Tasa Article

Despite repeating Form 4 three times, Palatasa Havea – also known as Tasa – persevered with his education and became a renowned Food Scientist in New Zealand.

Tasa grew up in the little village of Mangia in Vava’u, Tonga. He describes his childhood as “wild”, and a normal village boy life, where his large family of 11 children depended on subsistence farming and fishing. His family wasn’t well off, so all of the children had to help out with domestic duties, farming and fishing. Tasa recalls that his duties often included fishing early in the morning before school.

Even though life was hard, Tasa has many fond memories of his childhood. One of them was having his own garden beside his father’s. It was his own way of being independent and where his passion for nature and science began.

Tasa describes his early school life as ‘just going to school’. Every day he would walk around 6 km to school and back, but he was always too exhausted to study at the end of the day because of all the other extra-curricular school activities he had to do on top of his chores at home. There was singing and dance practice, rugby training, working for the school or the teachers and other things.

At the time, the school he went to didn’t prioritise the performance of its’ students to meet the academic national standard. School was just seen as a chapter to tick off when you grew up and if you got in to somewhere with your education it was an important cultural ideal.

For Tasa, science was the only thing that he could understand in school because it related to the chores he had at home (farming and fishing). But even though he understood science, he wasn’t doing well at school. He found it hard to articulate his answers to questions, so he could never really show how much or how little he actually understood.

Tasa always wanted to do well at school, but his repeated failures made it extremely hard for him to stay motivated. He always envied the students who won prizes and always doubted his own capabilities. When he reached Form 4, Tasa was put into Form 4E, where the letter of the Form was important as it denoted the student’s academic abilities and the top students were in Forms A and B.

In Form 4, the students had to sit their first national certificate exams, but unfortunately for Tasa, he only managed to achieve 42.8%. Even though he failed the exam, he came second in his class of Form 4E.

Tasa recalls that day clearly, “The poor people of my village celebrated my being second in my class, but they didn’t pick up my 42.8% achievement. They only compared me to the rest of my class, who all failed.”

Tasa remained in the same class for two years trying to pass the exam. It wasn’t until he went to school on the main island of Tongatapu that he developed any hope of doing well in his education.

In his new school, the teachers and students were all about learning and doing well academically. The teachers made the effort to help all the students, no matter their learning level and even if they had to tutor privately. This made a major difference in Tasa’s life and to his self-esteem. He learnt to read properly and developed the courage to believe that he could do well academically even after all his failures in the past.

When Tasa passed and graduated high school, he got a job at the Tonga Commodities Board, a local resource marketing company. He worked there for four years before they sent him to the University of the South Pacific in Suva for his Foundation Studies. He then went on to New Zealand to study Food Technology at Massey University. The company’s vision was for Tasa to return to Tonga to develop coconut products such as ice cream and butter for export.

But when he returned to Tonga, the company was about to become obsolete, so Tasa went back to New Zealand to continue his education in Food Technology. Even though his educational journey was a difficult one, Tasa persevered and went on to receive 1^st Class Honours and later a PhD in Food Technology.  

Today, Tasa is known as Dr. Palatasa Havea and is a senior research scientist at the Fonterra Research and Development Centre in New Zealand. He has advised the New Zealand government on multiple policy issues involving the Pacific Islands, and has invented a number of patented technologies that have earned his employer and the New Zealand economy millions of dollars. He is also a prominent leader in his community and at church.  

From a poor village boy, who found school extremely challenging, Tasa turned the tables and achieved great things for himself, his family and his country. His inspiring journey acts as an example that should empower others to believe in themselves. If you couldn’t do it once, keep trying because you might just be able to achieve the impossible like Palatasa Havea.