Here We Go Again Blog

05/04/2025

Kat’s Grant is Here!

A process and a dream that began in September 2024 was finished this week.
Kat’s school was in need of.. everything. A paint job, new windows, carpet, lawn equipment, trash bins, pipes and so on. As a peace corps volunteer we are able to write grants in order to help our communities with things they need. Kat’s grant was funded by Friends of Tonga, an organization of old peace corps volunteers and people fond of Tonga wanting to stay connected through supporting local projects. The supplies were shipped from the mainland and her community and teachers got to work! The community takes pride in having a beautiful, clean school and feel proud to have accomplished this dream, together.

The pictures below show before and after

05/04/2025

March: The month of puppies

In January 2024, we were gifted with a Tongan pup we named Laramie. A beautiful brown, spunky, toe loving puppy. We learned how to raise her without “proper” dog food, American medicine, treats, toys, etc. We treated her fleas with dish soap and coconut oil. She loves bones, canned fish, broth, leftover rice and her absolute favorite -hotdogs. We spent the last year training her in the Tongan language, taking her on runs, and teaching her how to play with the village kids. After our New Years trip to New Zealand in January 2025 we returned home to find her…pregnant.

We knew absolutely nothing about pregnant dogs. All we thought was that puppies come from the pet store. We never knew anyone with an actual pregnant dog, leading us to experience everything first hand. First came the mood swings. She was so affectionate and wanted endless pets but would then turn around and bark nonstop at everything that moved, even the bushes. Second, diet. She was eating everything. We even doubled (somedays tripled) her meals. Third fatigue. Our traditional 2 mile Sunday walk which was for sure her favorite part of the week was shortened. She would make it the first ten minutes, sit down, and wait for us to catch her on the way back. Not to mention she was massive. There was a flow of people in and out of the house putting guesses on just how many babies we were to expect.

February 20th, we woke up and were greeted with the cries of puppies. Eyes watering, we were so excited to meet the little ones, but more excited to see how Laramie was doing. Laramie’s favorite spot under the house, a safe, shaded place that not many dogs can fit under which is where the new puppies were born. She came out later in the day, skinny but full of energy. We were so happy to see her healthy and back to how we knew her. It was then a long three weeks of waiting to see the puppies.

Three weeks…we were about to crawl under the house, how can anyone wait that long?

Three weeks on the day we were greeted with seven puppies. SEVEN PUPPIES. Our hearts with were full. It was the most amazing experience to be apart of. We soon realized that the puppies were scared of the sun, so play time began about 8pm which was no problem for us. We brought out the flash lights and played all night. That week was filled with shooting stars and freaking adorable puppies. We kept them around for a few weeks, making sure they were fat and healthy and jealously spending as much time as we could with them. In time, each developed their own unique personality and quirks. They wobbled around the place acting like they owned it and chasing Laramie endlessly for their next meal.

The word got out quicker than you could imagine. Everyone wanted a puppy from the Peace Corps but especially from Laramie, a town favorite. Eventually, we found seven perfect homes for all the puppies. Our hearts filled with joy each time we got to drop off one and watch how excited the families were, reminding us of the first time we met Laramie.

08/12/2024

Graduation Season!

Tis the season of graduations! We were lucky enough to spend another end of the school year in Tonga and be apart of all the festivities that come with celebrating the end of school and the start of summer! Hango celebrated with a traditional feast and an extra long church service and Kats school performed a Christmas show at their town hall.

On Friday morning, parents and children of each community representing the primary school packed into the hall, decorated with strings of colorful balloons and traditional mats. Students took their seats in-front of the audience of family members, dressed in their red and white school uniforms and some featuring the celebratory flower necklaces made for events like these. Kat’s students performed six songs all in English! Of course starting it off with Silent Night, then Jingle Bells, Deck the Halls (which is the students favorite), Feliz Navidad, This Land is Your Land (changing the words to fit Tongan landmarks), and finishing with ‘We wish you a merry Christmas’. The students did wonderful and all their hard work was seen by many. Next, the students performed their end of year dances. The girls danced to Dancing Queen, some in their long princess dresses, and the boys danced to Pump it by the Black Eyed Peas, wearing sunglasses and a backwards hat, and lastly all the students performed a Christmas Zumba song all taught by Kat. During any dance or performance, you can always expect a mom or grandma to stand up, start shouting and dancing, adding to all of our entertainment and to the kids embarrassment. Beyond the performances, each student was called up one at a time with the other kids in their grade. The teacher reads their full name, home villages of each parent/family, and their class rank (talk about high stakes), then families get a chance to walk up and bury their child in loli kahoa’s (Candy necklaces). Their smilies are ear to ear, and it’s amazing to see just how fast that candy is ate.

This was our second year of making candy necklaces for each student at Kat’s school and it took us about 4 hours to complete them all. It’s good to know the only things needed for the perfect graduation gift is plastic wrap, ribbon, and lots of yummy candy.

27/10/2024

Koniseti!!

This month is the month of church concerts (Koniseti) in Tonga. Our village held three different concerts, and one kava men’s group in order to help fundraise for the villages church. This fundraised money is used to support the church for the entire year until next October, therefore families take pride showing out and supporting their local community.

Each family is asked to perform at least once during the month and the family can choose how and who they want to perform for their family. They can choose for a family member to dance a traditional Tongan dance, or choose anything song they like and break it down on the dance floor, which can be done by anyone in the family, while the rest of the family dances around them in support, both are very entertaining and a sight that is ever dull to see.

Our concert took place on Wednesday last week, with a scheduled start time of 7, which actually means that people will begin to come at 9 (island time). People come in all their best colors, wigs, sparkly dresses, hats, scarves, the wilder the better. The most important element to any Tongan Koniseti is the music. It has to be loud, the speakers have to be big, and you have to hear it from the next village over. It was quite the party.

The church asked for all the primary school kids to be placed at the same concert and for group dances as well as solo performances. A women in our village was quick to accept the challenge. I was sought out quickly and asked to teach three English group dances and of course, I said yes! Dance class began right away and lasted for three weeks until it was performance day! The women in my village hosted the kids everyday after school where her and her oldest daughter taught the three Tongan dances with myself teaching the other dances. We practiced rain or shine, and the kids were often bribed with cookies, bread, ice cream, and papayas! Even though I’m sure they would have shown up anyway, the kids would run over right after school with a smile and a desire to learn. As long as the last three weeks felt, once the day came I couldn’t have been more grateful for all the crazy in between. The performance showed all their hard work, especially the children’s abilities to adapt and learn something new. The kids performed a line dance to Cotton Eye Joe, The Macarena (which is a crowd favorite) and their new favorite song, WakaWaka by Shakira. The village cheered and celebrated with the children the entire night. They enjoyed seeing something new as well as their traditional dances that continue to live on. It was a night of sharing cultures and a fun way to use English outside of the classroom.

As the night finished it was very bittersweet, but don’t worry, I have already started planning the Christmas concert, with more English dances to come!

-Katarina Eads

23/10/2024

When the Water Stops, The Work Begins

Wind slammed against our windows and rain filled the streets this past weekend as we sheltered from our most recent tropic storm. Its common knowledge for us by now that any occasion we get a substantial amount of rain, we can count on our sinks and toilet running slow and muddy for a day or so afterwards. However, following this recent downpour, we were left with no water at all along with the rest of our campus. There are enough rain tanks scattered about that this didn’t pose an immediate threat, but as most of you know, water is a pretty nice thing to have when you need it and because of this need, C**t’s school is cancelled until the problem is resolved.
At the start of this week, with no time to lose, all the male students and staff piled into the back of an old wooden wagon hitched to a 50 year old Case IH tractor bound for the water source at the base of the islands spine. We made a few pitstops on the way, stopping in the back fields to gather plenty of green coconuts for drinking, and some potatos, cassava, brown coconuts and talo leaves for our lunch. By the time we arrived, most students had to sit perched atop our bounty of home grown, hand harvested goodies. We parked the trailer in a shaded clearing when the ‘road’ had finally turned into jungle.
Our crew of 15 or so was split into groups, first shift, second shift, and our miscellaneous (cooks, mechanic, etc..), as we unloaded our supplies amongst the draping vines and crawling roots. The water source is located about a minutes walk away, crawling over a small meandering creek and crouching through a first rocky gateway. The water then begins to pool and a large black pipe can be seen running deeper into the cave and connecting into a moss covered concrete wall. Behind which is a pool of cold, usually clear, chest deep water (aka the source). The heavy rains bring in silt and dirt from the ground above, constantly building up within the pool, and occasionally growing tall enough that it clogs the pipe altogether. Our task was to wade into the pool, take turns diving to the bottom with a bucket, usually assisted by someones hands on your shoulders, and filling it with as much mud, sticks, sand, and rocks as you could before coming up for air. The bucket was then passed down an assembly line and dumped over the edge. We did this for hours. The Tongans were high spirited the whole time, as we’ve come to expect. Laughing, joking and cheering echoed through the narrow space as we worked.
When it was time to switch, we emerged back into the clearing, wrung out our soaking wet clothes, huddled close to the few fires burning, and filled our stomachs with coconuts and warm food. The feast was all the more impressive knowing that it was made with only 2 knives and 2 pots. Everything other tool being fashioned out of sticks and stumps lying around or discarded coconut husks. We ate our fill and then lounged to the rusting sound of the leaves. When our time was up, we rode our jostling carriage back past the fields and jungle, free from the extra weight and with tired bones.
We returned the next day for the same thing.

25/09/2024

24/09/2024

Don’t worry, we didn’t forget about you all..

TAWS Marathon
This past weekend there was a race being held on the main island that happens once every year. We were lucky enough to attend last year where we both completed our first 5k. This race sparked colts love for running, but for Kat, not so much. Once moving onto our island we began to get a little more free time which turned into us developing island life hobbies, one of which being running. Our community members have gotten used to seeing use trotting along on the side of the road, heading through town or or often the middle of the jungle. At first, they couldn’t quite figure out what in the world we were up to and often stopped to offer us a ride to wherever it was we were going. Nowadays they just give us a little honk or a wave and drive on by knowing that we aren’t really going anywhere in particular. The evenings are our favorite time to run, giving the day a little time to cool off, and allowing us to wrap up any after school activities we may be working on. On Saturdays we sometimes use the extra freedom to go on longer, more adventurous runs, often to see other volunteers and always to check out the beautiful nooks and crannies of our island. Alot of our Peace Corps group has gotten hooked on an app called ‘Strava’ which is basically a way to keep up with each others runs and workouts even while we are in different places. It keeps everyone motivated and a little competition never hurt anyone. As for this years race, we were unable to travel to do it in person but we still completed each of our events here on our own island. We all upped the ante from last year with Kat completing her fastest 10k and C**t running a half marathon. We shared all of our runs with our fellow volunteers that competed in person and look forward to next year where we will hopefully end our service the same way we start…out of breath.

New Volunteers
As we reached our one year mark of living in Tonga in June, we were also greeted with some exciting news..19 new trainees were about to embark on the same journey! At over double the size of our group, this collection of features half education volunteers and half of the brand new environmental volunteers. Tonga is the first country to implement this new, climate-oriented environmental project. These volunteers will have the chance to utilize their own personal strengths and experiences in developing new programs in their communities. From coastline restoration to sustainability in the home, the sky is the limit for the new possibilities. We had our first chance to meet the new crew on their first full day in Tonga, an exciting, disorienting, and exhausting day that we remember all too well. It was a lot easier to be on this side of the experience, watching them excitedly flit around to their new best friends and asking questions at a mile-a-minute. We answered their questions as best we could but the truth is that you really just have to wait to see it all for yourself. We’ve been lucky to have plenty of opportunities to get know this new group throughout their 3 month training period, spending a week sharing powerpoints and discussions, wandering around town pointing out all the best shops and restaurants, snorkeling and mangrove planting, and even hosting a select few at our house for a week. The education and environment volunteers alike come from a plethora of diverse backgrounds, educations, and interests. And More than a few have already done peace corps in a different country, bringing plenty of stories and experiences to share. With this group, volunteers will have returned to all major island groups of the Kingdom of Tonga, continuing to build on the foundations of over 50 years of volunteers before us.

Whale Swimming
Among the many things that may bring someone to Tonga, or specifically ‘Eua, the most prolific is the yearly humpback whale migration to our warm, clear waters. After spending their summers in antarctic waters stuffing themselves full of krill, they embark on the 6,000 km journey towards their mating/calfing grounds located in our front yard. Like the whales, people come from all over the world for the unique chance to swim in our waters with these massive creatures. There are currently only 2 whale diving outfits on our island, so each keeps thoroughly busy this time of year. To our luck, we’ve become friends with some of the guides and the owner of one of these resorts. We happened to be at the right place at the right time and received an invite to fill in some empty spots on one of the whale boats going out early in the week. After watching blowholes and distant splashes for the past year, we were finally getting the chance to see them in their element.
We loaded the boat at 9am, borrowed wetsuits on and squeezing us in all the wrong places, and then we were off into the watery horizon seeking our first encounter of the day. This didn’t take long (at all) and in no time we were watching as the first 4 divers threw on their fins and masks with the speed and precision of an attack team and slid into the deep, lapis colored water. Each boat fits 8 guests, a guide, and a skipper. The guests are split into two groups so there aren’t too many flailing bodies in the water when the whales come up to check us out. We watched from the boat as a few black, car-sized backsides spouted fine clouds of salt water and whale snot from 50m away. They were curious, but clearly not in a playful mood and soon disappeared beneath the swell. We repeated this encounter a time or two until we came upon a group of whales that would steal the show and provide us with a mesmerizing day and stories to last a lifetime. As soon as we came upon these 3 playful juveniles, I think the excitement was mutual. We watched from the deck as their white bellies turned the clear water a shade of electric blue/green as they passed beneath. Their shrill, deep exhale bellowed out from all sides of the boat, often preceding a big splash. Once we got in the water there was nothing we could do but watch with amazement as these giant, bus-sized teenagers floated, twirled, bobbed, and splashed about, nimble as a reef fish. We bunched together in the middle of the beautiful chaos and tried not to catch a stray 2 ton tail. These animals were clearly having fun. What struck me the most was their apparent curiosity with us. We are clearly not the same species, but our bilateral symmetry (head, 2 arms, and legs) shows them that we aren’t exactly aliens either. Multiple times they floated within 10 feet of us, nearly grazing us with a fin, and peering deeply with one small, black, intelligent eye. These stares freeze time, and make the chaos stand still.
After 90 minutes with the same pod, we were forced to return to the boat for lunch and give the whales a break from our presence. We ate amidst deep exhales and emotional recounts from all we had seen. We returned in the afternoon, exhausted but fulfilled. Words can never truly describe what saw in the cold, blue water, but I hope the pictures below may give you some idea at least.

Highlights
- C**t wrote a grant for his school and received a new roof, windows, and doors for the men’s dorm!
- We met the Director of Peace Corps
- Kat has led Zumba classes in her village!
- We went to New Zealand during the school break
-The first ever cruise ship came to our island
- Our dog keeps getting bigger and bigger