Boys+land = Tonga

1 February Tokonaki

To celebrate Chinese New Year we dined at the Emerald Chinese with a bunch of French, American and Aussie volunteers and Kotoni had ukulele lesson number three. He now knows a few more cords and strumming techniques… maybe a Sunday gig at the Union Bank wine bar in Orange will be in order on our return!?!

Another little cultural snippet from the Tonga in My Heart book by Shadrach… this time on land ownership

“When he is 18 every Tongan boy gets a piece of land. The oldest boy will get the family piece of land, because he is the heir. When his father dies, he asks the noble of the village and the Minister of Lands to put that piece of land in his name. He can’t sell it; in Tonga you can’t sell land. If you try to do it, all your land would be taken away from you and you would be taken to court. If he wants to, he can divide up any extra land and give it to his brothers, they tell the Minister of Lands, and they register each piece to each brother, and then that piece belongs to those families.
If I die my wife will be responsible for our piece of land. She will go to the Minister of Lands and tell them I have died, and then the land will be registered to her. If she didn’t do that, and if my son didn’t do that, after ten years the noble who owns our village would have the right to that piece of land… But even then he could still let my son have the land if he wanted to.
My daughter has no right to the land unless she has a son and I don’t. Then my daughter’s son would have the right to the land. The same is true for a nobles title. If he has no son but his daughter has one, that son has the right to the title.”