay
‘Maybe. I don’t mind it myself, but Joyce … She’s not that keen on the place, y’know?’
As Bill drops me off in Vuna Road, his shoulders sag low, a cigarette still clings to his lower lip. I thank him, shake his hand, tell him how much I’ve enjoyed my stay at Keleti Beach. He smiles, wearily and a little sceptically.
‘Good luck with your book,’ he says.
‘Thanks. Oh, the fare for bringing me here? How much?’
He waves his hand dismissively, then stops, frowns. ‘Joyce didn’t ask you fer the fare when you checked out?’
‘No.’
He exhales sadly. ‘She’ll be expecting me to bring it, then.’ His body seems to deflate even more as he looks up at me apologetically. ‘That’ll be … ten puh-ung-ga.’
The next day I watch 35,000 people take to the streets of Nuku’alofa. Officially the walk is to celebrate Emancipation Day, but it doubles as a walk for Jesus because, in the words of King Tupou IV, ‘King Tupou I was a born-again Christian in 1862 and that was the reason he granted freedom to the people at the time.’ Tupou I, the present king’s great-grandfather, was the founder of modern Tonga. Uniquely among South Pacific Island nations, Tonga does not celebrate an independence day, because it alone was never colonised, never ruled by a European power. This is a source of great pride to the nation of 100,000.
Nevertheless, the missionaries did a grand job of colonising Tonga. As in neighbouring Samoa, there are churches everywhere, not just those built by the original proselytisers, the Methodists and the Roman Catholics, but also those built later by the Church of the Latter Day Saints, the Seventh Day Adventists and the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Judging by the newness and number of their churches, it’s the well-heeled Mormons who are winning the race for Tongan souls.
I book into the town’s best-known hotel, the International Dateline. It’s a world away from Keleti Beach: big, sprawling and sleepy, located right on the waterfront and a five-minute walk from the town’s main street. The hotel’s logo is a sketch of the building with a vertical line – the international dateline – kinking around it to the right. In the lobby I find myself staring at the floor, because built into the marble is a large bas-relief of Tongatapu, and that kinked line again, in brass. The line is the reason Tonga subtitles itself ‘The Land Where Time Begins’.
Back in the 1870s, when the European colonisers were trying to sort out a way of regulating an increasingly mobile world into time zones, an American academic came up with a system whereby the 360 degrees of the globe could be divided into twenty-four zones, each about 15 degrees of longitude apart, and each one hour behind the other, with Greenwich, London, being the prime meridian. In 1884 this sensible suggestion was accepted universally. There was only one snag: some small Pacific Island groups close to Greenwich’s antemeridian of 180 degrees – Fiji, Samoa and Tonga – were bisected by lines of longitude and would therefore suffer the inconvenience of having two different days of the week on some of their islands. Something pragmatic had to happen, and the logical solution was to make the 180-degree of longitude kink around these islands. But which way to kink? East or west?
In 1879 the colonial governor of Fiji decreed that the dateline should take a big kink east, incorporating all the islands of Fiji and Tonga west of the line, and giving them for all time the same day as New Zealand and Australia. The King of Samoa, however, went along with United States’ demands that his islands be a day behind. And so it is possible, for those titillated by such matters, to stand on Tonga’s easternmost island, Tafahi, on, say, a Monday, and look across to not very distant Savai’i, in Samoa, where it is the same time, except that it is Sunday. Luxury cruise ships clustered in this stretch of the Pacific Ocean celebrated the advent of the new millennium in Tongan waters on 31 December 1999, then sailed east the next day for an hour or so into Samoan seas and partied all over again, thus getting two millennium knees-ups for the price of one.
Tonga may be The Land Where Time Begins, but it is also The Land Where Time Appears to Stand Still. Nothing, but nothing, is done in a hurry. Although this maddens Palagis like Joyce, as I cycle around Nuku’alofa I think it’s rather nice. Even rush hour is a relative term, with hundreds of well-used Japanese cars, some held together with rope and duct tape, creeping through the dusty, pitted streets. The road toll in Tonga must be very low. All transactions, from buying a banana in the market to reconfirming an onward flight, are done in slow motion. And just to make sure that nothing speeds up too dangerously, most dockets are still written by hand and carbon-copied.
Next day I leave for a day tour of Tongatapu with Lani, a very pleasant young woman from the Tonga Visitors’ Bureau. The island is almost level, tilted a little to the north, and shaped like the slipper of a medieval knave. Nuku’alofa is located where the knave’s laces would be tied. Although it appears at first inspection rather featureless, Tongatapu holds subtle secrets. At the eastern end of the island there are marvellous Maya-like tombs of Tonga’s feudal kings, and the Trilithon, a prehistoric monument on a scale with Stonehenge and of equal significance. It is thought that the alignment of its massive menhirs was connected with the seasonal solstices, a knowledge vital for planting food crops such as taro.
In the evening, Lani takes me to the Tongan National Centre, a line of large fales built in traditional style and housing exhibition centres, a museum, handicraft workshops and display halls. Tonight there’s Tongan dancing, a feast and a kava ceremony. The ceremony is carried out according to strict etiquette: the pepper tree root is beaten, mixed with water in a large carved bowl, strained through coconut fibre, then served to guests from a half coconut shell by a Tongan maiden. An honorary ‘noble’ is sought from the audience to take part in the performance, and a young Swedish man with long flaxen hair jumps up to volunteer. Afterwards he is presented with a certificate acknowledging this role, and I imagine him later trying to explain the significance of the kava ceremony to puzzled friends back in Göteborg.
‘What does kava taste like?’ I ask Lani.
She shrugs. ‘I don’t know, I’ve never tasted it. In Tonga, women can’t drink kava, they just serve it to the men.’
The women get stuck with making tapa cloth, surely one of the most tedious and mind-numbing pastimes in the world, involving beating hibiscus bark with mallets, soaking it, beating it some more, and so on, for day after day after day, even before the painting of the patterns begins. By having exclusive rights to the kava drinking, men have got by far the best part of the cultural deal.
And they drink a lot of kava. There are ‘kava clubs’ everywhere. The churches don’t disapprove of this, on the theory that if the men are filling themselves up with kava, which has a mellowing effect, they won’t drink excessive amounts of alcohol and do damage to themselves and others. When later I taste some myself, I’m puzzled as to the liquid’s appeal. It tastes like dishwater with some mud mixed in, and turns the lips numb. But drunk ceremoniously, with a group of other men, it’s undeniably sociable.
‘Don’t Worry, Be Ha’apai’, enjoin T-shirts all over Pangai, on Lifuka island. Pangai is the only town in the Ha’apai Group, a cluster of sixty-two beautiful atolls and volcanic islands, half an hour’s flight from Tongatapu. And the timing of my arrival here is fortuitous because it’s festival week, when most of Ha’apai’s population of 10,000 celebrate with sport, dancing, singing, parading, crafting and tug-of-warring. Ha’apai’s festival is the foreplay that leads up to the big festival of Helaila, held on Tongatapu in the first week of July. This also celebrates the birthday of King Taufa’ahau.
I’ve arrived just in time for the tail-end of the festivities – the announcement of the winner of the Miss Ha’apai contest. First, though, there’s the Crown Prince’s cocktail party, to which someone has wangled me an invitation. The party is held inside a military compound on the Pangai waterfront. The venue itself is enclosed by barbed wire, but inside it’s all very jolly as we stand under the stars and drink our Royal beer. Like all crown princes, His
Royal Highness – the title’s apt, since he also owns the brewery – attracts a great deal of gossip and notoriety. Educated at King’s College, Auckland, and Sandhurst, the heir to the throne of Tupou is still unmarried. Known to have a predilection for girls from commoner ranks, he can nevertheless marry only into Tonga’s nobility. Furthermore, affairs of state seem to very much bore HRH, as he is commonly known, and he spends much time flitting off to other lands. He even has that middleclass English affectation, a lisp. However, tonight on Ha’apai the Crown Prince appears to be on his best behaviour. His princely duties include dancing with all six finalists at the ball that follows the beauty contest.
Beauty pageants may now be de trop in many countries, but in the South Pacific they are still big-time. The Miss Ha’apai contest final is being held in the Toluafe Hall, just outside Pangai town, and I hitch a ride there with a young American Peace Corps worker, John from Philadephia, on the back of a battered utility truck. The two of us are waved inside and immediately shown to the line of VIP seats at the front, just behind the Prince’s throne, the governor’s chair and the seats of the sponsors. This is embarrassing. Why should I be sitting up here? John from Philadephia explains, ‘You’re a visitor and a Palagi. The Tongans would consider it grossly ill-mannered for you to sit with the commoners.’ So, to avoid offending my hosts, I remain at the front on my white plastic chair.
While we wait for HRH to make his appearance, some middle-aged women get up and do tau’olunga – solo dances – which are well received by the audience, then we wait some more. The hall is crammed with spectators. Above the stage are the banners of the festival sponsors, local businesses and Royal Tongan Airlines. The biggest and brightest banner is that of Benson and Hedges, its slogan, ‘Turn to Gold’, a message of unconscious irony, given that is the colour most users’ lungs will turn if they continue to smoke at the rate they do. The international tobacco companies push their product shamelessly in Tonga, and with no restrictions on advertising and a cheap packet price, it’s unsurprising that most men (but not many women) smoke.
The prince enters, using a walking stick for assistance (he suffers from gout), and wearing the faintly disdainful expression of a man who for a very long time has had everything he ever wanted. He takes his throne, there are many speeches, then the contestants come on. They wear elaborate ball gowns and most look petrified. They bow low to HRH, crimp their way down the catwalk and back, then exit. Only one looks relaxed, the very pretty and pert Miss Ha’apai Hardware, who prances, waves, and even gives HRH a cheeky grin. At this stage I decide to excuse myself. I can’t take any more and, besides, I’m awash with Royal beer. As I walk out into the darkness, I stop and gape. Outside a wire fence, trying to peer in the windows, jostling each other for a better view, are several thousand people.
Later I hear that the winner of the beauty contest is Miss New Zealand-Ha’apai. I’m disappointed: I had hoped it would be bold little Miss Hardware.
Walking back through the town is like being blindfolded. There are no street lights, no house lights, no vehicle lights and no moon. I literally grope my way along the street, heading in what I hope is the direction of my hotel. Suddenly, from out of the darkness to my right, two massive figures loom over me. I think they are young men. Very large young men.
‘Where you goin’?’ The tone is challenging, aggressive. ‘Yeah, man, where you goin’?’
I’m terrified. It’s the first time I’ve ever been threatened on a Pacific island, and there’s no one, absolutely no one, to help me. They’re all back at the hall watching the beauty contest.
‘You hear me, man? I said, where you goin’?’ The tone is menacing now.
The two enormous figures come closer. I can see what I fear are bunched fists, and can hear their thick breathing. Swallowing with fright, I think as quickly as I can, then call out airily and in what I hope passes for a Utah accent, ‘I’m on my way to church. The night service. I’m a Mormon missionary.’
A pause, then, ‘Yeah? Where’s your bro? Youse always goes in twos.’
‘He’s … ah … meeting the bishop.’
‘The bishop?’
‘Yes.’
There is silence for a few seconds. Then the two figures move aside, melting into the blackness of the night.
The Niu’akalo Beach Hotel is a kilometre up the coast from Pangai town, just past a statue of Shirley Baker and right beside the lagoon. Eight two-bedroom fales are set in a large well-tended garden which runs down to a sandy shore and the lagoon. Meals are taken in a small dining room on the covered patio facing the sea. There’s a bar in the lounge and the whole place is small enough for the guests to get to know one another easily. Such intimate circumstances can be disastrous – one bore in the house could wreck an entire stay – but luckily this is not the case during my visit. I find myself in the company of a Danish couple, Henrik and Pia from Elsinore; Godfred, a Tanzanian engineer who designs harbours; and Irene, a Tongan-born woman who’s returning to Ha’apai, after thirty years away, to trace her family’s roots. Dining and drinking together, we’re soon a small, jolly team. Although hailing from Hamlet’s home town, Henrik is far from melancholic, and the lovely Pia shows no signs of dementia. Godfred is witty and articulate, and Irene has the natural dignity and courtesy of many Polynesian matriarchs.
Now that Ha’apai’s festival is over, Pangai has subsided into a dusty torpor, so we spend most of our time sitting on the hotel patio with other visitors – the Niu’akalo is a popular gathering place for locals – talking about what we’ve found in Tonga, or just staring across the lawn, past the palms and at the skyline. There are several reasons why this is not an entirely idle pastime, for precisely where we are, and in the immediate proximity, are some of the most significant sites not merely in the Pacific but on Earth.
Just a few kilometres behind us is the Tonga Trench, a submarine chasm where the ocean plunges to unimaginable depths as the Pacific tectonic plate slides under its neighbouring Indo-Australia plate. This slow, inexorable collision has tossed up a line of live volcanoes, two of which, Tofua and Kao, we can look straight out at. And it explains why at least once a month these islands are heaved from side to side by seismic convulsions.
Kao – the highest peak in all of Tonga – is a perfectly symmetrical cone over 1,000 metres high. Neighbouring Tofua has decapitated itself through successive eruptions and now presents a low, smouldering profile on the horizon. Within the crater of Tofua is a large freshwater lake. It was while standing off this island, in April 1789, that Fletcher Christian seized the Bounty and cast William Bligh and eighteen others adrift in an open boat. Bligh sought food and water on Tofua, but did not scale its slopes and find the lake. The locals attacked the Englishmen, one of Bligh’s men was killed and the party scrambled away to their boat. Later, while sailing between Viti Levu and Vanua Levu, they narrowly escaped being captured and eaten by a Fijian war party. They made no other landfall until they reached Timor, six weeks and 5,800 kilometres later. Today you can fly out to Tofua from Ha’apai in a float plane, land on the crater lake and eat a picnic lunch on its shore.
There is plenty of other human history in the vicinity. James Cook anchored Resolution and Discovery here in 1777, and the locals put on such a party for him and his crews that he named Tonga ‘The Friendly Isles’. What he didn’t know was that his host, a Machiavellian chief called Finau, was softening the Englishmen up in order to murder them and seize their ships. The plot was lost after a disagreement among the Tongans over the timing of the attack, and the English ships sailed away, forever impressed by Ha’apaian hospitality.
Thirty years later, in 1807, Finau did manage to seize an English privateer, the Port-au-Prince, kill most of its crew and successfully employ its armaments against the defenders of Tongatapu. One of the English crew who was spared, Will Mariner, lived among the Tongans for several years before returning to England and writing a classic chronicle of his adventures, An Account Of The Natives Of The Tonga Island
s (1817). The Port-au-Prince was beached just a bike-ride along from where we sit and watch the sun go down over Tofua and Kao, turning the sky the colour of marmalade.
On my second-to-last day on Ha’apai, a Sunday, I walk the three kilometres up the road to where the Port-au-Prince came ashore, and try to imagine the scenes that happened that day. It’s difficult, as it’s a place of utter serenity. Trudging back along the road in the early afternoon sun, I hear the soft parp of a car horn. A battered red Mazda draws up alongside me, and a youngish Tongan woman leans out the driver’s window.
‘You like a ride?’ she asks, smiling in a slightly lopsided way. Alongside her is a grinning man in shorts, jandals and a blue singlet with the familiar ‘Don’t Worry, Be Ha’apai’ slogan.
‘Thank you,’ I reply. It’s thirty degrees on the road, and I flop gratefully on to the worn back seat.
‘Like a trink?’ The man in the front turns and passes over a 1125ml bottle of dark rum. It’s half empty.
‘Ah, no thanks. It’s a bit early for me.’
‘Cake?’ He holds up a fat sponge cake on a cardboard plate. Several wedges are missing.
I take a piece. It’s sweet, thick and gooey.
‘Sure you doan wan a trink?’
‘Quite sure, thanks.’
The man swigs happily from the bottle, then passes it over to the driver. She takes the bottle in one hand, takes a swig, hands it back and takes a wedge of cake. The man starts crooning an island song and she joins in. We drive contentedly on, along the hot, empty road.
‘Where are you going?’ I ask. ‘To a party?’
The man burps. ‘No. We already got a party. Here. Haha-ha!’
‘Dah-dah-dah-dah,’ croons the woman. ‘We drive round the island, having a party,’ she giggles. ‘Just him and me.’ The car veers to the left and she corrects it hurriedly. ‘Better than bloody church.’
Then I understand. It’s Sunday, when nothing at all is sanctioned by the authorities except worship, and more worship. Eating between services is the only permissible pleasure. And now that the carnival is over, there’s nothing to do on Ha’apai. Nothing. You’re not even allowed to go fishing on the sabbath, let alone drink. No planes can take off or land, no shops are open, no secular activities are permitted. As one Tongan wag told me, ‘If we were allowed to skydive on Sunday, even the parachutes wouldn’t open.’ My new friends’ solution is a mobile, secret party for two, in the front seat of a Mazda. I applaud their initiative, and courage. The hotel approaches.