The World's Fattest King and I

From time to time I will post older things I have written on this blog. I have labelled these posts "flashback" (see the labels below each post). This was originally written in 2002 when I was living in Fiji
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"Kill 'im!" Fane yelled at the screen in a thick Tongan accent. The family that lives upstairs is of mixed Tongan and New Zealand extraction. I’m watching the Super 12 rugby finals with the Tongan woman Fane (fah-nay), her son George, and a New Zealander. Whenever the game reaches a reflective moment (someone was maimed and prone on the field) Fane says with a hearty laugh: "It's tough li'fe on th' fiel'd today!" And to think that the capital city of Tonga is poetically named "The abode of love" (Nuku'alofa) - obviously rugby was not being played on that fateful day.

If you hadn't already guessed...Tonga is a place with totally impossible to pronounce words. An apostrophe signals a sudden gasping pause in the word – the dreaded glottal stop. My dad supposed that Tonga would be a bad place to be choking on a fishbone because people would merely think that you were stuttering and wouldn't think to offer help. The King of Tonga (King Taufa'ahau Tupou) was once the world's fattest monarch (around 450 pounds says the Guiness book) but he began an exercise regimen and lost about a third of his weight. Fane said that she used to see his ample bulk bicycling through the streets of Nuku'alofa with his royal attendants frantically jogging alongside. I am hoping to see the King biking through the streets, as I will be in Tonga on Saturday. I am taking a quick spin of Tonga and Samoa from June 1-12 [2002].


It’s 7:45pm in the Kingdom of Tonga and Nothing is Happening
Tonga must me one of the sleepiest places ever. Walking around the capital city of Nuku'alofa one could be forgiven for thinking you might possibly be the last person on earth. Tonga is one of the very few remaining absolute monarchies and it can be a very very conservative place. There is a democracy movement but whenever I asked anyone about it they would invariably turn silent. Maybe it was the influence of my time in Fiji but I began to silently pray for some kind of political revolution. Maybe I could stage the coup d'etat myself. If you just did it on a Sunday nobody would be around to stop you.

On Sunday I was not carried away by the revolutionary spirit, instead I was anxious to attend church at the Centenary Chapel in the hopes of seeing the King. I had no pants with me and I knew that in the South Pacific attending church in shorts is pretty rude (especially in the presence of his royal highness King Taufa'ahau Tupou IV). I had visions of entering the church and being tackled by the royal entourage. In rugby broadcasts they often give the "pack weight" of the front row of each team. I wondered what the pack weight of the Tongan royal attendants must be! Needless to say I opted out of going to church and instead wandered around outside the various churches of Nuku'alofa and listened to some amazing singing. Everywhere men and women alike were dressed in lavalavas (skirts) and ta'ovala (a woven mat made from pandanus palm leaves wrapped around the body and worn over a lavalava).

My father and I are staying in the guesthouse of a mostly deaf Tongan woman named Sela. The shower is strange - a single solid stream. The hot water heater is right next to the showerhead. This creates the somewhat alarming effect of having a visible flame inches from your face as you shower. The heater is "junkers" brand. The Junker was a German dive-bomber in the Second World War, and this seems an oddly appropriate brand-name as I had to practice a bob and weave evasive technique to wash myself all the while attempting to avoid smashing my head into the hot water heater! Ah the joys of travelling (in Slovakia I once faced a shower in the kitchen, so close to a gas stove that you could stir the goulash).

Travelling around Tongatapu (the island that Nuku'alofa is on) I saw trees filled with fruit bats (flying foxes), a cave populated by swallows that use echolocation (sonar) to find their way in the dark, and the Ha'amonga 'a Maui Trilithon (a thousand year old "Polynesian Stonehenge"). At Ha’amonga ‘a Maui a pregnant sea snake was curled up in the coral on the shore. Our guide on this little tour was a snarky man from Lancashire (England). When we were at the cave he was very insistent that I should go swimming. I had neither a bathing suit with me nor a flashlight that worked so I asked him what I might see if I went. He seemed to take great personal offence to my innocent question and repeated several times in an indignant and exasperated tone: "It's just a special experience! You could sit on a stalactite! Lots of people have never sat on a stalactite before!" Maybe it was just me, but the thought of sitting on a stalactite was not appealing. In fact, it sounded rather painful.

Tongan Style
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Tonga is its graveyards. Tongan graves are often decorated with what I can only describe as embroidered billboards, bearing the name of the deceased and some kind of picture. There seems to be a certain amount of one-upmanship in the grave decorating business with some of these billboards embellished with sparkles and glass and other graves decorated profusely with neat rows of sprite and beer bottles stuck into the soggy earth.

After leaving Nuku'alofa I travelled to the nearby island of 'Eua. The passage to 'Eua is notoriously rough, traversing a channel perched over the Tonga Trench (at nearly 30 000 feet, the second deepest point in the world's oceans). I was visiting 'Eua during their annual festival and their enthusiasm was infectious. The highlight of the week was the beauty pageant for Miss 'Eua National Park. I ended up at the wharf watching the various contestants in the pageant strut their stuff. They had obviously watched Miss America pageants a few too many times as they walked around the loading area of the wharf with a studied elegant gait, languid hand-waving, and plastic smiles. But something set this pageant apart from the others. The women had garlands of bird of paradise and frangipani flowers perched in their hair and draped across their bodies. The crowd showed their appreciation not only through wild cheering but trucks honking their horns. Dancing was also a part of the event. In Tonga they have a kind of an odd (to a Canadian at least) tradition of oiling their bodies before they dance, in order that appreciative people in the crowd can approach the dancers and stick bills to their bodies. As all this was going on, a bulky Tongan man was standing on a cement mixture mimicking the graceful swaying of the female dancers.

That night I found myself in the pastoral setting of Taina's guesthouse. This was no ordinary night. This was it! The night of the big event: the final judging of the beauty pageant. I sat hunched with Taina in her living room listening intently to the radio as they described the spectacle (all of this was in Tongan of course). The décor of the room was a stunning mixture of traditional Tongan and 70's disco chic, complete with floral print everything and a disco ball. We anxiously awaited the results. The sonorous drone of Taina’s snoring almost kept me awake. I retreated to my small room, the one decorated with the Harley Davidson sign on the wall that proclaimed: "Born to Ride!", and fell asleep to the sound of cows.