-The adventures of Ryan & Abby Kloberdanz as they serve as Peace Corps volunteers in the Kingdom of Tonga-

Thursday, October 3, 2013

Faita Pe ( Just Pictures)

Here are some of our random pictures from the last month or so. 

Some of our kids were overjoyed to find an apele mafu to give to us. Apele means apple and mafu means heart. This apple really looked like a heart. It was white inside and super sweet. It had a very odd texture. Truly one of the stranger things we have eaten here. 

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Ryan and I on our second wedding anniversary. 

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Our school staff lead the kids in building a huge new school garden! It is going to be amazing.

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Popcorn and movie night. Turns out putting the lid on the pot is a pretty important step. But, the popcorn volcano was unexpected fun and entertainment. Cleaning oil off every surface in the kitchen area was not. 

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Thursday, September 26, 2013

The Tonga Giveth and the Tonga taketh away

Hey everyone. Its been our best week in Tonga yet in terms of adventure. Sea kayaking to a private island, swimming with the whales and dining with Spanish expats on their private island. Truly a week right out of our poetic memory. But like the title of this blog, the Tonga giveth and the Tonga taketh away. Right as we are on top of the world, our computer's hard drive crashes. This is a little bit devastating as on the computer is 100s of hours of Abby's work, all of our pictures, music, movies, etc. We have it backed up, but neither of us can imagine village life without a movie at the end of the day to look forward to or the ability to do work! As Abby said, balance here is n

We are currently in the process of rectifying the issue so stay tuned. For now, the long blogs/pictures about all our adventures will sit on the broken computer. We will be in touch via email and as soon as we can get our hard drive fixed (worse comes to worst we will take it to the Apple store in Auckland, NZ when we arrive in December) the blogs will be coming fast and furious.

As always, the roller coaster continues!

P.S.~If you want to read about our whale experience and trip to Ofu with the Coops, they blogged about it so check out their site:

http://thecoopriders.blogspot.com

Thursday, September 19, 2013

The Real Thing

First of all, a huge congratulations to Em & Cory! I cant believe the two of you are having a baby!!! So exciting. I cannot wait to meet him/her when we get home.

Also, we want to wish Grandma Cassie a very Happy 90th Birthday!

We recently learned that Lucky loves to swim. So we took him down to the beach despite the obvious issues with the ocean near Tu'anuku. We excitedly walked down there to find a dead pig floating in the water next to two sea snakes who were mating. We decided against going in and Abby forbade Lucky from eating the pig under threat of yanking his napping inside privileges. He got the message. The teacher death glare works on him too.

It has been exciting to crest the year of service mark. But, in so many ways, that has only made another year of service to go daunting as hell. So many things are a thousand times easier than when we first moved here. Mostly, we feel happy that Tonga finally feels like "home" in many senses of the word. We have settled into a life here. The day to day just....happens. Being a part of the community is so much less stressful than it used to be. We no longer wonder what lessons this experience will teach us as every week our "shit I learned in Tonga" list gets longer. Our students continue to remain a joy. In the last two weeks, they have taken 4 grueling, hour and a half long English tests. Right after the testing session, our principal has us work them though a debrief session to better help them understand what they need to do differently next time. And yet, they still smile and get excited when we come in the room. They still come to us at the end of the day and ask why we didn't have English after lunch. I tell them we had English for 4 hours in the morning. They look at me blankly and ask, "Soo... why didn't we have English after lunch?" They are troopers. I probably will never again have the pleasure of working with students with as much zeal as these amazing kids. 

Ryan has also made a new buddy at school. His name is Soela. Soela is currently in class 2 and will be in our class 3 next year. He has had the privilege of coming to the library to retrieve things or have copies made. He has decided Ryan is the coolest person in the world. He runs up to Ryan, slaps him high five as hard as he can and tries to initiate Ryan in play fighting. Ryan always indulges him. I almost died laughing the other day when Soela returned to the library to haltingly yell to Ryan "Later DUUUUDE." So funny with his cute Tongan accent. This is now his greeting of choice with Ry. After every interaction, I look at Ryan with my mean teacher glare and suggest this may not be the best way to assimilate class 2 students to working with us. He pretends to ignore me. God help you if you ever chose to live and work and live and work and live and work with your spouse on a small island. Mo'oni. 

Here are some of the younger kids. Soela is front and center on the right..

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Many of you have inquired as to how we are REALLY doing here... all cute blog quips aside. Honestly, that is just about the toughest question in the whole world to answer right now. We really feel like life here is like the craziest roller coaster ride ever made. It is hard to describe, but our emotions can run from sky-high-on-top-of-the-world-Peace-Corps-is-the-most-amazing-experience-ever to missing America so desperately we feel like we can't possibly do this another day. Case in point. This morning I was trying to haul a bunch of buckets of water so Ry and I could bathe before our big day in town. I dropped an entire bucket in what I call "the creepy area" in the bathroom. This flood of water caused a bunch of rotting gecko corpses to surface from beneath the floor mat. The smell was unbelievable. Looking at the sewage that seemed to appear like magic and more water than I knew what to do with, I decided to take the mature route and bawl like a baby and scream at Ryan to get his lazy ass out of bed he never helps do anything! Yep. Priceless moment. 5 minutes later Ryan had promised to divorce me yet again, I was still hysterical, and the gecko corpses were being attacked by cockroaches. But, then I heard the laughing voice of Laea. He was on his morning bike ride to come by and make sure Ryan was up and out of bed. He LOVES giving Ryan a hard time for how late he sleeps. He cackles and yells things into the house until Ryan appears. If he really has just gotten Ryan up, he cackles loud enough to wake the roosters and rides his bike down the road yelling "Epi sai aupito. Ryan kovi!!" (Epi is very good, Ryan is bad.) This has become one of my favorite morning routines ever. So, after the appearance of Laea, I was laughing and back to thinking no day will ever begin like this ever again and I am so blessed to have this experience. Every moment of every day is something like that. It kind of makes you feel like you are on crazy pills and eventually everything will just even out. Nope. The roller coaster is ever alive and present. 

Overall, Ryan and I feel so thankful and blessed to be able to be living this experience. We both agree nothing quite like this will ever exist for us again. So, we try to remember that in the moments of lows. This is supposed to be hard. The hard is what brings the deep introspection. The hard is what makes service, service. We feel like we never get to say thank you to all of you enough. Thank you for your emails, you letters, your text messages, and your care packages. You have no idea how those things effect us here. Without all of you, living in Tonga would be a lot more overwhelming and sad. So, from the bottom our hearts, thank you.

P.S.- To Alexe Mericle. In the last month, I have been forced to "borrow" the crap toilet paper from school because my husband has spent the t.p. money on phone cards. He always claims the company takes his money somehow when he only sends a text now and then. Yet, whenever I ask to see his phone, his text inbox  and outbox is cleared. Suspicious, no? This type of shenanigan will not fly in New Zealand my friend. You owe me 3 rolls of t.p. Charmin. Extra Soft. Make it happen. 

Here are some pictures from our visit from Michael (a representative from the Tessa Horan Foundation). They are sort of like class pictrues.... Tonga style :)

Class 5 and 6:

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Class 3 and 4

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Class 1 and 2:

 

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Thursday, August 29, 2013

1 Year, 2 Year

This Monday, September 2nd marks two important anniversaries for Abby and me.  Two years ago, we were married on September 2nd, 2011 at the fabulous Polk County Courthouse in Des Moines. If you can recall that far back, we pushed up our wedding date (we were planning on a Summer 2013 Wedding in Denver initially) and shotgunned the damn thing because we were tired of waiting to go into the Peace Corps, and married couples have to be wed for one year minimum before they are allowed to leave. That worked out pretty well, as one year ago, on September 2, 2012 we officially departed the good ol' USA en route to Peace Corps Tonga. Looking back on both of those dates, they both seem a little surreal.

In many ways Its hard to imagine we have lived abroad for an entire year, away from all of you. On the other hand, life in America seems so far removed from our worlds that its hard to believe it ever existed. There are just no words to explain what this experience has meant to us and how it has been.

In a word:                           hard

In another word:                 life-changing 

In a third word:                   tedious

And last but not least:         awe-inspiring
 
The good with the bad and the bad with the good. Such is the roller-coaster of Peace Corps. Thanks for sticking it out with us.

In other news:
It has been another slow week around these parts. The dog days of the school year have set in and we got to remember what debilitating humidity feels like with the return of the heat.

Mark and Alissa stayed one night with us and Mark, the incredible cook that he is, made a dead-on impression of tasty tacos. This elicited tears of joy on my behalf and even my wife admitted they were fantastic. For those keeping score at home Panchero's, Tasty Tacos and the Taco House in Boji (aka the Ted McCartan hat trick) are all on my first week eating itinerary upon our return to the states.

They slaughtered some cows in the village and Lucky got himself a steer's horn. (Did I mention its been a slow news week?)

Since I have done the lion's share of cooking lately (that's right folks, I can make hand rolled tortillas with my eyes closed now) I asked Abby if she could pickup the slack and take care of dinner Thursday night. She said absolutely and that she had a special surprise in mind. I hoped for more tasty tacos. What I got was Tongan rum and cokes with cereal and uncultured box milk for dinner. Yep. Two years of marital bliss...

That's all from here. Happy Labor Day!


....whoa, whoa whoa. Stop the train. I just realized that the Hawks are back in action this week. Wow, I feel so far removed. But have no fear Hawk fans, detailed schedule analysis, position-by-position breakdown and some reflective thoughts about the Ferentz era to come...

Some pictures:

Abby retro-fitted her infamous country reports to ocean animals. The kids loved them and the projects are setting the stage for some environmental projects I will be doing with the kids and our community in October.


See, no lies here, he really did get a steer's horn!




We went into our bathroom to find this little guy dead in our bath bucket. The rats are back. Maybe more depressing, we had to clean out our dead-rat infested bath bucket with my old e. coli bucket. Yikes.

P.S.~I asked Abby to contribute her words to sum up one year in Tonga. After viewing my blog she said: "kids, dog and rats, yup, that pretty much sums it up!"

Thursday, August 22, 2013

Much ado about Nothin'

So, here are the happenings from this week.

We finally found the rat who has consumed about $20 worth of poison dead in the yard. Good stuff.

We baked a pizza with some kids.

Watched our students take their trial sivi's. These are the tests they must pass to be able to attend high school next year. Very few of them were successful in passing. Stressful times.

Ryan refused to do household chores because of his kingly meeting. He may have gotten locked out of the house in the rain due to my lack of ability to handle him. I think the men in the kava hall next door thought I was pretty funny though :)

And that folks was our whole week.

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Random pics from a "hula hula" (dance) we went to in our village a few weeks ago. Kids here are the most amazing dancers ever! I stuck to zumba dances... at least I didn't make as much of a fool of myself as I could have. Mr. Too Cool for Life because I touched the hand of a king sat slumped on the sidelines all night. Party pooper extraordinare.

 

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The little guy with the jacket in this pic is our neighbor, Loa. We dubbed him "best dressed" at the dance, no contest!

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Friday, August 16, 2013

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.








King Tupou VI  taking a tour of the fair:



Ryan waiting to meet the king:




And finally, the big finale. Ryan meeting King Tupou VI.








Friday, August 2, 2013

A Big Moment

To help explain (and justify) our lack of posting, we wanted to share with you a big moment we recently had in our service here in Vava'u. While our village does an amazing job of celebrating the old customs of Tonga, it also wants to be present in the 21st century so the children have as many opportunities as possible with their lives. Throughout our service, they have constantly reinforced this vision.

To make this vision a reality, we scoured our Tongan contacts and finally got put in touch with a Tongan businessman who lives in Auckland, New Zealand by the name of Mosese Uele. For several months we worked with Mosese, telling him all about our amazing students and village. Mosese grew up in Tonga but used his skills in English and computers to start his own import/export business in Auckland. We all agreed that these are the types of skills the village must have if they are going to be able to have these same type of opportunities. In the end, Mosese told us he would like to visit our village and donate four computers to our school. He said he would only do this if we agreed to train the Tongans on how to use, maintain and maximize these computers.

On Wednesday, after a lot of stressful planning, Mosese came to our village with five computers. The people were so touched by this generosity they planned a massive town celebration in which they roasted pigs, setup a feast and a performance to honor the gift. It was an amazing day in which there were LOTS of prayers, speeches and thanksgivings. Ryan even got up and gave a speech in Tongan!

After all is said and done, now the hard part begins! We are working on re-wiring the Tessa library to accommodate the computers, scouring the world for cheap English Language Learning and math computer programs, and training our village on how to maximize these wonderful gifts. For us, the most important thing about this entire experience has been that it was a Tongan man who was giving back to a Tongan village, which made the day about Tongans empowering Tongans through education versus the white-man just giving things to a needy community.

Our next project with Mosese (oh we are not close to done with him) is setting up a second computer lab for the community which will be for general use. Mosese was so touched by the reception he received, the eagerness of our community and the plans we have made that he has asked us to facilitate another gift of computers at a later time. Already we have had several young men in the village volunteer to work with us and take on the task of creating a community computer lab. Our goal is that within one year, both of these projects will be completely run, maintained and administered by the people of our village, which is the only true way to create sustainable change in this community.

Here are some pictures from this wonderful day, enjoy!

 

 The new computer lab in the Tessa Library:

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The community enjoying the feast:

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Here is Mosese joining in the traditional Tongan feast dancing. A little rain never stops the Tongans!

 

   

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I was so proud of how great Ryan was with our community. At first, the men and women were a little hesitant to go into the library and check the computers out. But, Ryan was so encouraging and tried to have everyone come see "their" new computers that by the end of the day, even the women came in to have their picture taken! This is a huge deal because the women were SO shy and uncertain about going into the library where all day only the important village men had been. I was so happy to walk into the library and see two really involved moms chatting with Ryan and asking to be shown some things on the new computers! YEAH!!!

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P.S. There are many pictures of me on this blog because I let kids loose with our camera, which Ryan is firmly against. So, when it came time for me to take pictures of him giving his speech and leading the big reveal of the computers, I realized the camera was in a 5th grader's hands at the other end of the feast table and he was taking pictures of roast pig. Oops!