It is a beautiful morning in Pangai and the locals are standing on the dock staring into
Bella Donna. After a quick breakfast we all take off in different directions to town. I am
determined to take a long bike ride. Once again we take the 4 foot dinghy ride to the dock
me with by bike. I decide to head north out of town toward a low water crossing from this
island to the next. The guide says one should be careful that locals often drown trying to
cross due to swift tides and wind. I decide to bike there to see how bad it is and decide
when I get there the feasibility of crossing with my bike.
A paved road heads north past The Friendly Book Store, a very small one room building jam
packed with stacks of magazines and books that look well used. There is very little
traffic on the road, just the occasional bus or taxi. There are private vans and trucks
usually filled with locals. There are extremely few private cars with one or two people in
them. They drive on the left side here so I think about riding down the right side so I
can at least see the vehicle approaching me. This does not work well because the oncoming
traffic drives close to the left side even though there is not traffic coming the other
way. I decide the prospect of a rear end collision is better than one that is head on and
ride on the left side.
I pass several cemeteries that have the now familiar local graves with the colorful quilts
draped over more than a head stone; it is a head wall I suppose. I then spot a cemetery
that looks like one you would see in the United States. Upon closer inspection it is
labeled as a European Cemetery. A prominent grave is of a Christian minister who died in
the 1800's at the age of 82. I looked at ages and I am hard pressed to find many over 50
years old. Even today the life expectancy of a local Tongan is said to be 50 years. Many
of the women died young; I saw many 28 to 34 year old women with "The Wife of …" on their
headstones. Maybe childbirth plus the hard life far from home was too much in the 1800's.
Tongans passing in vans and the backs of pickup trucks slow down and say hi-bye to me.
Again toddlers wave and say bye as I ride past. I have done some research and I think the
little guys have heard the older kids say hi then bye to strangers like me and they just
shorten the greeting to bye. Every time I slow down people working in the fields wave and
greet me. There is no farm machinery in Tonga; the fields are cultivated with a digging
bar by hand.
Every time I stop people, mostly children, walk up and talk to me. They want to know where
I am from and where I am going. I ask if I can take their picture and they say yes and
break into a pose. I have heard that Tongans do not like their picture taken so I always
ask first; I think the guide books are wrong about this, at least in Pangai. I always show
the review on the camera screen to them and they always break out into a big smile. I
don't think they have seen many digital cameras, if any. One about 7 year old boy came and
sat with me on some rocks. He asked the usual questions and just wanted to sit and share
the view. When I have to leave his little face looked sad; it broke my heart, but I had to
move on to be back by noon.
It turns out the low water crossing at the north end of the island is now a one lane
causeway about a quarter of a mile long. Some care must still be exercised as there is not
width enough for a bike and a bus; we all know who would get wet.
I ride for quite a distance through small farm villages until the road becomes a dirt path
into a private parcel of land. I turn around and ride hard back to town to meet everyone
at noon. Back at Bella Donna, I go through the side of the road routine with children in
school cloths, lava lavas. They keep coming back with more friends for another posed photo.
I found John on his way to Mariner's to meet everyone else. We instead find them all in
the internet building next door. We hang at Mariner's for lunch and then go back to Bella
Donna for a departure to Nuku'alofa.
God Bless Bella Donna.
No comments:
Post a Comment