Wednesday, June 1, 2011
June 1
Over the past few days it's been raining really hard and there were funerals. After a death in the city, you can't work for 3 days, so we couldn't weave and with the rain we couldnít do much of anything else. I've been thinking about my project and trying to come up with a hypothesis. It seems as if there are so many different types of influences going on in Tonga, (Australia, New Zealand and American) and it seems like people keep cultural aspects that they have sort of a testimony of. It's like in the church; people have a testimony of certain things after they have experiences regarding that thing. For example, Uini made breakfast for the missionaries, and said it was better to make them traditional Tongan food (not an American dish that we suggested) so they had energy for the day. It was kind of ironic because we had gotten sick from the Tongan food the night before. However, she feels like from personal experience that Tongan food is healthy and makes you strong and gives you energy for the day, so for herself and her family, Tongan food/culture is the best.
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The question is Michelle: now that you have been experiencing Tongan food for a few months now, have you found that Tongan food gives you more energy?
ReplyDeleteThis is such a cool post! I like the comparisons of testimonies. We all base everything off of our own experiences--I'm sure that is one of the main reasons integrating into a new culture is so hard.
ReplyDeleteI can definitely say from experience that Tongan food sits in your stomach for hours. I felt full forever. Not like a bowl of fruity pebbles... But seriously, i've found the "testimony" an important part of tongan medicine. They only go to healers or to the hospital if they know it worked in the past. If they've heard a miraculous story about someone being healed by a certain treatment, word spreads like wildfire. Definitely an element of any culture
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