From Ted to Tonga

It's beginning to creep me out how many of my blog entries start with, well, the aging body and its ailments. One hopes the writing doesn't stop there -- one hopes this seemingly inevitably burgeoning body of material (so to speak) will lead, like all decent material, to other considerations, deeper understanding, connections to others, and humor (okay, wry, dark and absurd).

Well, here's another one. It starts with Ted's colonoscopy last week and takes me back 32 years to Tonga. It turns out this potent life experience of mine, that intense two years in the South Pacific, is not so far in the past after all.

I was sitting in the endoscopy waiting room at Little Company of Mary Hospital in Torrance, waiting for my husband to wake up after his procedure. I'd already had the pleasure of regreeting our ace colonoscopy doc, Oren Zaidel, who came out and cheerfully said, "It's nice to see you on this end of things!" Must be hard saying anything that's not a double entendre in his business, but who doesn't need a chuckle when skimpy smocks, exposed derrieres and long tubes are the order of the day? Anyway, Dr. Zaidel said my beloved had done a fine job of cleaning himself out (this is the kind of thing that gives us oldsters a renewed burst of self-esteem). He said Ted had one mere polyp and was blissfully sleeping off the blessed dose of demerol.

I settled back to read my New Yorker and check out the others in the room: a sweet, fretful silver-haired lady , whose befuddled husband was being admitted after his test, a trio of 30-somethings waiting out their father's procedure -- they looked upwardly mobile and were chatting alternately in Spanish and English -- a bilingual virtuosity I greatly envy. And then there was another couple -- a honey-skinned, stocky duo, a man and woman who looked to be in their 40s. I wasn't paying much attention until I started recognizing a word here and there: "Io." "Ikai." "Mahalo," "Oiaue," I once knew that vocabulary well: it was a language I once adored for its delightful blend of consonants and sliding, sensual vowels. They were speaking Tongan.

In Michigan there aren't many Tongans -- and I hadn't heard the language spoken by a native for years. At first I simply sat back quietly and took it in, my memory rushing back to 1976, when I first landed in the overwhelmingly exotic and noisy Kingdom and tried to make sense of the language while surrounded by it. It was an exciting, infuriating and deeply satisfying time. Finally I couldn't resist.

"You're Tongan!" I said. They looked up mildly and said yes. I quickly spilled out a bunch of commentary -- how I had been a Peace Corps volunteer long, long ago, and how I loved the language though I'd forgotten it all, how I was deeply changed by my two years in their country, how I met my husband there, how I still dream about it from time to time, blah blah blah.

I am such an American, always talking, always talking about myself.

The two sat quietly, smiling. They said they had left Tonga after high school, 17 years ago, and had never been back. They said yes, they'd heard about the riots and fires in Nuku'alofa, the capital city, two years ago. They said they liked the U.S. better because, the man said, after all, Tonga is just a little island and there isn't any opportunity. Eventually they told me they were Mormons -- not a surprise, considering the long-standing influence of Mormons in the Kingdom.

I continued my Yankee gushing. I said how much I loved the Tongan proverbs, and managed to spit out two of my favorites: Longolongo pusi kai moa (It's the quiet cat that eats the chicken) and Kai lu fa ihe tu'unga u -- Eating the "lu" (a Tongan delicacy, a sort of coconut and taro leaf tamale) found by surprise in the pit after the feast. That last one stands for serendipity and plucky hope to me -- you never would have guessed there'd be anything left in that pit, but you looked anyway and eureka! Food!

The woman smiled again at my probably awkward pronunciation and repeated both proverbs. She and the man exchanged a few phrases in Tongan. Then I babbled what a beautiful country they came from: how I'd gone up to Vava'u, one of the northern island groups, and loved it. How I'd hitched a ride on a boat to the islands of Kao and Tofua. They admitted they had never been to Vava'u themselves -- nor Kao or Tofua -- that they stayed close to home on the main island of Tongatapu.

Then, in a classic Peace Corps conversation, the woman and I determined that we had lived within blocks of each other, and that she not only knew my Tongan father, Sione 'Osamu, but vividly remembered him and his kids in Ma'ufanga, the neighborhood where I lived. I mentioned the crotchety grandfather, Pasikala (Bicycle). When I said "Man, that guy didn't like Americans much," the woman said "Don't worry -- Pasikala didn't like anybody."

I explained my husband and I had met on New Year's Eve in 1976 at the King's palace, and the two murmured pleasantly. Then I remembered I had a bunch of Tongan kava music on the very laptop I was toting, and within a minute I had opened iTunes and had the sweet sounds of Tonga filtering into the overly warm little room.

"See?" I said. "See how much your country still stays with me?"

The man and woman continued smiling, and in the Tongan way, maintained a dignified reserve, declining comment -- never volunteering their names or many details about themselves. Certainly I would not press: that would be rude. I began to feel like a big floppy dog, so happy to be talking about Tonga, but after all a little bit embarrassing. But one never knows. I hope they found my interest entertaining, at least. Who knows what they think about their little South Pacific homeland? Who knows what they think about Peace Corps? Who knows why they have never gone back, or how hard their life in LA might be? Who knows if they've experienced racism or poverty? A whole vast set of possibilities remained unsaid, and an old, familiar Peace Corps guilt crept in. I remember how one of my Tongan colleagues used to make fun of the U.S. volunteers -- noting that all we wanted was a little hut and a black British bicycle -- naively ignorant of how VERY dissatisfying those minimal expectations were to the Tongans themselves, who wanted concrete block houses, big cars and, in many cases, an escape route out of there.

Eventually somebody came and told me Ted was ready to go, and when I said, "mo nofo a, eh?" (you two stay, right?) the two smiled even more broadly and said, "she remembers" and answered "alu a, eh?" (You're going, then?) and then there was Ted, upright and only a little discombobulated, and we went out into the rainy LA afternoon in a present that was rich with the past.

The Most Boring King in the World

AP Photo -- looks like the islands of Kao and Tofua, but I could be wrong.

Here are 13.5 remarkably excruciating moments, from the BBC, with the new King of Tonga, Taufa'ahau Tupou V (George V). He was crowned just last Friday. Sleepy Monarch

I'm interested in this quirky story because I spent two of the most memorable years of my life in this eccentric kingdom 3,000 miles southwest of Hawai'i. It was a time when Tupou V's father, Tupou IV, was about the same age as the new king is now. At least his father, a huge man with catcher's mitt paws for hands, kept life interesting: he cracked a smile once in a while and occasionally hoisted his 400-foot frame onto a specially-made surfboard. Meanwhile, this fellow, whom we always called Tippytoes, spent most of his time in London.

From the sound of it, he's ceding some monarchical powers to the Parliament. That may be the effect of pro-democracy riots and fires that destroyed much of the downtown of the capital city, Nuku'alofa, two years ago. While George V lethargically bemoans the instigators as demagogues, he reportedly feared for his life in the aftermath. Perhaps he felt deadened , facing the apparently enervating ordeals of his figurehead position. Or perhaps, being the imperious royal that he is, he simply didn't think he had to say much of anything to a mere reporter.

Thinking about this later in the day, I feel more empathetic. At the beginning of the interview, he says something like "One doesn't choose the job. The job chooses you." He follows this with a small, wry smile -- in my different mood tonight, I almost see it as poignant. Whether he wants this job or not, it has chosen him, and it must indeed be a heavy burden to bear.

So, in short, I wish the people of Tonga -- and George V -- much prosperity and happiness in their beautiful kingdom. It's a remarkable place and a remarkable culture. I wish them the best.

The Blogonut Wireless

Back in Tonga there used to be a phenomenon (I suppose there still is) we called the "coconut wireless" which meant basically that news could travel fast by word of mouth through the bush. The immediacy of person-to-person transmission was interesting, amusing and somewhat mysterious -- how did something travel so fast, if not always accurately, and certainly not in a straight line? It was more like a complicated dominos design dropping tidbits across the whole island of Tongatapu, spreading simultaneously in a dozen, a hundred, directions, vividly representative of the human impulse to "tell."

I'm thinking about the Coconut Wireless this morning as I sign in and realize I'm creating here my own little network of friends whose writing I can see through the new Blogger feature I just added, at right, the "Blog List" including blogs from former Flintoid Gillian Swart, Grand Rapids poet Greg Rappleye, my colleagues Cathy Akers-Jordan, Jim Anderson, tech role model Krista Heiser, and fellow "communards" Teddy Robertson and Dennis "Sporeman" Brown -- people whose lively observations and wit -- whose lives, really, however they write about and depict them -- I find intriguing, stimulating and entertaining.

Last week, feeling lachrymose, I offered a eulogy of sorts for newspapers, but this morning I'm leaning toward a brighter perspective. Some of the channels evolving to replace newspapers are pretty damn terrific, offering intricate and complex ways to say who we are and what it's like to be human at This Moment. We're all in the game, paying attention, reacting, writing poems, taking pictures, venting, griping, celebrating, solving problems, wisecracking, bemoaning, remembering, arguing -- it's amazingly energetic and idiosyncratic. Technology has not led us to the loss of humanity we feared, at least as it's playing out on the Internet. It has proliferated our humanity, opening up a zazillion channels for the individual voice. Is anybody listening to anybody else? Well, I'm at least listening to the folks on that blog roll at the right, and I think they're listening to me. Here's to the human voice -- voices.

Hmm..this Monday morning seems to find me uncharacteristically optimistic. No marine layer here.

Thank you, Frank

Thanks to RPCV friend Bob Forbes for letting me know that the photo below was taken by our Tonga colleague Frank Bevacqua. Thank you, Frank, for this beautiful shot, which really captures something about Debbie Gardner's spirit.

Sad Tonga Memories -- the Debbie Gardner Murder

Isn't that a gorgeous photo? I'm not sure whom to credit for it -- I found it on Google, and I imagine the photographer is somebody I know. So if you're out there, let me know. This beautiful young woman, Debbie Gardner, was murdered by another American in the Kingdom of Tonga on October 14, 1976 -- Oct. 14, by a cruel irony, is the birthdate of the Peace Corps.

And her tragic story is deeply significant in my life, although I barely knew her, not to mention the dozens of others affected by her brutal death and its aftermath. Again tonight "48 Hours" ran the 2005 show about the murder. She was killed by Dennis Priven, a spurned suitor and, obviously, murderously mentally ill young man.

This is the story my novel Night Blind is based on. It was wrenching this cold and snowy January night to see old friend Emile Hons emotionally recall the events of that terrible night and the weeks that followed. It was good once again to see New York journalist Phil Weiss on the scene in Tonga retelling the story in his quest to get a measure of justice for Debbie. It was good to see Rick Nathanson, my fellow volunteer whose job was to be a reporter at the Tonga Chronicle, retell his story, and to see the old photos of him -- a curly-haired and feisty kid who kept stubbornly reporting the story even though Peace Corps wanted him to shut up. The story of how PC Country Director Mary George twisted the facts and unaccountably repeatedly tried to protect Priven doesn't get any more palatable with the years -- how she and Peace Corps Washington responded is still a craven miscarriage of justice, a dark embarrassment. My heart went out to Mike Basile, our assistant country director, as he remembered that awful autumn -- he was put in a terrible position and one feels as if he's never quite come to terms with it.

All through these decades I've contended the Peace Corps is one of the best American programs ever, but delving once again into this story, the doubts come back. The Peace Corps bureaucrats should have been ashamed. As volunteers, we were all so young, so clueless -- we wanted to believe, after Vietnam, after Kent State, after the Detroit riots, after the assassinations, that just one thing from our U.S. of A. could be full of grace. Instead, we got a tragedy and its grievously mishandled aftermath that has stayed with us, demolishing our trust and exacerbating our cynicism. Those of us who lived to tell about it have gone on with our lives. I finally wrote my book, which took me thirty years. And I feel better for it. But it's not how it should have been. Debbie Gardner shouldn't have died. It's a dirty shame.

But, thinking about the show over night, I come back to this blog entry to add further reflections. It would be grossly unfair to let one homicidal volunteer and one bad country director define the whole Peace Corps, which over its 47 years has placed thousands of volunteers into dozens of countries. The Peace Corps' history isn't perfect, but as I noted in my NYC podcast (www.janworth.com), it is an international program with a brain AND a heart, and has had an immensely transformative effect on several generations of young Americans.

Thirty Years Ago...

...this was me, standing outside my second house in Tonga.

Finding an old photo can be a bit jarring. But I like the looks of this young woman. She was having high quality fun. Note the bare feet...ah, that was reckless, with so much sharp coral around. That black British one-speed was my constant companion and friend -- imagine the pleasure of piloting a bike all over a remote, impossbly green Polynesian island, 9.000 miles away from home. There were moments in those two years, I must say, when just being there was enough -- an unalloyed satisfaction.

Life doesn't often offer such pure pleasure. Here's to Peace Corps.