Rebecca's first cousin, Nora Bachman, spent six months working in and touring Australia and New Zealand. Before returning to the States in March 2003, she visited Rebecca and Justin on Nomuka for a week. Here is her report:

After my three weeks in New Zealand, I flew into Tonga's capital Nuku'Alofa, which although a short 3 hour flight, gets in at around 1 in the morning. Just before that I'd arranged to stay at the only hostel I could find and get in touch with. I emailed the owner and asked if she had any space and when she emailed back that she did, she also asked me to do her a favor. She asked if I could buy her two bottles of rum and two packages of cigarettes duty-free, as they cost a lot in the "city." She said that in exchange, her adopted Tongan son, a 190 cm, 130 kilo "boy" would pick me up at the airport for free. I, of course, said yes. It sounded almost like a threat. :) So I made my way to this hostel, which turned out to be quite nice, and I got to sleep. The next morning I woke up to go into town and find the Peace Corps office. The owner made me breakfast and we chatted a bit and she gave me some directions to find the office. At this point, I had heard from my mom, through John & Lynne from Rebecca, that her friend Corey happened to be in Nuku' Alofa at the same time as me and was going to be traveling back by boat and would be able to help me.

When I finally found the office, the security guard at the front told me the office was closed as it was some American holiday, not that I knew anything of it after being away for so long, but it was Martin Luther King day. I began to panic just a bit because I had no idea what I was going to do, until the guard asked me if I was Rebecca's cousin. When I said yes and he yelled to someone, this crazed girl comes running over to me, hugging me, apparently very happy to see me alive. I felt a bit bad for not knowing who she was until I realized I didn't know her. She turned out to be Corey and she'd spent the entire morning calling all the hostels she knew of trying to find me and had Rebecca worried about my whereabouts-that's right, Rebecca was worried. Due to our four-line communication, there had been some confusion about where I'd be staying when I got there and when I would go to the office, etc. but in the end it all worked out.

Because of the undependability of the boats, the boat that I thought I'd be taking, the Siupeli, did not go that night as scheduled because there would have only been two passengers, so I moved to Sela's Guest House and stayed with Corey. I ate at one of two Italian restaurants in the capital and also found a nice American cafe with pretty good food before we departed the following night.

The boat ride was not quite as bad as Rebecca and Justin described in one of their first emails after having visited Nomuka. That's not to say it was all wine and roses either. We were on the boat for about 12 hours with no toilet except for the first 30 minutes, because it had no flushing system so after such a long ride, it overflows so we got our business out of the way early on. We had a thin mattress that Corey had brought to put on the bench so that we could lie down on the hard wood. Unfortunately, the mattress did not cover the entire bench so from my waist down I was a bit bruised when the boat finally made it to Nomuka. We had gotten there about an hour early in order to assure ourselves a bench each but the boat was so full that we ended up sharing one, so we were quite scrunched up. We'd taken some "Sea-Legs" (sort of like Dramamine but not as strong) in order to help us last the ride.

I witnessed Tonga firsthand during one of my first experiences in the country, when a huge group of people brought a dying woman hooked up to an IV onto the boat. This throng of people was crying and surrounding her, trying to make her comfortable and set her up and many of them were saying good-bye before they left the boat. Corey informed me that many Tongans will go to their birthplace or childhood home when they are dying and that those people were her children and other relatives and that this was the last time they would see her. I felt a bit out of a place but I had nowhere else to look-it was very depressing and also brought me back down to reality.

Another strictly Tonga experience was when we had to move over so another woman could lay down on our bench. Tongans don't give a whole lot of personal space the way New Yorkers like it, and this woman just plopped her head right on my butt and laid down. She was nice enough to let me lay down and stretch out a bit and later ended up moving off the bench because I was too fidgety. She also offered me some of some strange purple object which I declined but later learned to love (kumala-a type of sweet potato).

The ride was fairly hellish, sliding along the bench as the boat rocked from side to side and my bladder was close to splitting when we finally arrived. I didn't sleep too much but went in and out of consciousness. I also was feeling a little guilty about laying down while others were standing or sitting on the floor but as Corey pointed out, we got there early, and there were many other Tongans laying down though many gave us Pelongis (white people) a hard time. But as Rebecca and Justin told us later, once they listened to them and got up and then of course, other people just laid down in their spots, so we tried to enjoy the space that we had.

Because Nomuka is so small and the boat we took, the Fangafa, was a rather large cargo boat, we could not dock so small boats would ride up to the Fangafa and we would sort of ever so carefully make our way from the large boat to the tiny boat with all of our bags. I was sort of in a state of misty-eyed drowsiness and cheer at seeing other Pelongis in the distance and knowing that they were sitting on land. (Prior to that boat ride, I'd been dreading my 13 hour plane ride after leaving Tonga, but during my time on the Fangafa, I couldn't wait to be on that plane with ALL that space.)

Needless to say, the first thing I did upon seeing their house was find the bathroom, also known as a pit toilet. They have small bike locks on their bathroom and shower because they live right in front of Justin's school and people are always walking through their yard, so just as a precaution to keep their washrooms as hygienic and private as possible, they have these small locks. They'd set up a bed for me in the front room right by the door so I could catch some breeze and it had a mosquito net covering it fully.

It's hard to imagine such incredibly hot weather and no breeze when it's so cold here and I returned to snow but it got quite warm after the first few days. When I returned from my trip to the pit toilet, which really isn't that bad, I walked into the kitchen and heard Dave Arlington on the radio--what a surprise! We had coffee and they had cinnamon buns waiting for us off the boat-those might have been the best cinnamon buns even though they were half burnt and a day old because they thought we were coming in the day before, so they'd had to keep them in the oven.

I took a nap while Justin went to school for a little bit and Rebecca fought with herself over whether she'd go in to work or not. I woke up sweating like crazy and ready to see Nomuka. I'd bought a "lava-lava" while I was in Nuku' Alofa with Corey, which is like a wrap or a sarong that can be worn sort of like a sari, and that came in handy as I had to cover my legs while I was walking around Nomuka. Nuku' Alofa is much more accepting nowadays, though I wore a long dress during my first day there, but Nomuka is still very traditional. We could wear shorts and tank tops in the house and walked from the shower to the house in our towels, but outside of the fence we tried to cover ourselves as the Tongans do.

I went in with Rebecca to school most days (I was there for a total of 9 days) and even helped teach the kids a little bit. I also acted as a teacher's aide, helping her prepare her lessons and workbooks. She has a workbook for each child and has to rewrite whatever she has planned for them for each child. Rebecca is so comfortable teaching the children and does a wonderful job of making them use their English and thinking of creative ideas to get them interested and help them understand. By the time these children leave her school, their classes in Justin's school are supposed to be taught entirely in English so Rebecca has a big job to try and help them.

The kids were so excited to see a new person, a Pelongi, and an unmarried girl, that they would call out "Nola! Nola!" just to have me turn and look at them. Throughout my nine days on Nomuka, I was really given the royal treatment.

One of the highlights of my trip to Nomuka was having the honor of serving as a "to'a." I sat in a circle of men who were drinking "kava," a drink made from the root of a tree that makes the drinker a bit high or drunk. Only an unmarried girl who is not related to the other members of the circle can be asked to perform this honor, and as you may know, most people on such a small island are related to one another, so an unmarried girl who is not related to anyone was very exciting to the Nomukans. Pretty much the first thing that every one of the men asked me when they say me was, "to'a? to'a?" I was a bit reluctant at first, but when we worked out a way for Jonathan and Justin to go with me, I was willing to accept. The men would not let me sit next to either of my fellow Palangis, so I sat next to one of Justin's coworkers, a teacher names Sikope (sp?), and another to'a's brother. The men used half of a coconut shell as a cup and would hold it up to me. I served the kava from a kava bowl with a ladle and the men would suck the shell dry in one gulp and then throw the shell to the floor. I got to taste a little bit but did not really like the flavor, it made my lips a little numb, and one sip was enough for me. There were four circles in the room, and throughout the evening they would play music and sing. There was one very rowdy kava circle next to me and played guitar and sang, and competed with my own circle (I did not take part in the music). Every time that I applauded following a song, they would get very excited and yell, "The Palangi is clapping! The Palangi is clapping!" It was very entertaining. At one point, a guy who needed to be cut off stood up and danced for me--I think we left shortly after that. It was strange to walk home in total darkness. I, obviously, had no idea where we were or in what direction we needed to go, what would be in my way, or anything and it was almost absolute darkness. It's amazing how much we depend on light.

We went on many walks down to the beach and went swimming a few times--occasionally we'd get to a more isolated beach where I could swim in just my bathing suit but a couple times we showed up and there were already some Nomukans there, so we had to keep our t-shirts and shorts on. One of those times, Rebecca and Justin's neighbors were getting a fire ready for a cookout. The father of the family came out of the ocean with his spear gun and more than a dozen rather impressive-looking fish. They were all probably almost two-feet long and the coolest part was when he turned one fish over, and a smaller one came out of its mouth. Meanwhile, the man's parents had been preparing a fire on the beach and roasting some bread fruit. They are so resourceful--they used giant leaves as plates, potholders, and kindling. They placed the fish on the fire and after a few minutes, put the fish in front of us and bade us to eat while they waited for their! food. I am not a huge seafood fan, but I was loving this fish. You just dig in with your fingers, no seasoning at all, you just eat in plain and it is so tasty. The Tongans think we're crazy because we don't like the fish head-they see the fish head as a delicacy and the best part, so we gave Finn the fish head at home, but not in front of Rebecca and Justin's neighbors, lest they thought we were insulting them. It was a truly Tongan experience.