Tonga's Ironman ministry helps deportees [1]
Saturday, August 30, 2003 - 10:45. Updated on Friday, February 19, 2016 - 18:32.
From Matangi Tonga Magazine Vol. 18, no. 2, August 2003.
Arriving in Tonga immediately after being released from foreign jails is often a traumatic experience for young people, who have spent most of their adult lives in the metropolitan centres of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sydney and Auckland. Many of them know very little about Tonga, excepting for the fact that they are of Tongan origins.
Sione Koloamatangi, a deportee from Los Angeles, arrived in Tonga in 1998, to a place that all seemed very strange to him, and was not the welcome home scene that he imagined.
“I wanted to go back [to the US], the attitude of the people was disheartening. I got up with the gang-bang thing in LA, and I ended up in jail, but I was always proud to be a Tongan, but to return and find that my beloved country and even some members of my own family went out of their way to make me feel unwelcome, was an incredible experience,” he said.
But there was no going back for Sione (32), who left Tonga when he was 13 years old, and had lived in America for 19 years. A USA immigration policy deports non-American citizens after they serve jail sentences.
Sione believes that he was fortunate to become a Christian while in prison, which helped him to keep his sanity and his cool.
Desperate
After being in Nuku’alofa for a little while he continued to meet more deportees with similar experiences, and some were in very desperation situations.
Sione said he decided to establish the Ironman Ministry with the objective of “sharing god’s love” with these deportees, who were jailed for a range of horrendous crimes. Sione did not want to talk about their crimes, because of fear that it would perpetuate the stereotype image that people have of returned criminals.
Spiritual problem
Sione said that with all the time that he spent in correction institutions and the time he spent in prison, “It didn’t fix me. It is a spiritual problem, and it has to be fixed in that way.”
Sione has been financing his mission with contributions from friends and the little money that his mother sends him from the USA. He has set up an office near the corner of Hala Lelue and Hala Wellington, in the central Nuku‘alofa business area, where he meets every Friday evening with about 30 deportees to share stories and to give each other encouragement. Sione also offers a counselling service every Wednesday.
His long-term plan is to have a Halfway House where deportees could find refuge while they are trying to get their feet back on the ground and fit back into the community.
Sione admitted that he did not know how to structure a ministry, “But this work is all that is occupying my mind, I sleep with it and that is all that I am doing.”
Volunteers
But so far he was happy with how things were progressing, and a working committee had been formed. He was grateful to the people who had offered their help, including Drew Havea, Papiloa Foliaki, Trevor Guttenbeil, Denis Wolff, the Peace Corps, the Prime Minister’s Office, the Salvation Army and the Deputy Commander of Police, Taniela Faletau.
The first substantial financial assistance that the Ironman Ministry received was $5000 recently donated by the British High Commissioner to Tonga, Paul Nessling. Sione said that this money would go toward the financing of the office, and its running costs, which he estimated to be about $13,000 per annum.
Sione attends the Assembly of God Church but he stresses that his ministry is open to people from different churces. He also wants to extend his ministry to young people. “Some of the music they are listening to is banned overseas,” he said.