During the holidays I have been watching a lot of documentaries. I was very intrigued and amazed by the traditional work of many different cultures. Therefore, I decided to make an blog-post on one of those documentaries. For the next couple of days I might be able to create blog-posts on the different cultural perspectives on tradition. Today I will be sharing an documentary from my culture. I chose to start with my own because it's one I am mainly familiar with and I can understand well. I hope you enjoy this blog-post and learn something like I have :)
THIS IS NOT MY VIDEO I DO NOT OWN IT
WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT - TONGAN PRACTICES
As you can see, this is only part 1 of this video but, it shares a good amount of information and I will be covering only a few parts. The term finemotu'a (female) fangota or a tangata (male) fangota is a fisher woman/man who harvests or collects seafood and seafood plants. Fangota is something they do everyday. This traditional technique is mainly directed towards the woman which is learnt and passed down from grandmothers to mothers to daughters and coming generations. The Seafoods and Seafood plants are used for both food and medicine for the people of Tonga. Even though their are many striving people who own decent places and a good amount of money there are many people who don't have those things and are based in poor homes.
Matelita Tupou (a finemotu'a fangota) is one of those people who don't live those wealthy lifestyles. She is married to a man who's previous wife had seven children as well as his current wife who also has 7 children - 14 overall. Matelita's family are so poor they don't have the basic money to even buy foods from the store. This is why her and her children go out to the ocean eat, bring and feed to everyone the provided food from the ocean. When they go out to the ocean they bring woven baskets from green flax to gather the seafood and seafood plants.
Vai Tupou is also a finemotu'a fangota who lives together with Matelita. She is also married but has a total of ten kids whom she takes care of and feeds. Besides the fact that they live a poor lifestyle and enviroment, all her children are well and not sick and no one is laying in a hospital bed because of the healthy seafood they eat and freshly grab from the ocean.
A common thing people from foreign countries do is import food from their country and give it to people who live in the islands (Samoa, Tonga, Fiji etc.) In Tonga we call it Talamu. Talamu is where we pack tons and tons of foreign food, put them in giant containers and ship them straight to Tonga. This is something complusry for us and it happens on occasions where families come for any matter to New Zealand or other foreign countries.
Vai Tupou stated that before this became a 'thing' for Tongans they were consuming very healthy and natural foods. These foods included limu a type of seaweed commonly picked during the fangota session. But now, people in Tonga are eating very unhealthy foods like chips, sweets, corned beef (a very common food tongans ship). This has lead to many illnesses in Tonga. Tonga is now in on of the top diabetic countries/islands in the world because of this matter. A disease fell on her island and her and her family survived it by eating the seafoods and seafood plants.
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Well this is all I am able to cover on this interesting topic. I can claim that these people are very healthier than us because (this is not all cases) the daily diet people in foreign countries consume are shocking. If you want to see part two of the video click this link. I agreed with Vai Tupou's statement because It was very true and its something my mother always talks about. What about you? I would love to hear your input about this topic. Please leave a comment to share and I will reply!
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