Coconut Milk

As I am sure you can imagine living on a small trpical island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean there are a lot of coconuts and in turn we end up using the coconut milk in a lot of our cooking. So I thought I would show you guys how they make the coconut milk, and also a good way for you to get introduced to 'my family' here in Tungua.

First if you look to the right of the picture you will see a sharp stick. That is what they use to husk the coconut (take off the outside), you can see the outside parts on the round (sorry the picture is a little dark). In the picture you are see Saane (the mother), Viliami (the youngest son), and Tevita (the son of one of the daughters).

Now that the coconut has been romoved from the shell, Viliami opens up the coconut by hitting it with the muchete to let all the coconut water out.

After all the water has been drained out the coconut it is split in half and the meat of the coconut is shaved out of the coconut. The thing that Viliami is sitting on actually has a sharp serrated blade at the end. In this picture: The woman behind Viliami is one of his sisters, Melelose, and next to her are two of her children, first Tevita and than Kulisitofa (in English David and Christopher) which is holding my dog Sinilau. The women to the left of Viliami is his oldest brother's wife. And the two children are children of two of his sisters.

Here I am helping to shave the meat of the coconut. They let me do this every once in a while but they let me this time because they said my family would like to see a picture of me doing Tongan things. =)

Once all the coconuts are done being shaved now it is time to start squeezing out the milk. From the inside of the shell of the coconut Viliami has taken out the 'coconut hair' to use like a cloth to squeeze the shaved coconut meat.

You can see him packing in the shaved coconut meat. (Sorry the picture is really dark.)

And the last step is to squeeze out the coconut milk. You can see it running down his hands. You squeeze the coconut hair with the coconut meat inside just like you would squeeze out a dish towel. Once you have squeezed the milk out from all of the shaved coconut milk you are ready to start cooking. The main use of the coconut milk is to be used like of like oil or butter when boiling the root crops or fish. Just like of adds some flavor and fat to them. I will actually use all of this coconut milk to bake the banana breads for the Fakame celebration. It is used instead of butter or oil in the baked goods. =)

Fakame (Fa-ka-may)

There is no direct translation for the word fakame, so I will just have to explain to you what it is. It is a celebration, it is always the first Sunday in May. The purpose of the celebration is to celebrate the children. May is kind of like the family month. The first Sunday is for the children - Fakame, the second Sunday is for Mothers (just like in America) - Aho Fa'e, and the third Sunday is for Fathers - Aho Tamai. They only have a big celebration for Fakame and of course when I tell you there is a big celebration I mainly mean that there will just be a huge feast. So I made sure to take some pictures of all the preperation for the food. We actually started the evening before prepareing some of the food. There were a lot of animals to die for this celebration. They killed and gutted the goat and the pigs at night so I could not really take pictures of them. And besides it is not really exciting to see the dead animals hanging from the trees with the blood and guts, when it is pitch black out side. They hang the animals from the trees while they are preparing it because of all the dogs, cats, chickens, and pigs wondering around. And of course they don't really have a table big enough and clean enough to do it on. So needless to say it was very creepy and I just could not bring myself to take pictures of it. Anyways, in the morning we started preparing everything to be cooked in the 'umu (if you remember from previous posts, that is an inground oven).

Here is Mele (the wife to the oldest son in 'my family') preparing lu. The lu that she is cooking has fish, hopa (a type of banana, really sweet), and coconut milk. It is wrapped it in a banana leaf and cooked in the 'umu.

This is Viliami (the youngest son) preparing the pigs for the tunu (bbq).

There is a lot going on in this picture. In the background you can see the mother, Saane, covering the root crops with foil. The pile of meat you see on the palm tree leaves is their goat they killed the night before, than you can see the three pigs we will roast. The boy standing by the pigs, Filimone - he is the oldest son's son. Than you can see Viliami playing with the fire. He is acutally moving all the wood pieces to a different pit to cook the pigs and all that will remain in this pit will be the hot stones for the 'umu.

Now that all the burning wood has been removed, 'Edimoni (the oldest son), places' the goat meat on top of some wire, which is placed directly on the hot stones.

Next, Viliami and 'Edimoni place the lu on top of the goat meat.

Now 'Edimoni is placing banana leaves on top of everything.

You have to look closely but they have places a sheet of metal down and then another layer of banana leaves.

Over that Viliami and 'Edimoni placed about 3 or 4 blankets to help keep the heat in and now they are working on moving the mound of dirt on top of the blankets. And in the botton left corner you can see where all the burning wood was moved to to cook the pigs.

While everyone else was in church, and the children performed a play, Filimoni, Viliami and I tunu the pigs. So this is the view we had for three hours while spinning the pig.

When church was over and all the food was cooked we brought it over to the church hall. There were three other place settings like this one and a little later some more food was added to this one from one of the sisters. Now, remember this is just once church in my village. There are 6 churches for a village of about 200 people. We had enough food to be able to feed the entire village but only about 30 people or so came to this celebration.

Then after the evening church service we just had a light meal of bread and cakes. My family made two different kinds of bread and I made the banana bread. Six of them actually =)

A day in the life of Hina

I don’t think I have explained what type of work I do here in my island. When I received my description of what I would be doing…my main job was to help the youth develop their business skills. I would also help teach at the school, help the local fisherman with their businesses and help the weavers sell their mats. My work seems to follow that description somewhat. You have to keep in mind that we work on island time, so something that would normally take me a couple of days to accomplish now takes me a couple of weeks. When I first arrived here it was summer time for them. So school was out and there were a lot of families visiting and lots of things to do night and day and of course….no work. It was really nice because it gave me some time to get to know the community, work on my language and get used to island life. My work really started in the beginning or middle of January. I started at the school for just an hour everyday half an hour with grades 1, 2 and 3 and half an hour with grades 4, 5 and 6 helping them with English. The rest of my time was filled with just hanging out with the youth and doing all the chores round my house. Like doing my laundry...by hand takes about an hour or so and that is just for a small load. Some of the other chores are: bringing water into my house, washing dishes, and sweeping. Everything here seems to take twice as long to accomplish. So far working with the youth…they have decided on a business to start, I helped them write up a business plan and apply for a grant to help with the start up costs. Right now we are just waiting on the grant committee to meet and approve our grant. The youth want to start a ‘gas station’. But of course there will be no pumps like we are used to seeing when we think of a gas station. There will be 205 liter drums full of the gas and oil for their boats and lawn mowers and kerosene for the lanterns. This will not only help our community but also the neighboring islands that are inhabited.

I have also helped a man in the community who wanted to start a store write up a business plan. I have also started what you could call a mini kindergarten. One day I saw one of the little granddaughter’s of my family writing on a piece of cardboard and asked her over to my house to help here practice her writing. Well that has turned into having 3 little girls from the community, all will be going to grade 1 next year, come to my house for about 2 hours and we practice writing, recognizing and singing the Tongan alphabet and numbers.

Currently, I am trying to get a first aid training here for the community. When ever they have a cut, a head ace or something wrong they always come to my house looking for me to help them. I am not supposed to use my Peace Corps medical supplies to help them so I try and do my best with their requests. I am usually able to help them at least until they can get to Ha’afeva to see the doctor. Here in Tonga going to the doctor and all supplies are free to them. So it is just a matter of getting the knowledge on how to best care until they can get to the doctor.

Here is what my typical day looks like:
6:30 – 7:30 am Wake up
7:30 – 8:30 am Getting ready for the day
(showering, bring in water, eating, if doing laundry get it ready)
8:30 – 10:30 am Helping teach English at the school
10:30am – 12:00 pm Do chores around the house or prepare for the Kindy class
12:00 – 2:00 pm Kindergarten
2:00 – rest of day Study Tongan, go to youth meetings, go to weaving group meetings,
work with the youth if they are mowing lawns, play basketball or go running, cook, read,
chores, go to community events, or just hang out with the youth or at the family’s house
that helps me, oh yeah, or watch movies if someone turns on their generator.
10:00 – 11:00 pm Go to sleep