The Freewheelin' Ryan & Abby: The Man Comes Around

Saturday, August 10th marked the revival of a major event here in Vava'u. You see, every year the Kingdom has a Royal Agricultural and Fisheries Show that is pretty much like the Iowa State Fair for folks in Tonga. However, for a variety of reasons (both political and logistical) this event has not taken place on the island of Vava'u for 13 years. That streak came to an end this past Saturday as the show took place at Vava'u High, the one public middle school/high school on the island.

What's more? With great circumstance comes great pomp, and there is no greater pomp around these parts than the King. The show also marked the inaugural visit of King Tupou VI to Vava'u. That's right, the streets were cleaned and lined with flowers and flags, everyone put on their best tupenus, taovalas, puletahas and kiekias and the military showed up to provide security, all to welcome the big man to our tiny little island paradise.

The show itself was fantastic. Each village had its own display booth. The most prominent booths featured their village's largest root crops (I mean it is still Tonga, folks), woven mats, livestock, wood carvings, fish and flowers. We saw 6 foot tall taro plants, 6 foot long eels and enough ufie to eradicate the entire Irish potato famine of the 1860s (its hard to over-emphasize the amount of root crop at this thing). We don't mean to be biased, but it was clear our village's woven mats were the most beautiful of any booth. There were also demonstrations for Tongan wood carving, weaving, harvesting vanilla, andgrowing vegetables. Naturally, the two of us with our friends Mark & Alissa found the booth where they were using fresh grown ginger and yeast to make ginger beer and serving it with a side of root crops friend up like potato chips. So good.

The day also came with one HUGE surprise. To explain the surprise, you have to understand our relationship with Tuki.

In the vein of Nan Louise, Lisa Eileen and Grandma Cassie, Tuki is truly our Tongan mother. She lives in our village with her husband Lolohea and teaches kdg. in Neiafu at the Fijian school (she is half Fijian). Since the day we moved here Tuki has taken us under her wing and looked out for us. She regularly stops by to chat and share village gossip with us so we know everything "important" happening. She tells us when big village events are happening, guides us on what we should wear and how we should act and usually comes by to actually take us to the event so we don't feel akward. A Godsend is what she really is. Tuki often has her husband gives us rides to town when we are in a pinch.

The Saturday morning of the fair, Tuki came to tell us she was going to have Lolohea drive us into town for the fair. We thought we would be going with them, but we soon realized that Tuki had Lolohea come from the bush just to take us in early so we could experience the fair from start to finish. Later, when we were walking around the fair, Tuki came up to us and told us that Lolohea had won a prize that day for his root crops. This was incredibly exiting, because it meant Lolohea would be called up in front of the thousands of people to accept his award from the King himself! Then she dropped a huge bombshell on us. She said that she and Lolohea decided one of us should accept the award because this would give one of us the opportunity to meet and shake hands with King Tupou VI. We were stunned speechless. Shake hands with the King? Really? We decided that Ryan would meet the King as I was not very dressed up and we all know Ryan has a pompous superiority complex to begin with :). So, an hour later, Ryan got to walk up the stage in front of the whole fair, remove his shoes, bow to his majesty (twice as tradition dictates) and shake hands with King Tupou VI. It was such an amazingly cool moment. But don't feel too bad for me, I got to join Ryan and Tuki in the Royal tent to watch the affair, where cakes and juice were served to us on platters by high school students!

At the end of the day, Tuki stopped by our house to chat with us about the fair. She wanted to know what it was like to shake hands witha King. Tuki then said she had to walk all the way to the store to get laundry soap. This is a woman who had been running ragged since about 4 a.m. and it was now 6p.m. I tried to give her some of our laundry soap to take home so she could just go home and rest, but she absolutely wouldn't take it. She said everything she had done was because she was our Tongan mother and that is just what Tongan mothers do. Ryan and I love this woman so much. We feel so lucky to have made a friend such as her on this journey.

Here is a picture of Tuki and Abby at the fair:

Our village's booth:

Other booths at the fair. We LOVED the outer island's booths because they had the craziest display of ocean life we have ever seen. The sharks and octopus were our favorite.