Word: surf
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Today, one can hover over Stevenson's single bed in his upstairs study (Fanny disliked the aquamarine walls almost as much as his coughing), gaze into his man-sized safe, and pace the verandas where the writer would listen to the distant surf crashing on the reef. But Samoa's climate hasn't been kind to his writing. A set of first editions in the museum has almost perished. "The cockroaches got to the books," says museum manager Lufilufi Rasmussen. "The covers aren't legible now, so we have to get them restored...
...does it then reappear and flourish? The first question is the harder one, and answering it involves a short trip through history. From the writings of George Vason, an English missionary dropped on one of the country's 170 islands in 1797, we know that Tongans used to surf. From the shore he would watch the natives take "particular delight" in an amusement they called fanifo. "It is astonishing to see with what dexterity they will steer themselves on the waves," Vason wrote, "one hand being stretched out, as the prow before, and the other guiding them like a rudder...
...Missionaries who came to Tonga shortly after Vason appear to have stuck more closely to their brief, and to have frowned on a pastime in which men and women, boys and girls - almost certainly naked - cavorted in the surf. It's thought that the missionaries convinced the chiefs that fanifo was corrupting Tongan youth and didn't belong in a budding Christian society, and that the chiefs placed on the sport a tapu, or ban. "This is, to some extent, speculation," says Po'oi Puloka, secretary general of the Tonga Amateur Sports Association and National Olympic Committee (tasanoc...
...surfing's Tongan revival? It all began with a love affair. In 1977, a 21-year-old chef from Sydney, Steve Burling, embarked on a holiday with some mates. Their plan was to surf Indonesia's best spots, then check out the less popular destinations of Tonga, Samoa and Fiji. But Burling's holiday ended on Tongatapu, where on his first day he met a local beauty called Sesika. Burling had never had a girlfriend before; never been in love. Sesika knocked him sideways. "It was her femininity," he says. "And she was slamming attractive." She followed him back...
...seemed natural to Burling that he would teach his children - he and Sesika have had six of their own and adopted two others - how to surf, and it was their eldest son, Michael, who first showed promise. By the time he was in high school, having featured in the local press for excelling in overseas competitions, Michael had drawn a number of his friends toward this unfamiliar sport. None of them had a board of his own - one still can't buy surf equipment anywhere in Tonga - so they used boards donated over the years by guests of the resort...