The King and I

The King comes back to Vava’u every year on July 4th to celebrate his birthday.  We had waited by the roadstead for his processional when he arrived, but it was delayed from 10:00 am to 11:00 am to 1:00 pm. When we finally got back to the road after a short break his car just whizzed by, despite all the school children lining the road. 

Then later in the week at Hunga Lagoon he was supposed to show up to talk about new fishing zones that were recently establish to help preserve the local fish stocks. It was kind of a lousy day weather wise, but we waited. Still no King.

An example of the various Tongan handicrafts.

The woven floor mats are a speciality of the Tongans, but the real functional items are the woven waist bands that Tongans wear to show respect (much like Westerners wearing a tie).

The fishing grounds around Tonga are rich in mahi mahi, tuna, skipjack, snapper and other types of fish.

These are actually yams, a staple of the Tongan diet.

So on July 7th we headed up to the high school sports field where the annual Agricultural Show was scheduled, we figured the King had to attend. We had a fun time walking around looked at all the vegetable, fruit, and fish displays from the various islands and villages. It was kind of like a very low key version of the Puyallup Fair. A bit later we saw several police vehicles enter the school grounds with blue lights flashing so we quickly got some seats near the offical dais with representatives from the Chinese and Japanese governments.  Sure enough, a white Toyota Land Cruiser pulled up and out stepped the King Tupo VI. Like his father, he is very well liked by the people and has even abdicated some royal responsibilities like land ownership and a representative government to the people.

King Tupo IV arrives at the fair grounds.

Everyone loves the King.

We sat and listened to long speeches in Tongan about agriculture, etc., and got in position for when the King would tour the grounds. It was funny for me as a former professional photographer who has photographed five Kings worldwide (and battled with their security people for the privilege), to meet the Tongan version of security. I was really pushing it to get very close to the Royal Dias when a Tongan policeman came over and very apologetically asked me to move back a bit. He was almost embarrassed in his request and I had to say to him “Hey, man, it’s cool. I understand you are just doing your job” as I slowly retreated.” Tongans hate confrontation and are very kind and polite to palangis (white people).

King Tupo VI tours the fairground with his various Ministers and officials.

The King showed a genuine interest in all the displays, and the feeling was mutual with the thousands of Tongans.

The Army guy on the right kept an eye on me all the way around the displays. These guys don't seem to come in a small or medium size, everyone is built like a football tackle.

I spent the next 30 minutes slowly walking backward (like in my old photo days) taking pictures of the crowd as the King stopped at each booth and talked to the people. Several older women actually prostrated themselves in front of the King yelling “God save the King” in Tongan. So amazing to be in a country where the people actually like the ruling class.

The Royal Corps of Musicians.

The Royal Dias with the King's son was just to the right of where we were sitting.

That night we and a thousand Tongans attended a Military Tattoo near the Army headquarters by town. Once again we were seated near the King’s Dias (except his son attended in his absence) and watched a throughly entertaining display of both local high school and military bands. The Tongans really like band music and the bands were quite good. 

The Royal Engineers made short work of disassembling the two jeeps.

The highlight of the evening was when the Royal Engineers played out a scenario of two jeeps in a combat situation having to cross a deep river. The engineers drove in the jeeps, disassembled them all the way down to the engine blocks and carried all the parts across “the river” where they were reassembled. Except they couldn’t get one jeep restarted, but with 10 huge Tongans they simply pushed it down the road.

The crowd favorites where the Royal Navy Special Forces team attacking a mock freighter where bad guys were holding hostages.

The next demonstration was the Royal Navy Special Forces pretending they were rescuing hostages held by bad guys on a freighter.  I thought they did a great job but the Tongans laughed at everything. Maybe it’s because the Tongans are such a peaceful and fun loving people that this aggressive activity seemed incongruous to them.

Anyway it was a wonderful experience and we throughly enjoyed ourselves.