POTSDAM — A retired SUNY Potsdam professor has published a book about his experience in the Peace Corps following college. 

Ever wonder what it would be like to live on a South Pacific island for two years? 

William L. (Bill) Romey did, in 1984-85. But he did more than merely hang around on just one, carelessly watching dark-eyed girls sway in grass skirts. He called 176 coral and volcanic islands home, and also worked hard as a Peace Corps teacher, in Tonga, an indigenous monarchy and member state of the British Commonwealth.  

Romey shares his experiences in a new self-published book, The Tonga Letters: Peace Corps in the South Pacific.

The “letters” in the 283-page volume are those the current Potsdam resident and retired SUNY Potsdam professor of biology wrote home to his late parents, Bill and Lucretia Romey, an SLU geography professor and an artist, respectively, in Canton, and that they saved.  

The book also features maps, photos, short sections on his pre-stint training and his post-stint travels back to the States, and a glossary of Tongan words.

Romey’s book is both educational and entertaining. His detailed, vivid letters home, roughly once a week for two years, are very lightly edited for consistency and clarity, and give us, in his authentic voice, extensive, anecdotal-style specifics about his tenure outside his comfort zone. 

There’s teaching science in a school system where schedules and attendance are best described as “whatever,” and learning to manage without refrigeration in a hot climate. We find typhoon warnings, spearfishing by moonlight, learning local customs like the frequent Kava Ceremony (kava: a mildly intoxicating drink brewed from a pepper plant) and correct construction of an umu (earth oven), feasts for every occasion imaginable (minus chairs and utensils), and proper social behavior at weddings, funerals and so on. We see joy, humor, distress, perplexity, regrets, enlightenment, confidence on a roller coaster – slices of life, which, like yours and mine, has its ups and downs.

Some of Romey’s letters are followed by brief modern-day postscripts, bringing the day’s topic, or his take on it, up to date: “Nowadays I see the similarity of Tonga’s British-inspired school system (in) the Harry Potter books and movies.”

Romey describes not only what he did, but also his gradual assimilation into Tongan culture, and how he felt about both. As one photo suggests, for a six-foot-five, slender, blond American who liked winter, adapting was not easy among tropical people who valued width over height. Their much-loved king, for example, weighed a proud and honored 400 pounds, give or take.

The Tonga Letters: Peace Corps in the South Pacific can be purchased in paperback or Kindle at Amazon.com at https://a.co/d/01BUlAsP.