It was a mission to turn New Zealand contraband into some tropical fun.
I landed my kayak through wind-driven breakers at the foot of a row of palm trees. Just beyond the palms, the Tongan island village of Ha’avefa collected concrete houses with corrugated metal roofs. A small flatbed truck with a young family inside drove across the grass to park overlooking the sea. Though the island was only half a mile wide, there were some vehicles. I pulled 3 one-gallon ziploc bags out of my hatches and carried them into town.
Our South Pacific voyage, which had started in Mexico 6 months earlier, was about to head for New Zealand, land of strict biosecurity regulations. Much of the well-planned long-storing food we carried on board would be confiscated on arrival, so I was on a mission to trade the offending food items for something we could use up before arriving in New Zealand. In the bags were dried beans, dates, whole cumin and coriander seeds, textured vegetable protein, nuts.
Fences of corrugated tin roofing and crooked posts protected small yards from roaming pigs. A few skinny papaya trees grew in corners, and an anemic mango or two. A stunted breadfruit tree waved its lobed leaves like giant green hands. Down one road I saw promise: a cluster of healthy banana trees in a garden of bounty, canopied by a majestic breadfruit tree. A man in a button-down shirt, ankle-length skirt, and flip-flops tinkered with a small motor in the shade of the banana trees.
”Malo e’lelei”, I said over the decorative concrete fence. He turned off the motor and eased himself closer to the fence. Most Tongans speak some English. He listened patiently as I explained that I had some foreign foodstuff to trade if he could spare a few bananas and perhaps a papaya.
It was only later that I realized that the garden belonged with the most well-kept house in town. He was the minister of Ha’afeva and the surrounding islands. His wife Maria was away in Nuku’alofa, the capital, visiting one of their children in boarding school and doing some errands. Nuku’alofa is a full day trip by local motorboat, a low wooden and fiberglass contraption with partial cabin top not high enough to stand up under, and wooden benches along the side. The trip must be a penance of sorts, in the choppy seas that can blow up around here.
His garden didn’t lie. Vilitonu, the large and soft-spoken minister, was a tender of plants as well as parishioners. He loved the idea of planting the beans to see if they might grow, and the coriander. ”Thank you for bringing more flavor to our kitchen,” he said slowly as we sat in the living room among upholstered couches draped with bright lengths of fabric. I sat comfortably on the wood floor since I was still wet from kayaking in the wind.
After a chat, I followed him back to his happy garden, his wide feet slapping softly in their rubber flip-flops. He cut a bunch of green bananas with a machete and handed them to me, still dripping white sap from the cut. A tall, hearty papaya tree got a good poking from a long stick until a football-sized fruit dropped to the ground. The papaya was just starting to blush yellow through its green skin. Finally, he led me to a row of shoulder-high shrubs that had been regularly trimmed of their pointy-lobed leaves. Like Saint Peter on judgment day, he tenderly chose this leaf, that leaf, and not that one, thoughtful yet decisive. He handed me a fist full. Like spinach, or kale, or Swiss chard, they were to be lightly steamed until just wilted before eating.
There have been moments when I keenly miss the communion of plants in my home garden. The foray into Vilitonu’s tropical oasis was tonic to the spirit as well as nourishment to the belly.
The next day I returned with Henrick to visit with Vilitonu. We walked across the island from the protected anchorage on the other side carrying another delivery of foreign food and things that might grow.
The day after that, I set out early in the kayak to explore some nearby islands on the way to Nomuka, the next anchorage some 20nm away, with the last New Zealand contraband in my hatches. Many little islands along the way are too small to have protected anchorages, so kayaking is the perfect way to explore. A few islands have villages, satellites to the central Ha’afeva.
I stopped at an uninhabited one, in a pocket of sand between sharply eroded limestone formations. A sandpiper of some sort poked among the crags. It climbed and hopped within a couple meters of me, unbothered. In the rocky holes hid crabs, scratching and clambering back from the advancing camera. The hillside behind rose too steeply to climb, too tangled with jungle growth.
I left the island and crossed over the protective reef. Just as the water began turning to deep-water blue, a sea turtle sniffed the air. It saw me trying to sneak past and dove, flying down, down below the kayak. A pair of white terns looped over the palms of the little island. Icons of freedom and playfulness.
From there I headed another couple miles southeast to an island called Tongua, according to the shipboard GPS. The locals call it Tomua. I approached over a long shallow reef. Two figures waded, then bent over, straightened, put something in a bag. The first, a teen whose gender I could not determine, stared, but hardly responded to my greeting or smile. The second, perhaps the mother, beamed a most welcoming smile. There are moments when the universe feels in balance and nothing else matters. Such was the warmth in her face at that moment. I smiled back from the depths of my heart.
”Malo e’lelei”, we exchanged greetings. Then we had no more words in common until ”Bye.” No matter. They were picking urchins. They were just beginning, or it was tough going, judging from the emptiness of their bags. I wished them well, whether they understood the words it or not, and paddled on.
Around a curve in the coastline, a village came into sight. Green fields were crossed by the occasional dark pig or white goat. A few low-profile motor boats moored in shallow water. Wood and corrugated tin houses. Footpaths.
In Tonga, as in the rest of Oceania, boats have always been the way to get around. Exploration, settlement, trading, raiding. Outriggers, double hulls, sails for distance, paddles for day trips. This British sea kayak, though its roots anchor in the cold northern reaches of the planet, fits the tradition of human- and sail-powered boat travel for visit and trade.
Motors power the modern Tongan inter-island vessels. Not everyone has a boat, but everyone who leaves the village must travel in somebody’s boat.
Here the boat isn’t peripheral or recreational. For those who operate their own, there is a common understanding, a language of the sea. It is something one will always have to share with the newly arrived visitor. Freddy met me on the beach in front of a huge tree. In very good English, he introduced himself as the captain of the sea cucumber fleet.
”How is the sea today?” he said as if he were asking about the health of a relative.
Sea cucumbers processed for the orient are the basis of their international economy, and a wide-leafed grassy plant softened by soaking in salt water was sold locally for bedding and matting. Of course he knew Vilitonu, the minister. Right there was the church, across the field.
Freddy gave me a walking tour of the village. Like many homes, most of these had a sheet hung in the front doorway, and no door. The breeze blew through to the back doorway opposite. Inner walls and doors hardly existed. Many people smiled and waved from their places in the shade, and some kids ran up to the fence to look and smile. The most striking thing that shaped this community was the complete lack of motor vehicles. Footpaths wove unstraight lines through the grass, People and animals walked about or lounged in the shade. Things were done or moved by hand.
Freddy, like Vilitonu, was well traveled, having been to the US, Australia, Asia. His cell phone chirped almost constantly in his pocket. He answered usually with a few sentences in Tongan and hung up.
Two women sat beside a fire under a sprawling tree and worked at making some food. Tan piles of long soaked bedding leaves sat along a fence to be prepared for sale. Two young men lounged in the shade on a backyard trampoline and greeted me in good English. Pigs sprawled in dusty hollows under the eves of an abandoned shack.
The village, said Freddy, was growing. It had some 300 people, if I remember the figure right. We returned to the beach. Before I pushed off for the next island, I pulled out the last 2 Ziplock bags with the remaining contraband. Dehydrated vegetables, soy protein, cous-cous, and a few other bits. Appreciation for a fine tour. He seemed genuinely interested in it, and I left feeling satisfied with my first two village trading efforts in this remote Tongan island group.
