It’s over! Oh mah goodness!! It is finally over. So I was asked to blog about my experience planning & preparing for the festival. If I could sum it all up in one word it would be …..CHAOS!! hahaha! This year was the 13th annual Friendly Island Festival. Count ‘em , 13! The first time I ever got really involved was in 2006 and that was an accident, a self-inflicted accident.. lol! I asked Ivoni & Fahina if they needed anything, any help.. let me know. Apparently, asking was the wrong thing to do. I was lured into the committee and have been here since and I love it. The dynamics of working with a group of people to accomplish a big event is without question, the dynamics surrounding a group of Tongan’s to accomplish a big event, is on a whole other level!! LOL!
After last year’s success, we decided to use the program from last year as a template to create this year’s Friendly Island Festival. Wrong!! The NTAS Youth committee and I met several times to create and breakdown the schedule for the festival and came up with so many rough drafts that we eventually worked ourselves back to square one. LOL! We finally came up with a schedule that worked and I delegated many of the responsibilities to my youth committee. Our purpose from the NTAS Youth committee standpoint was to cater to the youth & young adult Tongan population. We wanted to create an atmosphere that was inviting to both young and old. Did we accomplish that? I think we did. We could have done so much better but for what we did, it was okay!
The first 11 years of the Friendly Island Festival was a success but on a smaller scale. The 1st 11 years successfully attracted the older more mature, Tongan folks but for last year & this year’s festival, we wanted to appeal to the younger members of our Tongan community. We decided to make a change and I have to give it up to my youth committee and NTAS committee, we made it happen. With the ever watchful eyes of the committee, their approval & guidance, me as their advisor and under the direction of the 2006 Miss Tonga Utah/Meliani Tonga… last year’s festival was a hit. Last year was my first exposure to running a huge event and it ran so smoothly that there were no mistakes to learn from. Either there were no mistakes or I was so new to this that everything seemed okay. However, this year, I made so many mistakes that I felt frustrated. However, I did what we Tongan’s do best. We push on through with what we’ve got and keep on truckin’. We are such last minute people. Besides family, work & church, nothing is important to us until the moment it is upon us. We work well under pressure but, I tell ya, working under pressure is going to kill me one of these days!! Hahaha! This year as chairman of the festival, I felt like I had little or no control of the events that unfolded during the festival, this has nothing to do with the sports or food part of the festival, just my part in the whole event. I had called and had my youth committee call to confirm with our performers and some of the performers after confirming with them, didn’t show up to perform. What the? Hahaha! Who does that?! I had to run around and act like everything was okay, that the stage was void of performances because everyone wanted to watch rugby. Thank goodness for the DJ, bless his heart, for putting up with the constant nagging from me and my cohorts. We were able to pull it off without a hitch.
I enjoyed the performances from the groups that showed up. They really work hard to prepare themselves to perform at our festival. To them, I am thankful. Groups that performed: the Salsa In Utah group, Dir: Maria Ivanova & Eddie Santos, and one of my favorites the Laumalie Ma’oni’oni Warriors. Wow, these guys put in work. They smashed bricks with their heads, one guy blew into a hot water bottle until it popped, they all showed their physical strength by doing crazy things and it was a hit with both the older folks and especially with the kids.
I had fun but at the same time I was more stressed. I had to deal with certain “someones” telling others that they could do a better job, that they could make the festival so much better. Ugh. So frustrating all this while I’m running around trying to get all my performers on stage & emcee at the same time. I’ve come to the realization that you just can’t please everyone. You do the best you can with the best of intentions and let it roll. It is unrealistic to think that you can please everybody. For those of you naysayers, complainers, if you think you can do a better job, please, I would love for you to jump on in and do a better job. That’s what we’re looking for, participation and great ideas from our people.
Regardless of the negative aspects of the festival, there were so many more positives. We had for the first time our Tongan idol which brought out a lot of participation, we had a children’s playground which Peni Malohifo’ou (my co-emcee) after jumping in to interview the kids, ended up getting jumped by the kids! LOL! We had our 2007 Miss Tonga Utah that showcased some of Utah’s beautiful Tongan young women. We had a performance from a local reggae group called DaVerse Dir: Terick and of course the many Polynesian performances from our many talented Utah Polynesian groups i.e. Mohekono Dir: Meliame Mohi, Touch of Polynesian Dir: Ailine Lao, Paradise Review Dir: Heleni Mataele, Malia Lole Dir: Vita, and One Voice Dir: Paula Tui’one. There are so many other talented groups all up and down the Wasatch front and I hope to see them perform at next year’s Friendly Island Festival.
The purpose of the festival is to give our people a reason to get together, embrace and share our culture and uplift new & exciting talents that exist in both our youth & our more mature community. The festival isn’t perfect, its filled with flaws and always will be but there will always be room for improvement and all we ask from our community is for you to help us, join us, support us create a fun filled Tongan event for many Tongan families to enjoy.
Margarita Satini Festival Committee Member
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Ben Tameifuna