Tuanikevale: The Human Experience

I have been sent to Tuanikevale on the Vava'u, the most northern group of islands, for my six week homestay. It is a sleepy village that never sleeps blanketed by thick stars and set in rolling hills of "the bush" that seperate it from the waves crashing on the coral reefs just beyond the beach. The people walk lethargically through the town and work in the bush harvesting mango, root and pinneapple taking frequent breaks from the hot sun and sleeping and eating every couple of hours but in the cooler evenings the thick air is full of the sounds of singing and laughing as the people gather to practice traditional dance or gossip around the kava circles. Every day is the same. And it is here that I have discovered again what I know to be true; people are people where ever you go and it is the simplest things that make us all the same. I am a foreigner still who "lea faka-Tonga si'i si'i pe." I speak very little Tongan but though a laugh, a touch, the upraised lift of an eyebrow, there is a commonality some understanding, even just at me being the butt of a joke.