Within Reach
The day that a major natural disaster hits Hawai’i and the lights go out and stay out, I want to be in Wai’anae. Some might point out that the communities in the Wai’anae district are the most powerless on the island. Twenty percent of the population lives below the poverty line, and the per capita income is half of what it is in Honolulu. But take away the urban sources of ‘power’ from a society dependent on the things money can buy–like electricity–and Honolulu residents will be, uh, left in the dark.
Why Wai’anae? Because there are growing clusters of people in Wai’anae and its four major populated valleys–Nanakuli, Lualualei, Wai’anae and Makaha–who understand the concept of sustainability and more importantly, how to apply it. It’s a thin line between sustainability and survivability, whether you’re talking about houseless people on the beach or the disenfranchisement of a culture from the very land on which it was born. For Hawaiians, having the resources to survive is not a privilege for a single individual–it’s an opportunity endowed by the kupuna and passed on to the keiki, and it’s every person’s kuleana to make sure that chain is not broken.
and salting ‘opelu. Cooking on sunshine: Nanakuli Intermediate 8th graders’ solar ovens. Seeded land: Makaha Elementary 6th graders planted this garden with their own two hands under the guidance of Gigi Coqui (second from right). The heat is on: A clay oven bulit by Nanakuli Intermediate 7th graders.
With a perpetual eye to the next generation, sustainable practices were an intrinsic part of the traditional Hawaiian ahupua’a model for living, a system in which wealth was not measured by dollars, but instead by natural abundance. Historian and anthropologist Marion Kelly wrote, ‘In Hawaiian times, the chiefs were caretakers of the land and the sea for the gods. A good chief took good care of the land, the sea, and his people, and he and his people were rewarded by bountiful crops raised by the farmers and multitudes of fish caught by the fishermen.’
It’s a system that worked for centuries, developed by people who had an intimate connection to the land. It’s a system that was never broken, until outsiders came and changed it. And it’s a system that is being reinstated and re-taught in rural pockets of Hawai’i as a way to recover the land, the water and, subsequently, the culture that has been abused for too long.
‘The ahupua’a of the present is all bus’ up. Before, the ocean was our icebox, our farm, our energy. Today, the ocean is where we dump wasteÖ How do we bring back all those skills that make a thriving community? In the last 150 years, we’ve taken all those skills out of education. The skills are still in our collective memory bank,’ Ka’ala Farm founder Eric Enos says. ‘All over the world, pockets of people have said, ‘Enough is enough.’ We have to get back to what’s important. And that is our children, our families, our communities–how do we keep them safe and healthy?’
A week before the earthquake knocked out power for a day, Ka’ala Farm and the Malama Learning Center hosted the inaugural three-day Ka Papa O Kakuhihewa Sustainability Summit supported by Kamehameha Schools and Hawaiian Electric Company. The summit’s theme, incidentally, ‘Lights Out! Now What?’ referred to a three-day power outage caused by Hurricane Iniki in 1992 and prompted attendees–adults and children–to consider what would happen in such a crisis. The organizers asked key questions about sustainability: How can we grow and cook food in our sunny backyards? How can we build shelters from the earth? How do we use and conserve water from our streams? How do we convert our waste into rich soil that grows our food?
Most sustainability conferences address these questions with a top-down approach–a kitchen full of policymakers, scientists and environmental consultants dressed as chefs swapping recipes–however, all the banging of pots and pans fails to produce fodder that reaches the most essential audience: the people who need to eat. Sustainability will never be achieved unless the strategy includes a grassroots approach. The Wai’anae summit was taught by practitioners and held for the maka’ainana, the eyes of the land, the common folk–not in a hotel ballroom, not with a PowerPoint presentation, not by just discussing it. They took us outside and showed us how to do it.
You are what your fish eats
The first step is jumping into the paradigm, embracing the mantra ‘Take care of the ‘aina, and the ‘aina will take care of you.’ Outside the Kamehameha Schools Learning Center in Nanakuli, we line up in front of a row of tables upon which sat plastic rectangle tubs of hand-sized ‘opelu. The lesson: What is our responsibility to our resources? The teachers: William Aila, Jr., Domingo Gomes and Carl Jellings, all longtime fishermen from the leeward coast. The task at hand: Cut open the fish, take out the guts, salt the fish and set them in giant screened driers to dry under the sun.
‘How many people know how to cut and dry fish? Most never had to learn how. They just get fish from the store,’ Gomes says. ‘There’s nothing in life for free. You gotta malama the fish, feed the fish and then a percentage give themselves up.’ Then he explains the Hawaiian sea-farming method: ‘Opelu fishermen feed the fish from their canoes, distributing a chum of pounded pumpkin or sometimes ‘ahi, aku, kalo, ‘uala (sweet potato) or oatmeal–the fish eat well–and during the appropriate season, they harvest the fish by net. Salted, the cured fish has a long shelf-life, ideal for inter-island trips in the old days.
Looking at what’s in their bellies, we are confronted by the reality of the food chain. Who wants to eat fish with plastic in their bellies? The bottom line is the health of the fish is determined by the health of their ecosystem–which man continues to pollute with runoff, industrial toxins and human waste.
‘If we don’t take care of the watershed, we destroy the habitat for the fish and the relationship that has evolved over thousands of years,’ summit leader Enos explains, adding that the ocean is a resource for food, for energy, for medicine. ‘We’re putting doo doo and shi shi into our waterÖwhat’s wrong with this?’
Underscoring his point, a diagram of a multrium toilet behind him points out that no other land mammal defecates deliberately in water.
Next to the fish-cutting tables sits a meticulously crafted ‘opelu canoe built by McD Philpotts. The hull, the iakos and the ‘ama of the sailing canoe are made from albizia, the fast-growing invasive tree whose prevalence in Hawai’i is shading out native forests, causing less soil cover and more runoff.
‘Everything on the canoe is made from salvaged materials,’ says Philpotts, a furniture maker who is now building furniture that travels and floats and connects people to the sea–out of a material that in the process becomes constructive rather than destructive. Nodding to the kids cutting fish, he talks about experiential learning and the way nature resonates, and he cautions against too much urban development. ‘You go on a hike and what they remember is the mist on their face, the smells, the wonderful beauty only nature can provide. Urban living limits the opportunity of natural experiences,’ he says. ‘These kids grow up to make decisions about developmentÖ.Our agricultural footprint is being eroded. We have to make sure there’s still ‘aina left.’
Enos then suggests half-jokingly that Philpotts get to work on canoes for the whole community. It calls to mind a dreamy vision of a flotilla of wooden canoes traveling up the Wai’anae coast, chasing the sun and carrying a self-sufficient people home.
Here comes the sun
The second day of the summit takes place outside the 7th and 8th grade science rooms at Nanakuli Intermediate and High School. Like it does most days of the year on the leeward side, the hot Nanakuli sun beats down from a cloudless blue sky. An energetic group of students take time from their vacation to share what they’ve been learning about solar energy.
Kainoa Hopfe’s students give out hot dogs that they’ve cooked in solar ovens fashioned out of cardboard boxes, aluminum foil and plastic wrap. After he explains how the depth of the box affects the cooking time, eighth grader Blaze Bajit jokes about selling the hot dog bites for a quarter apiece–an idea that would be ideal as a fundraiser at festivals like Sunset on the Beach. I ask him what he thinks about these hands-on science projects. He says he’s a lot happier than when his former science teacher gave him 15 reading assignments in one day. ‘That’s not teaching,’ Bajit scoffs. ‘That’s torturing!’
Meanwhile, there’s a zealous crew of participants stomping on piles of mud atop blue tarps, grinning like Lucy and Ethel crushing grapes in a giant vat. The consistency of this mixture of dirt, cinder, water and hay becomes thicker and thicker with every stomp. The hay, like rebar, adds flex and resilience to improve the clay’s integrity. The kids use the tarps to fold the putty onto itself until it becomes a burrito. When it’s solid enough to handle, we haul armfuls of incongruent slabs over to the wooden foundation of the bench we’re molding, basically a rectangular box the size of a big toy chest. Less than three hours later, the kids are carving their initials into it.
A few feet away from the bench, the mud is being compacted onto an upright grid of kiawe branches so it looks like a black windowsill–the mold for what will eventually be the wall of a building structure.
‘We can make houses out of local materials. We don’t have to be dependent on the concrete, wood and steel that is shipped in,’ says natural building specialist and archaeologist Tim Rieth. According to Rieth, more than half the world’s population lives in earthen houses–homes made of mud, grass, wood or stone.
The Nanakuli 7th graders have also used the clay to make an earth oven, which they fired up earlier in the morning. Now it’s a blazing 450 degrees, ready to bake the kalo-dough flatbread and pizzas that the girls in Colin Waga’s science class have been prepping. Rieth puts in the first pizza. Two minutes later, it comes out charred. The kids take over, readjusting the cooking time, and pretty soon, we’re all grinding the tasty pies.
Adjacent to the earth oven is a four-tiered, Plexiglass covered solar dehydrator resembling a bookcase. On each screen tier, there are strips of food basking in the sun–banana, papaya, kalo, pineapple, pipikaula. A ventilated top and bottom allows the water to evaporate. We get to sample these long-lasting treats as well.
As Enos slices more kalo to throw in the dehydrator, he talks about how kalo produces more food than any plant per square foot–a couple of square feet can yield a wheelbarrow full of sustenance. ‘The lu’au leaf is the original solar cell,’ he remarks, showing photos of big, green heart-shaped leaves in a lo’i stretching out under the sun. The stem, he says, holds the blood that feed the baby kalo. As the corm sucks up the nutrients and grows, the leaves shrink, indicating it’s ready for harvest. Then the stem is replanted, perpetuating the bloodline, which Hawaiian mythology traces to the first Hawaiian.
Feeding the love connection
As it does in Hawaiian culture, food plays a leading role during the summit. After all, it is what sustains. But we’re not talking about processed food. We’re talking about cutting out the middleman, locally based economics, food from the earth and the sea, food prepared with the right intention–that is, to nourish. That’s how Mike Motas creates our lunch each day using ingredients grown locally in Wai’anae: kalo-watercress-tomato salad, sweet potato, pineapple, chicken lu’au, mahi lau lau, kalo bread pudding, haupia, lomi salmon, lomi ‘opelu and, of course, the dried ‘opelu salted by all of us. It’s healthy, and it’s delicious.
‘Even a 10-course dinner, if nobody loves each other, junk the food,’ Enos observes, talking to the attendees assembled in giant circle. ‘We taste the love.’
During a post-lunch discussion, west side activist Fred Dodge comments, ‘All things are connected. Everything around us has connections.’
People chime in to elaborate on that idea. Hakipu’u educator and cultural practitioner Calvin Hoe says that groups in East O’ahu are also trying to live ahupua’a. ‘We know the ways of our kupuna are so valuable,’ he says. ‘The Ko’olau and Wai’anae side may have differences, but we share love for our ‘aina, love for our waters.’ The practices on the windward side reflect the needs and nature of its ahupua’a–’we no more ‘opelu, but get loko ‘ia,’ Hoe says.
He adds it doesn’t always have to be about swimming upstream and bucking the system. ‘We cannot only be fighting against things. We have to be pro-active,’ reasons the longtime defender of Waiahole and Waikane water rights.
Many summit attendees are trying to do just that. Besides community residents, teachers and students, there are representatives from the Board of Water Supply, Hawaiian Electric, Alu Like, the Community Conservation Network, Kanu Hawai’i, the Nature Conservancy and Hawaiian Civic Clubs. But the summit isn’t only about connecting people from group to group and from mauka to makai, it’s also about connecting people to the land.
The words Edward Arning used to describe King Kamehameha I in Ethnographic Notes on Hawaii 1883-1886 show that even in early Hawai’i these same lessons were taught by example: ‘While he lived on O’ahu he encouraged the chiefs and commoners to raise food and he went fishing and would work himself at carrying rock or timber. They all saw that he labored himself with his own two hands.’
With our own two hands
The most pressing question I have throughout the weekend is, how do we get these ideas about sustainability to stick? It’s not like every kid in Wai’anae is going to go home and turn the cardboard boxes in the garage into solar ovens. The answer, reiterated many times throughout the weekend, is we must plant the seed with the kids and in the schools.
Day three of the summit takes place at Hoa ‘Aina O Makaha, the organic farm tended with love for the past 27 years by Italian farmer Gigi Cocqui. The 6th graders at neighboring Makaha Elementary give everyone a taste from the garden they planted here: eggplant and sweet potato brushed in olive oil and homegrown rosemary and basil, dried fruit, lemongrass ice cakes with honey collected on site.
‘They take ownership of this garden,’ their teacher Mike Sarmiento explains. ‘They even came over break. If I opened my classroom and said, ‘Hey, OK, we’re going to do math today,’ do you think any of them would have come?’
We gather under a thatch hale and watch a video documenting the evolution of the garden, which the kids named ‘A Garden Made With Our Own Two Hands.’ The film shows the students planting seeds and building a pond. One kid grins at the camera and says, ‘I think we can finish it in six months. I think it will be cherry.’ A Jack Johnson song accompanies the video, and the simple lyrics sung by Ben Harper convince the audience that the kids really get it: ‘I can change the world/ With my own two hands/ Make it a better place/ With my own two hands/ Make it a kinder place/ With my own two handsÖI can make peace on earth/ With my own two hands/ I can clean up the earth/ With my own two hands/ I can reach out to you/ With my own two hands.’
As we watch the video, a plumeria falls out from behind my ear, forcing me to take note of its perfection: the soft layers of pink, yellow and white, the shape of its petals, the sweetness of its fragrance. It dawns on me that maybe everything in nature is already perfect–its gifts ours to receive–yet we’ve insisted on destroying that perfection. What the kids are doing is growing more perfection, new perfection, healing the land that is sick, fixing the system we’ve broken, and they’re doing it with their own two hands.
Enos talks about the healthy ahupua’a of the past, the sick ahupua’a of the present, and asks what we envision for the ahupua’a of the future.
‘Unless you have places like this in every ahupua’a where kids can get grounded in their values, then the decisions that are made at the top won’t have any merit,’ Enos says, warning against the fate of other Pacific islands where land and water resources have been stolen and sold. ‘What are local people eating? Canned goods. Ramen. Bad health is big business.’
Cocqui, in his gentle demeanor, shares his philosophy, which makes perfect sense. ‘It’s not just [about] the power of the sun or eat organic and all these things. Teaching and learning about sustainability goes beyond all this.’
He asks the 6th graders, ‘What do we say after we plant?’
They immediately respond, ‘Good night, seeds.’
Gigi then asks, ‘How many seeds do we plant when we plant corn?’
The kids pause. One says, ‘Two.’ Another goes, ‘One?’
Gigi says, ‘Are you sure? One or two?’
‘The attitude is [what is] important,’ Coqui says, illustrating his point. ‘The technical things we can find in the books… It’s establishing a relationship with the land. Projects and programs do not make a difference in the world. Relationships make a difference. We have to develop relationships so we understand why we’re doing all these things.’
He continues, ‘We are healing the world. The process of healing is long. It takes only a second to make a wound, but a long time to heal it.’
