Tonga!

On Wednesday, the 11th, we hosted a dinner for 33 Heart Surgeons from Australia. They have been in Tonga doing humanitarian work for 2 weeks. They come every two years and do life saving surgeries for the people of the islands. They bring all of their own machines and use the new hospital wing to do the surgeries. This year their youngest patient was a 2 day old baby! If they hadn’t been here when she was born, she would have died. Now she should live a normal, heathy life. What a gift they give!! They are able to do about 30 surgeries while they are here and then people start getting screened for their next visit. It is socialized medecine in Tonga so it is all free to the Tongans. The Dr’s pay their own way here and they love coming. They told us that Tonga is their favorite place to go because the people are so friendly and appreciative. We had a great evening with them and they seemed to really enjoy themselves.

We took them to a resort on the western side of the island. They have a great meal and then a traditional Tongan floor show. We were impressed with the meal. They had a good variety of food. We ate a little bit of everything except the raw fish salad and the octopus. I had a Tongan Dr. sitting next to me and she loves octopus. When Alan and I didn’t have any, she asked for our share and then thanked us for not having any. She had ½ a plate full of those creepy things. I hate the way those tenicles look back at you ---YUCK! They also had the traditional pig. We watched a Tongan man go back for seconds and come back with the head. I still can’t believe that they eat the heads!

The floorshow was lots of dancing from the different islands of the South Pacific. At the end they did several fire dances. They were amazing! I had a lot of trouble with my camera. It just stopped on me and I knew that I had a full battery. I took the battery out and then put it back in to see if that would make it work. It did, but for some reason I lost every picture that was stored on my camera! I wanted to cry. I had most of them copied onto my computer but not all of them. Especially the ones that I had taken earlier in the evening. I asked one of the doctors that had a nice camera if he would email some of his pictures to me. He said yes and I am praying that he does because I have to write this up and pictures make it so much better. Also, I want to put some on the blog.