A thing about Tongan furniture: they will cover anything with fabric to make it look presentable, though that chair you're sitting on could be half a bed fitted with random plywood as a back, a halved or quartered foam pad as the cushions, and sarong fabric as the cover.
The thing I've noticed most, however, is that most of the furniture is used over and over for practicality, which is great. This also means they wear the heck out of something until it is dangling by its last fibers of life...and then they fix it up again.
In America, we get in a mood to change things around. Move furniture, get new candle holders, buy a new table that looks worn out and vintage... and curtains.
As a volunteer, it's quite normal to feel like the newest cleaning product on the old Billy Mays infomercials... and when my bottle is in its last effort of squirting to make things shiny in Tonga, I am...replaced.
I'm like curtains. Tongans, as I've noticed, do replace curtains quite often. New colors, patterns, fabric...the thinner and breezier the better, and I feel like the new material being crafted to fit this certain-sized window... and in a year and a half, they'll find another.
It's sad, really. Feeling like a quick-fix. I do think I am appreciated and I feel that my new position as GAD Coordinator will be fruitful in my Tongan life AND back in Clean Life...beneficial, no doubt. But I'm just a person, after all. Just another Palangi who came here with post-college energy and wide-eyed amazement at how MUCH I can LEARN! (Ok, it's still mostly there, but a bit faded...worn into a vintage wash, if you will.)
So there. Here I am making furniture metaphors about my life as a PCV, and BOOM. I realize I AM the furniture. Or more specifically, a single accessory!
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