Nuku'alofa

Those of us who love a tiny Polynesian nation in the South Pacific are distressed by the reports out of Tonga of anti-royalist riots that have left at least six dead and destroyed the downtown of Nuku'alofa, the capital of the country.

The best pictures of the riots' aftermath are on Matangi Tonga. My friend the former Peace Corps Volunteer Emile Hons has been working the international phone lines and reports that 80 percent of the downtown is destroyed. The old Tungi Arcade, gone. The Pacific Royale hotel, gone. The Indian department stores—gone. And of course Shoreline, the modern communications company started by the King-designate when he was Crown Prince—ratted and burned. By one account, many of the Chinese immigrants to the country—they bought their passports in a royal scandal some years back—are hunkered in the Chinese Embassy, waiting out the troubles.

Hons tells me that woodframed historic structures, the Royal Palace, the Nuku'alofa Club, and the Parliament House, have survived the riots. These sites will surely be the focus of the Aussie and N.Z. troops that arrived over the weekend, restoring order.

The riots are a paradigm shift for the Friendly Islands. They reflect a long-traditional people's impatience with a feudal structure of government and a Parliament dominated by noblemen. Or as former Peace Corps Volunteer Bob Forbes says:

I think the biggest burden is now on the shoulders of [future King] Siaosi Tupou V and especially the nobles in Parliament, who have the power to slowly change things.

Maybe not so slowly. The democracy movement has been around for many years now, with few real reforms to show for its efforts. Its time has come at last. The Tongans are a creative and (ordinarily) gentle people. I'm pulling for their leaders to wake up and grasp the moment.

The King of Tonga turned 88 today. Four years ago the New Zealand papers had him dying, still he keeps going.

I bring him up because I wrote a book about the murder of a Peace Corps volunteer by another Peace Corps volunteer in Tonga in 1976, a murder the King helped the U.S. cover up, and because of a Tonga-inspired conversation at dinner last night.

We were talking about religion. I lived in Tonga off and on for six months, and every Sunday I went to the Anglican church, St. Paul's in Nuku'alofa, with my Tongan family, to be a part of the community and to sing hymns and I suppose pray too, and Sela Tu'inukuafe would always motion for me to take communion. Now and then I did. I probably took communion five times. I liked it. I liked the procession, the kneeling, the velvet, the waiting, the hand of the priest, the sunlight in the northeastern window there, and the humility and solemnity and specialness of the moment. The light always felt exalted then. And no I'm not talking about the blood and the body of Christ, or my sins.

My wife, who has fallen away from Episcopalian upbringing in much the way I've fallen away from my Jewishness, says this would shock the religious. A Jewish friend also found it upsetting. But a fallen-away Lutheran said that her religious mother would be accepting of it. She would say that God's grace and love are available to everyone, you only have to open yourself to them. I liked that explanation.