This was a huge celebration. The one hundred year anniversary of the introduction of Tonga’s Constitution, 1875 to 1975, and it seemed like every village in the entire kingdom was part of the celebration and my village, Ngele’ia, was not an exception. I had been watching the village practice their dance for a couple of weeks. Then one afternoon when I got back to my hut, the Village Elder knocked on my door (actually just pushed the door open with a slight knock) and asked me to dance the Soke with the village. Without thinking I smiled and said sure. He took my hand in his and walked me to the two lines of dancers, perhaps 100 strong with a mix of men and women, and he gave me a long stick. I noticed the women had two small sticks. I was ready for some instructions, but not a word. The Village Elder yelled “kamata hulohula” (Start dancing or something close to that) and the entire two lines began to do the Soke. The dance, I would later find out represented a warriors canoe gliding through the water with men rowing and the women representing the water…pretty cool. I learned very quickly that when I missed a move (and I knew no moves) the women would hit me on my butt with their sticks. Needless to say my butt was beaten silly for the first three of four days. This was a matter of much laugher for those women, who probably still talk about it 43 years later. Through trial and error, mostly error, I finally caught on. We practiced every day, except Sunday, for a good month until we were ready to dance in front of the King and the Royal family. I was told at the time, that I was the first palangi (European) to ever dance in front of the King, but I have since learned that I was not the first, but that is okay, I still got to dance with my village and that’s what counts.