In the Buffer Zone

Originally posted September 2, 2014, by cruisingrunner

We are anchored in the lee of Kenutu Island, which is a small island on the far eastern fringe of the Vava’u island group in Tonga. On the other side of the island is the vast Pacific Ocean, where winds are blowing and surf is pounding. The cliffs are steep and you can look down to watch the surf crashing over the reef below. If you’re lucky, you can look down and see turtles swaying back and forth in the swell and big fish swimming around taunting you since it’s not a viable place to go spear fishing. We know all this because we took the short hike up to the ridge yesterday and enjoyed the wind in our faces and the sound of crashing waves, all of this reminding us of some of the more rugged coastlines in California.

But on this side of the island we are buffered from all that. Here, we have so little wind that yesterday we drifted around on our anchor and got up close and personal with the catamaran anchored next to us, another kid boat with three girls. Our cockpits were so close to each other we pretty much had breakfast together. On this side of the island, I went for a run this morning along the approximately half mile beach, and I was actually hot without a cool breeze to accompany me. In this buffer zone, we were able to have a fantastic 10th birthday party for one of the kids on one of our buddy boats, which included a bonfire, hot dog roasting and capture the flag. We can constantly hear the sound of the Pacific on the other side of our buffer zone, but it is distant and content to exist in the background, even if it is really not too terribly far away.

That’s not the buffer zone I wanted to write about, though. There is another buffer, a figurative one, that has a tendency to separate the cruising community from the people and culture of the Kingdom of Tonga. Like Mexico, there is a huge expatriate population here that has figured out how to immigrate and start businesses in order to serve the cruisers and other tourists that come here to visit. Unlike Mexico, these expats are primarily from Australia and New Zealand as opposed to the U.S., but that point, while maybe interesting, is largely irrelevant, so I digress. These expats cater to all of our needs. They have most of the restaurants and dive operations in town and they run many of the resorts scattered amongst the various islands of the Vava’u group. They provide internet, laundry, and provisioning services, and they even run a daily VHF cruisers net which lets us connect, ask questions, get help, find boat items, and listen to their commercials about all they have to offer. French Polynesia, in contrast has a very small, if nonexistent immigrant community. France controls this very tightly, and it seems to be fairly effective in preserving the Polynesian culture there. While we thoroughly enjoyed the immense amount of interaction we had with the local population, it was, at times, difficult or frustrating to figure out all of the everyday stuff like where to get propane filled or where to take laundry.

So, when we arrived, all of the services offered by this expat community, particularly the daily VHF net, was a welcome change. Starting from day one, Mike from the Aquarium Cafe helped us by telling us what to do to initiate our check in procedures with the Tongan Customs officials. He also gave us flight status information when our friends were arriving by island hopper from Nuku’alofa, the capital of Tonga. However, not long ago it became obvious to us that our experience here has been a bit different. Tim hasn’t gone spear fishing or lobstering or harpooning with any locals, we haven’t been invited to anyone’s house for dinner, and there haven’t been any local kids using our paddle boards or jumping off the bow of Exodus. We’ve eaten at American, Spanish, and Swiss restaurants, and even the Tongan Feast we went to was run by an Australian woman. The only Tongan businesses I’ve supported are a bakery (with yummy cheesy bread) and the laundry lady, although most cruisers take their laundry to an Australian establishment (that’s also an internet cafe). Now that we’ve identified and acknowledged this buffer that we’ve allowed to exist between us and the Tongans, we need to do something about it. There are many, many small villages amongst these islands, and that may need to be our starting point. We’ve walked through a couple of them, and people seem friendly and helpful, but so far we haven’t connected with anyone. Perhaps we connected with people in French Polynesia out of necessity some times, and since all our needs have been easily fulfilled by the expats, that impetus isn’t there. Our impetus will simply need to be our desire for a richer experience here. It’s hard for us, because we are all naturally shy people, but perhaps the effort could be well worth it.

-D.

P.S. In my first paragraph I said that the other side of the island is not a viable place to spearfish. Since I wrote that, my husband and his buddy have headed out there to do just that. Not surprising, he and I have different opinions of “viable” sometimes.