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SUNDAY IN TONGA
by Skye Taylor
There’s little boy at the door struggling to shuck his flip-flops without spilling an enormous, brimming pitcher of Otai. He’s the first one this Sunday, but there’ll be others. You see, it’s the custom in Tonga to share your Sunday dinner with your neighbors. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Sunday begins early. Not like in the US, where even regular church goers get to sleep a little later than they do the rest of the week and the pagans among us consume a leisurely and probably artery clogging breakfast and then put their feet up to enjoy the Sunday paper or head out to participate in their favorite sport. Tonga is a Christian country. There are many denominations, but everyone is a practicing Christian. And most get up for a 5:00 a.m. service four days a week, including Sunday.
Returning home at just a little after 6:00 a.m., the man of the house, sometimes with the help of one or two sons, builds a fire in a pit dug in the ground. (They call this in-ground oven an umu.) They toss in wood and old coconut husks until the fire burns hot, then add rocks - not a whole lot different from a good old Downeast clambake. Once the rocks are hot and the fire a glowing bed of coals, layers of banana leaves are put on top, then the food. Taro, sweet potato and yam (Tongan yams are nothing like ours - they are long with white meat and taste more like a bland Maine potato) go in first, then the lu. While the “men” have been busy building the fire, the women have been preparing the lu. Lu begins with banana leaves for the wrapping, then taro leaves, which are part of the meal, are carefully layered on top. Next comes whatever meat or fish is going into the lu today. The most common choices are mutton, fish, chicken or canned beef. The meat is garnished with chopped onion, then the whole bundle is carefully gathered up into a bowl shape and coconut cream it poured into it. Coconut cream is another freshly prepared item. The tool for this is a board about 3 feet long with a thin piece of steel affixed to the end. This is usually a job for one of the children. They prop the stick up on a small log or stool with a basin under the scraper, then sit on the stick to hold it still while they scrape the coconut out of the shell into the basin. Then fibers are pulled off the outer husk and folded into a mat. This is dragged through the liquid in the basin, then twisted, like wringing out a wet cloth, to squeeze out the liquid (coconut cream) and the chaff is discarded. The lu, with the coconut cream inside is carefully folded inside the banana leaves, then tied up with the stout string-like central vein of another large leave. (Some Tongans have begun to use foil instead of the banana leaves, but most still use the leaves as they are cheaper, and certainly more ecologically friendly, although this isn’t an issue for the locals.) Now the Lu is placed in the underground oven on top of the root crops. This is covered with more banana leaves, coconut leaves, and finally dirt.
Now it’s time for church again. The church bell, or the hollow wooden log they beat on is sounded a half hour before church to summon the congregation to worship. When I first got here, the ringing of the bells or clonk of the log woke me every morning at 4:30, but I’ve gotten very good at sleeping through it. I have to admit, however, that for a populace for the most part without watches or clocks, it works really well. Everyone dressed in appropriately Tongan garb for church even at 5:00 a.m., but for the midmorning service, it’s really dress up time. The rest of the week, children wear plain and often ragged uniforms to school and play in even dirtier, more disreputable clothing, but for church on Sunday, they are dressed like we dress our children for a photo session at Walmart. The frillier the better. Hair is braided or put up in a twist with elaborate bows and hair clips. The boys wear the traditional men’s dress of wrap skirt with a woven mat tied around their waists. Parents, too, wear their best clothes. Although I still wouldn’t be caught dead in the garments they prefer, I’ve begun to feel pretty plain, if not outright dowdy in comparison. Since most Tongans live and attend church in villages, the distance to the church is relatively short and everyone walks -- but not together. The children are readied first and dispatched to church. Then the parents dress and leave, Mom last. They don’t sit together either. Small children usually sit with their mothers, but older girls and boys sit with other children of their gender. Husbands mostly sit with other men. In some churches you’ll see all the men on one side and all the women on the other. The Catholic church, which, ironically, is the most liberal of denominations in Tonga, does have some families seated together, but even there, along the sides of the church, where there are no pews, men sit on the left and women on the right, on the floor, cross-legged, for well over an hour. (If I sat that way for that long, they’d have to take me home in a wheel barrow.)
Once home from the morning service, everyone shucks the church clothes for comfy wrapped skirts - yes, even the men - and loose shirts and it’s time to eat. The earth is removed from the umu and the food inside piled on plates and brought to the eating area - usually the floor of the kitchen or living room where a long tablecloth has been laid down plates set out. Some Tongans do have tables to eat at, but they are the exception. And now what I’ve come to call the Great Sunday Swap begins. 
The otai I mentioned is a favored drink in Tonga made from coconuts and fruit - usually watermelon, but sometimes pineapples when they’re in season. It’s very pulpy, but delicious. The little boy with the otai is soon followed by another child from a different household, bearing a plate with a steaming lu and a yam or two. Another might bring another lu, this time accompanied by taro, or baked plantain, or a quarter of a watermelon. The plates are quickly emptied, but just as quickly filled with something from the family’s own feast, and here I have to smile since it’s pretty much the same food that just arrived. All the time this is going on, the children of the family I live with are busily delivering food to other neighbors. By the time the prayers have been said and we dig into our dinner, we have samples of food from every umu in the neighborhood, platters of watermelon, pitchers of otai, dishes of raw fish swimming in coconut cream(a real treat) and just about every inch of the tablecloth, be it on a table or on the floor, is covered with something to eat or drink. 
Little wonder that, once this feast has been consumed, the most common activity is napping. Sprawled on the hard concrete of their verandas or on mats in a shady patch in the yard, they sleep off their dinner until the church bells begin again in mid-afternoon. In some villages, there is Sunday school for the school aged children somewhere around 1:00 (makes nap time even easier for parents!) Many churches have singing practice in the evening and anyone can go, not just the choir.
Since Sunday is strictly enforced here, no stores are open, the only restaurants in operation are those attached to hostelries and no sporting events are ever held. If it wasn’t for a devastating storm some years back that left much of Tonga unable to feed itself until their crops could recover, nothing would be open except the churches (not even the Tongan version of our convenience stores.) But, due to the storm, bakeries were given permission to operate on Sundays so that the citizens who had nothing else to eat, could at least buy bread and butter. The crops recovered eventually, but the new Sunday event, the visit to the bakery, was so popular, the exception to the rule was left alone. The bakery doesn’t open until late afternoon, but it is the happening place to be on Sunday evening. On small, remote islands, the only thing available is bread, and in Nuku’alofa, the capital, you can get all sorts of fancy buns as well, but the food isn’t the point. The bakery is the event of the day. Teenagers get to hang out together for a short while, the adults get to gossip and the kids just do what kids do everywhere. They run around and play, squealing with the fun of being somewhere other than home with their parent’s attention somewhere else as well.
When I first came to Tonga, I couldn’t imagine spending two whole years worth of Sundays doing nothing, but I’m getting very good at the Tongan way. I go to church, eat way too much and then pretend to read, but nap instead. I love going to the bakery to see who’s there and buy buns to share with the kids at my house. When I return to the states, I think I might just find I have a hard time getting motivated on Sundays. There’s a lot to be said for a day of rest.
Previously published in the Lincoln County News and Village Soup
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