Copyright © 2016 by Thomas Gangale
Our newest neighbor is Jonathan, an American ex-pat who has set up an ice cream shop in the field next to the Sione Tongilava house on Hala Taufa'ahau in Fanga. His enterprise taps water from our meter, and we share the water bill. Jonathan's shop is comprised entirely of shipping containers: two joined together in tandem, and one freestanding behind them. His shop is not quite up to code, however. Not that a building inspector is likely to come around and get on his ass. I speak of "code" in an empirical sense; unlike every other shop in Tonga, there are no bars on the windows. Talk about a risky business. But, recently I saw a half-dozen policemen enjoying his ice cream cones on the cement pad he had poured next to the containers a few months earlier; there are tables and chairs in a fenced-in area, and a corrugated metal overhang to keep the tropical sun off his patrons. Jonathan said, "I'm taking care of the policemen."
I wasn't entirely sure how he meant that, given my family history. "Sure, I responded. "You have to take care of the policemen so they'll take care of you." Once upon a time in America, 1920s San Francisco to be exact, my grandfather "took care of" the policemen and they "took care of" him by turning a blind eye to the distillery he and some business associates had set up across the street from a police station. A necessary business expense. He couldn't "take care of" the Feds, however; they broke into the distillery and busted up the joint with their baseball bats. Risk overtook opportunity.
But, there is nothing illegal about selling ice cream in Tonga, except on Sundays. I wonder whether one could get around the blue law by establishing a church and having parishioners take communion in the form of ice cream cones. An "usher" at the front door would make sure that no one got in without putting the minimum remuneration in the collection plate; throw in a few sing alongs and the operation would look perfectly legit. You see how we dagos think, always looking for an angle.
I witnessed an expansion of Jonathan's business as a truck brought in the fourth cargo container. It was a tight fit, clearing the branches of a huge mango tree above and to the left, and the overhanging corrugated roof of an outhouse above and to the right, but the Tongan winch operator worked with the precision of a surgeon. I'm sure he gets plenty of practice. One sees shipping containers all over Nuku'alofa, even in people's yards alongside their homes, which makes Jonathan's ice cream shop the apotheosis of Tongan architecture. After watching Jonathan's new shipping container set in place, I returned to the house, where Marilyn and I chatted about the thousand and one Tongan uses of cargo containers, and we came to the realization, "Wow! We're actually living in a cargo cult!"
Thomas Gangale's Tales of Tonga
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