Nuiatoputapa: Very Sacred Coconut

Niuatoputapa' A step back in time.

"New Potatoes" as the cruisers are wont to say, is a tiny island off the northern part of Tonga - it has under 1200 people on it, very National Geographic sort of feeling. The King of Tonga died just after we arrived, (September) and everyone was in mourning for a month. (This is a lot better than the last time a sovereign passed away when everything, including all business came to a complete halt for a full year).

Upon our arrival through the reef edged pass we were boarded by customs and immigration and a health inspector. I think they just wanted the bit of excitement as the formalities were very simple. Their supply ship visits once every two or three months and the influx of yachties at this time of year is a huge event. Everyone wants diesel for their cars or petrol for their outboard engines and we traded for fruit and woven items.

Horses and small black pigs roam everywhere quite freely. The people were dressed particularly conservatively in traditional dress - at work, school and on Sundays, in respect for the dead King. A woven mat or overskirt wrapped around the middle and secured with a cord at the waist for the men and also for some women. Some other women wore and a decorative belt, often woven, but occasionally made from coconut or knotted from some other material with many decorated strips trailing to the hips or further down the body. Black dress were worn everywhere.

Houses and cricket strip on the island

We found the houses here were normally very basic, usually consisting of one main room either with a dirt or concrete floor, some of the better ones having a sleeping room as well. Buildings are constructed with corrugated iron sheets (what would the third world do without corrugated iron?) cement or palm leaves. Customarily each one has a step or barrier at the doorway to prevent the little pigs from going in. Everyone sits on woven mats on the floor. Fences outside the more affluent homes may have a gate which might also have a piggy barrier.

House building in progress

Everyone was very friendly and soon we were invited to have Sunday lunch with a local family on a nearby island or motu. They brought the main course, we cruisers took deserts. The islanders seem to have an extremely sweet tooth and are particularly partial to chocolate! (I took pancakes with maple syrup). We had cooked piglet and cooked fish, raw fish marinated in lime juice, raw clams, taro leaves cooked in some sort of caramel, with breadfruit, taro root and a juicy cooked papaya and grapefruit dish. All the cooked dishes were wrapped in leaves as the cooking is done in a covered pit – or umu. This turned out to be a much better Tongan feast than we could have paid for – better food certainly.

Everyone dressed in their Sunday best for churchy including Mary and Chrisfrom Aventura

The women on the island are kept busily on at work in weaving huts, producing high quality mats in what seems to be a form of co-operative. The long thin pandana leaves are harvested from the short trees that abound everywhere on the island. Then they are soaked in the sea for at least week, (longer if they want a finer quality), and dried in the sun hanging from fences or trees. These leaves are wound into flat reels of leaves ready to split into narrow strips for the actual weaving. The split is made with half a tin can top, or possibly a needle. When the leaves are split into four strips they are ready to be woven into mats by hand.

The weaving house was always a hive of industry

Some of the woven mats can be up to 100 feet long. The supply ship takes them off to wherever they are sold. The women sit on the bare concrete floor of the weaving huts to work but this is much cooler than sitting outside in the warm sun. I asked for some mats to be made and also dyed as they had some wonderful brown dye (from the nono or mangrove tree) but the finished article wasn’t as nice as I hoped because they used a coarser grade material for the weaving, and had also experimented with the dye process.

Bartering with Fadeha and her mother for woven mats with Mira from Ironbark

We spent quite some time bartering for woven items which was very enjoyable even though I think they got the better deal in most cases. We aren’t accustomed to trading yet and I felt sorry for them for not having the supplies they needed and knowing that they frequently didn’t have money to pay us. Tinned butter was popular, and baby wipes enthusiastically accepted. They had another advantage as well – we had a list of food stuff that we can’t take into New Zealand, so took the chance to off load some of it here where it was obviously very acceptable. I got a surprise nonetheless, when the stakes went up to things like DVD players and used laptops!

We rarely saw the men – possibly they went off to a nearby island where the gardens are, or off into the ‘bush’. They did return for the Friday night Kava evenings though, when they gathered together to drink plentiful bowls of the local mild home brewed alcohol. I heard that there is more potent liquor available but it is probably not entirely legal. The cruisers were invited to the Kava nights but as there was no singing or dancing allowed due to the demise of the King, we didn’t participate. Maybe another opportunity will occur before we leave Tonga, and if not perhaps next year or in Fiji.

All the young people go off island to senior school and I imagine very few of them return home. The lifestyle on this island is very traditional and opportunities abound elsewhere.

Fishing boat in a tidal creek