1948-1954

I attended Kaleli, the elementary school on my island when I was five years old. My first class was called 1-B and then 1-A, class 1, class 2, class 3, class 4 and class 5.

School was about one mile from grandma’s house. We walked to school. School was fun except when it rained. The road got so muddy and if you fell down in the mud you would have to take the rest of the day off. It happened a few times to me.

How I first learned English: We had books with mostly pictures. We learned how to pronounce each word with the corresponding picture like “apple” or “table”. We also learned the letters of the English alphabet which differed slightly from the Tongan alphabet. This is the Tongan alphabet: A E F H I K L M N NG O P S T U V ‘. Later we put the English words in sentences, for example: A is for apple. B is for book. C is for cat. D is for Dog.

We also learned how to use the indicator words, for example: Run under the table. Then we’d actually run under a table. Sit on the table. Then we sat on the top of a table. We also learned English rhymes like “the cow jumped over the moon”. It was fascinating to learn English although it was very hard.

Later we learned to spell the words. We also learned how to write upper case and lower case letters. Later we learned to write in cursive. Also we learned how to add, subtract, divide and multiply.

My brother paid Siaosi Filiaipulotu, a neighbor of ours in Fotua, to teach Sione Takapu, Hala Afu, myself and other kids in our village how to memorize the multiplication table. ‘Inoke paid him with fish, flying foxes and pork or by sharing dinner with us about twice a week. Our tutor was very happy for that and we learned fast. We sometimes slept over night at his house.

Some of the teachers used to beat kids who didn’t know their multiplication table or other school assignments. They were strict with homework. Talk about child abuse, I mean discipline! Sometimes we’d get spanked for being noisy in the classroom.

The ocean was close by so we often went with our teachers to pick some shells or just walk on the beach. They used recess to have us weed the school yard.

Wednesdays each week we worked on the school grounds, attending to the school lawn and the many beds of colorful flowers and plants. This school was the first place where I learned to like beautiful flowers, like marigolds, petunias, and roses. Some of the little plants in front of the school grounds, as they grew together, formed the letters G P S Kaleli. It was red and green in color and trimmed to perfection. One year parents raised some money to buy a lawnmower for our school. This lawnmower was a push mower. What a novelty that was. We were so proud of this lawnmower.