The Feast, The Fire, The Forgiveness

We decided to go to the feast once again at Ano Beach with Jan and Tony. When Tony and I booked it through Aquarium Café, Jason told us there would be fire dancing which proved to be different. We started getting ready to go but were a bit delayed as I ended up relaying a distress call from a catamaran called Top Cat that had hit a reef in on the eastern side of the Vava'u group and damaged a rudder. The rudder was jammed so they had a problem steering with engines. Another boat, "Linda" was able to help but for whatever reason, VHF had to be relayed through us until they were within hailing range. At the end of the day, Top Cat managed to get their damaged rudder freed up and with one good rudder and two engines they managed to get to the Tapana anchorage. We got to shore and browsed the local crafts, of course, Jan and Tony got talked into buying a few things from the locals. Tony was a mad photographer and took at least 150 photos during the time we were on shore. They evening started with the dancing which was pretty much the same as we had seen before but the Quina, the local fire dancer and his son performed the fire dance which was pretty spectacular. The feast was as good as before with tons of food and after eating we settled into the Kava circle while the locals jammed with guitar, banjo and ukulele. The kava is pretty weak. We shared around a bit of rum we had brought, much appreciated by the players!! Quina had asked Tony if he could burn the photos to CD and bring them into the village the next day so before we left, we asked him what a good time would be, and he said come before church at 10:00 and we could then go to church. We decided to go and hear the singing. Cathy and I had talked about it for awhile anyways. We were on our way by 09:00 this morning and after a good hot, sticky walk into town, tracked down where Quina lived, delivered the CD and he took us over to the local Tongan church. He was feeling pretty rough and didn't join us. You start by joining the men in a kava circle before the service. It was odd, they were all sitting around in the circle in the shirt, ties, jackets, and either dress wraps or pants. Cathy and Jan were the only two women there. The older minister was not too enthused about it but nothing was said. Allowances were made for the Palangi's. The service lasted an hour, the singing was terrific, the service was incomprehensible but we were thanked for being there at the end. Not really sure of the denomination but it really doesn't make much difference as it was all in Tongan. We had plans to move today but by the time we got back, everyone was pretty much beat from running around like mad since Wednesday. Maybe tomorrow, we will explore some more!!

----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com