Polynesia: Tonga

     Y 2M has put Tonga on the map, since, thanks to a bend in the International Date Line, it will be the first country to greet it. Special flights are being put on for people with more money than sense who refuse to greet the new century happily in the arms of Morpheus.
     Rugby now raises its brutal head. From New Zealand, Max Hope points out that "probably nearly half the AB team have a Polynesian background. (But we like to think of them all as 'Kiwis'!)." We are in the good care of a Tonga couple. Saia, the husband, belongs to the majority Free Wesleyan Church of Tonga, and his wife Soana converted from minority Catholicism when they married, this being the custom.
     Saia, a burly man, played rugby in his youth, and still suffers from an injury he thus received. When I mentioned the black day for the New Zealand All Blacks at Cardiff, he revealed his encyclopedic knowledge of the whole business. In view of his ailment, I advised him to take up chess.
     "National teams" is a misnomer. Many members of French teams are non-French, often black. Not to be confused with the All Blacks, who are not black.

Ronald Hilton - 11/3/99