Kingdom of Tonga - Nukuʻalofa

First of all, I probably owe you an apology. I should not be writing entries in twenty minutes anymore, especially not at half past six in the morning at the airport, laptop in hand, standing in a queue. That is exactly how the last text came into being, and that is exactly how it reads. Pardon. So then, now Tonga, or rather the Kingdom of Tonga, another step farther out into the Pacific. Though in everyday terms, for me at first, that mainly means Tongatapu, the main island. Besides it, there are around 170 more islands with a total population of just under 100,000.

As mentioned, by the time I had put my last blog entry online, I was already on my way to the plane. Bright sunshine outside, and when I looked around the waiting area, I noticed that I towered over almost everyone else, and that is with my height. That is right, I was the only white man on the plane, along with a few people of more Polynesian appearance and otherwise a great many fellow passengers who looked Asian. Never mind, I thought, get on the plane and off we go. At some point the flight became rougher and the weather got worse. Every now and then an air pocket, the whole thing over the Pacific, it was not a pleasant flight. Though I really do have to praise the pilot. When we got off the plane, the wind nearly blew us off the airport. For weather like that, the flight had actually been surprisingly calm. Truly, the wind was fierce, the rain came lashing down.

A few minutes later we were standing in the immigration queue. I was roughly in the middle, so actually not a bad place to be. Since I always like to keep a bit of distance from the person in front of me, not crowd them too much, my dear fellow travellers shamelessly took advantage of that. At every turn more of them slipped past me, and suddenly I was standing at the very end of the line. What those of us shaped by European habits would consider pretty rude seems to be rather normal in other cultural contexts. I had already noticed that in Australia. Even so, I am still not about to start breathing down the neck of the person in front of me. But then again, I also had the luxury of not growing up in a particularly densely populated region. Anyway, there I was at the end of the line when I heard a whistle. The man handling Tongan immigration had finished with his counter and whistled at me. So I slipped under the barrier and suddenly found myself at the front. Murmuring from the other side. Two minutes later I was outside. My fellow passengers were not so lucky, they were being ushered one after another into a separate little room. Why, I do not know. There seem to be reasons for it.

Barely outside, get cash, new currency, new banknotes, find the shuttle. The young man was already waiting, and off we went to the accommodation in the pouring rain. We did not exchange a single word. I stared out of the window, and he gave me the impression that he was quite happy not to have to talk. It struck me immediately: Tonga, or rather the Kingdom of Tonga, is different from Fiji or Vanuatu. Small things, but they jump out at you right away. First of all, Tongans are of Polynesian descent, so culturally they are closer to the Māori in New Zealand than to the Melanesian societies of New Caledonia or Vanuatu. Fiji, meanwhile, also has its strong Indian component. That is the first difference. The second: there is no plastic rubbish lying on the streets and in the fields. There is rubbish collection and there are public bins, even with separation for different kinds of waste. Along the waterfront there are covered benches, stretching for kilometres, another one every few metres, and they are actually used. And with them bins, some even for presorting. Only on the beach do you find plastic, I assume washed ashore, and pigs too, sea pigs. The roads are also much better built than in the other island states, even though the rain was pushing the drainage to its limits. Which, incidentally, is not underground, but rather a trench covered with stone slabs.

Tonga was not a classic colony, but it did spend seventy years under British protectorate, from 1900 to 1970, and it was settled around three thousand years ago. It was always strongly hierarchical, was formed into a kingdom in 1845, and received a modern constitution in 1875. This will toward self determination seems truly to have been placed in the Polynesians’ cradle, and I find that deeply likable. At the same time, Tonga was heavily Christianised in the nineteenth century. Many missionaries, many churches, a real day of rest on Sunday. The old Tongan culture did not disappear because of that, but today it lies beneath a thick Christian surface, and one has to dig a little to come upon things like the creation story. But that is worth it. In the Tongan telling, everything begins with the primal sea. Hikuleʻo creates the volcanic islands by throwing stones into the ocean. Maui pulls the coral islands up out of the sea with his hook. In this way the myth explains Tonga as an island world of two origins, of fire and stone on the one hand, and coral and sea on the other. Interestingly enough, Tonga is geologically divided in two as well. The islands lie in two roughly parallel chains. In the west, the islands are generally higher and volcanic. In the east, they are mostly flatter coral and limestone islands, among them Tongatapu. Flat as a sheet of paper, and precisely because of that vulnerable to tsunamis and storms.

How do I know all this? Well, on the first day I had no choice but to sit out the rain. In the evening I managed to get out for a bit, but there were still heavy squalls coming down again and again, and the storm was extreme. I do like that sort of thing, stormy weather has something. The second day began a little more gently and I was able to look around. My hostess had put a bicycle outside my door, one of the all gas, no brakes variety, to quote a Samoan legend, and so I rode through the city, past the royal palace near my accommodation. A truly beautiful building. The current system of government is a constitutional monarchy, the king still matters, but Tonga also has parliament and government. Near the palace are also the embassies, and the Chinese one here is particularly significant and huge.

China is so visible in Tonga mainly because a relatively small Chinese community stands out strongly in trade and because China became very present in Nukuʻalofa through reconstruction and loans. In 2006 there were serious riots in Nukuʻalofa after expected democratic reforms failed to materialise. Large parts of the city centre were looted and burned down, and Chinese run shops were also attacked. Reconstruction was later financed on a large scale through Chinese loans, and that is exactly why China, Nukuʻalofa and 2006 remain visibly linked to this day, politically and in the cityscape. And you can see it. But Australia and its disaster relief are also present, just as in the other island states. To this day Australia is considered one of Tonga’s most important partners for emergency relief and disaster aid, especially since the eruption of Hunga Tonga Hunga Haʻapai and the tsunami of 2022. Australia responded quickly at the time with immediate humanitarian relief, reconnaissance flights, naval ships and later further funding for reconstruction and long term recovery. There are many interests represented here, and you can feel that too.

How do I know that as well? At my accommodation there is an older New Zealander from Dunedin staying, who runs a resort farther north. From July to October he offers whale swims near Neiafu. Greetings to Germany, Timmy. He says you can set your watch by the animals. They arrive in the first week of July, calve, and then disappear again by mid October. Swimming with whales, three hours for 150 euros, he says. Anyone wanting the Timmy feeling, now you know where. And the good man also confirmed something I had already noticed myself: in Tonga, they know how to make coffee. It knocks your shoes off, unlike the sludge on some of the other islands. The French can do a lot, but apparently coffee is part of it.

In that spirit.