This is my first blog, and I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed. Creating a blog for my Prep-Course for the Tongan Field Study I will be doing over the summer, has proved to be a much more difficult task than I would have imagined. I am working on trying to add headings to the blog so that I can sort the blogs into categories. . . this could take a while.
We were assigned a very interested reading for tomorrow's class called "The Origin of the Tongan Tao'vala." I was actually surprised that the whole point of the article was only to describe the origin of the Tao'vala (given the title of the article, I guess I should not have been surprised at all). Given that this article was the first reading we were assigned about Tonga, I assumed it would be. . . well more about the Tongan culture, and not just an article of clothing. However, as I was reading I noticed myself thinking, "well, that's very strange." I started to think if maybe that was the point of us reading this article to begin with (I'm completely guessing on that). Maybe, we were supposed to notice how we perceive other cultures as being "strange" because they are not like our American culture. I can't help to think that, as Americans, we our quite egocentric in the way we view other cultures. My thinking that it was strange for the Tongan people wear tao'vala to weddings, funerals, and in the presence of the king, is a perfect example of that. Of course, in my country it would be very odd (and possibly even rude) if someone were to wear a mat, or a baked canoe sail, to a wedding or funeral, but in the Tongan culture it's completely appropriate. This opened my eyes and made me realize that as I travel to Tonga, I will need to be very sure that I do not view the culture and their traditions compare to what we do in America. I feel very confident that I will have a much better experience if I just observe what they do and allow myself to be immersed in that, rather than just thinking that it's different from what I do and therefore, wrong or weird.
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