The Kingdom According to Friends

Friends is one of my favorite TV shows. I still can't believe it's been off the air for nearly 10 years. I feel like I can still relate to every episode. Like this week, I was working my way through Season 7. It's the season where they all turn 30 and since I'm now less than 365 days from doing so, it may or may not be on my mind a little bit. Friends can also be applied to the Peace Corps and my life in The Kingdom of Tonga. Their faces say it all. Here. I'll show you:



Finding out I ate dog, when someone told me it was chicken.

  

Finding out a pig got inside the school fence because the gate was left open and then realizing that I am the one that needs to chase it out.

   

How I feel when I understand Tongan.

How I feel when I don't understand Tongan.



Hearing about fakalele and the different sicknesses people get (and share about openly) here.



Waking up to another hot and so-humid-you-are-melting day in Tonga.  



Thank you for the help Chandler, Joey, Phoebe, Ross, Rachel and Monica!

[Friends: Copyright NBC]



P.S. Some of you have asked if you can send me a letter/care package. You are more than welcome to and I will surely write you some snail mail back! It's my favorite thing. My address is:

Mandy Pederson, PCV

PO Box 136

Neiafu

Vava'u

Kingdom of Tonga

South Pacific*

*Super important as letters and packages have gone to Togo (in Africa) in the past.

FYI: I love nuts, tea, dark chocolate, lotion and ground coffee.

PCV Profile: Sean

Sean didn't come to Tonga with Group 77. He's actually been here for two years already and has signed on for a third.

He loves Peace Corps and The Kingdom of Tonga THAT much.

I am grateful to have him around. He knows his stuff, laughs at my jokes and has a love of the Tongan culture that is unmatched by any palangi (white person) I have ever met. He and I are working on Camp GLOW together and he is interested in starting a camp for boys (more information on that soon). Let's get to know Sean a bit better.



What's your favorite TV show? Well, I've been gone for 2+ years so I can't say for sure, but I guess Jeopardy. Followed closely by Entourage.

What's your favorite part of Tongan culture? That's hard! Probably "Tongan Time"... Tongans always have time. Time to talk to one another, time for a stroll... Time is most definitely not money here, and I appreciate that. I mean, what could be more important than having time?

Name a song you think that everyone should know. I think everyone should know Lynyrd Skynrd's, "All I Can Do is Write About It". At this point in time, it's also the only song I can play all the way through on guitar.

If you could have a super power what would it be? That's easy: flight. Like superman type flight... None of this "I need a suit" bs. I want to fly!

Favorite school supply? I always liked my nice, simple, broken-in backpack. Cars are fun too, though.



   PCV Profiles is a regular post that introduces you to the fine people I work with. Want to meet more of them? Check out Joey, Michael and Mark!

No School

The wind whistled through the luvas in my bedroom this morning. It was this natural alarm clock that woke me at 5am. Coupled with the sound of the rain hitting the corrugated tin roofing, I listened, stretched and watched as my mosquito net fluttered with the breeze. I love the wind. It's amazing what a little wind can do to a very hot day. It isn't hot here today though. School was cancelled due to heavy rain and high wind advisories across Tonga. There were moments this morning where the air was still and not a minute later a gale wind would come rushing through causing the rain to fall horizontally and the date palm trees to lose their branches. Much of the next month will be like this. The weather is finally starting to change - there are more low humidity days and I'm not having to take 2 showers a day anymore. I like it. I have been told that March is "'afa" (cyclone) month here. The majority of bad weather happens during these 30 days and in April the humidity will lower even more as we prepare for Winter (tourist season).

So I spent the today reading, watching movies, preparing lessons, getting organized, baking banana bread (using bananas found on the tree outside) and crafting (my favorite). This afternoon one of my Tongan friends, Silia, came over. She said that she wanted to clean my house. I told her she didn't have to, so we compromised and she swept the floor. She said she "liked helping the Peace Corpse" (that is not a misspelling ... that is how she says Peace Corps). She then told me that I needed to do something with my hair ("It is so flat Mandy, but I like the color.") so I let her braid it. We talked about school (she's 15) and what she wants to do after school is finished (live with her family and help them). It was a quiet, but wonderful day.



Update: School was called off on Thursday as well. The radio announced that all the GPSs (Government Primary Schools) are closed "until further notice". Oiaue (oy-yah-way - which means "oh goodness/ oh jeez!").

Nuapapu.

Last weekend the Peace Corps Volunteers that live on my island group were all invited to Mark and Alissa's fale (house). Mark and Alissa live on an outer island so we were extremely excited to receive an invitation to spend a weekend with them. On Friday we piled into a boat with our Peace Corps lifejackets, sleeping bags and backpacks and headed toward Nuapapu.



The boat ride took about an hour and a half, but felt like 10 minutes because of how beautiful it was outside. On the way we stopped at Swallow's Cave (pictured below) and drove the boat right into the cave. When we arrived at Nuapapu we hiked up to the village and were greeted by many of Mark and Alissa's neighbors. They were so welcoming! The boys created a make-shift grill and we ate hot dogs and burgers for dinner.

We woke up on Saturday morning to another hot and humid day in Tonga, but it didn't matter because we spent the day on the water. Re-applying SPFs as often as we could remember, we jumped back in the boat and headed to Vaka'eitu (a deserted island near Nuapapu). We hiked to a secret coral reef and spent the later part of the morning snorkeling. I kept having "I can't believe I live here" moments. Part of the time I thought I was a character in Finding Nemo. Socool. We ate pb&js for lunch and a special treat - Pringles!

Then we journeyed back to the boat and headed towards Mariner's Cave. We stopped back at Nuapapu to pick up two Tongans that knew how to get to the cave, giving Harrison just enough time to ride a horse.



Mariner's Cave is located on the edge of an island and can only be entered by swimming under the water and through a tunnel. At this point, we had spent enough time in the boat that I was entering the early phases of sea sickness. Everyone else made it into Mariner's Cave except for me. I was the one who was sleeping on the bottom of the boat. Everyone eventually made it back safely to the boat. We then returned to Nuapapu and had just enough time to bucket bathe and prepare for a get-together. This concert was put on by members of the village of Nuapapu in honor of Mark's 26th Birthday and the Peace Corps who visited Nuapapu last weekend. It was amazing.

  

Complete with banjos, guitars, ukuleles and dancing with spears!

On Sunday morning we hiked to Matamaka (where Mark teaches) and sat under the 'Ovava trees right on the water. We chatted about life and friends and America and then made our way back to Nuapapu. We then went to a neighbor's house to eat roasted pig and many root crops. It was a morning full of fellowship and fun!

It was a wonderful weekend and I can't wait to go back and visit this little village in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean.

  

    

Nuapapu [in black and white]

    

   

sunshine.

"live in the sunshine.

swim the sea.

drink the wild air."

- emerson

  

the tale of the kuma.

I returned home yesterday after a great weekend on Nuapapu and unlocked my front door.

Excited at the prospect of an uneventful and quiet Sunday evening, I was instead met by the most awful smell these two nostrils have ever sniffed.

It was so bad. So so bad.

I initially thought "Mandy, you must have left some food out. Way to go."

But I couldn't figure out what food would cause such a stank.  

So I cleaned out the fridge and sprayed some Fall Leaves Febreze, crossed my fingers and went to bed.

That sure didn't fix it because I awoke this morning and the stench seemed to have exponentially grown over night. And then I got to thinking...

A couple weeks ago I had a visitor who liked to eat through my peanut butter jars and nibble through my tea bags (who does that?). I knew I had a rat and I knew that something needed to be done about it. So the next time I was in town I picked up some rat poison and hoped that it would do the trick. Sure enough, the very next morning all the rat poison I had left out in a bowl the night before (I felt like some creepy kid leaving poison out for Santa) was gone. Mission accomplished. But I guess this kuma's (rat) dying wish was to be a pain in my backside. Because two weeks later (which, if you do the math, is many hot, humid and sticky days later) I am now stuck with a funky smell and no more rat. So I went sniffing this morning - determined to find the exact place in my tiny house where the stench was coming from. I sniffed and I sniffed and I sniffed... somewhere in the kitchen is what I had decided but I didn't have time to do anything about it because I needed to get to teaching. During a break, I told the teachers about how my house namu peka (smiled like a bat) and they laughed. Then one of the teachers came over and was nearly blown away by the odor. Seriously. He couldn't step in the house without dry heaving. It was THAT bad. He called three students over who started pulling everything out from underneath my sink. And sure enough... there that little bugger was. This rat had to have been a foot long. I've never seen anything so disgusting. Even my molokau story wasn't this gross. So these students took a 30-minute break and cleaned Ms. Mandy's house. Extra credit points anyone? What an exciting morning it was! The odor isn't quite gone yet, but I think I'm rat-free for the time being. Fist pump.

P.S. Sorry if you were grossed out by this post.   

P.P.S. Sorry I'm not sorry... I wanted to tell you because gross things are a part of life and a part of Peace Corps.