In Tonga

Need a haircut

Posted by: Samiuela LV Taufa on May 02, 2005 5:15:42 PM

Paula Leka has been servicing the rich, the poor, and the altogether not getting it, for longer than my memory. His shack shop-front sits across from the Kauli bakery store in Fasi-moe-afi(?) which just happens to be prime realstate (now he did he get that ?)

Paula's not getting any younger, so I took this shot when getting some bread just incase we forget the service the man has given/giving. When you're next in town, drop in for a haircut and just poke a little to get some of the wildest stories one can have in a lifetime.

He's still doing it on the cheap at TOP$3.00 a cut though you are always invited to put in two pennies more if you are inclined. No one's watching.

Paula's been around but somehow you'll need someone like Taua Koloamatangi to make the retelling of Paula's story half as interesting as when Paula retells it. Some great ones are his times in Hawai'i and how coming back to Tonga without a passport he just 'tailgaitted' the passenger in front to get onto the plane and then sweated it out how he was going to get back on the plane in Pango for the last leg, to find out that the Airport Manager was an old friend of his that he had helped to get a job in Hawai'i (both illegals). What else was he to do but to sit with the Airport Manager and have lunch while the plane waited for him. It's another story altogether when customs officials saw him drag himself out of the plane in Tongatapu knowing full well he had disappeared and there was no way he'd have any legal papers.

But don't take my word for it, ask Paula yourself. Let alone his adventures in the pre-vehicle days of Tonga.

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Need a haircut? Anonymous May 02, 2005 06:35 PM

Just looking at that shot brings back alot of memories. I remember all through primary school a nd high school, sitting at that hut every month waiting for a haircut. I would tell him what I want and he goes off and cuts it the way he thinks a school haircut should be. The stories were pretty cool too, often at times a little too x-rated :-) He use to tell us that story about hopping on the plane without a passport but i thought he was just BS-ing around. He'd be pushing what? 70/80 now? N4

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